Jesus Always Chose What Was Beautiful

I would like to share my reaction to yesterday's Worship Rally for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. As we gathered in front of the steps of the Ohio Statehouse, we were joined by Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Mainline Protestants, Catholics and Evangelicals. About 150 of us gathered there to show support for comprehensive immigration reform. As expected, a group of about 10 stood by the road holding signs saying, "Honk if you Support Arizona" and "Illegals Go Home!" I must say that it was a very touching experience to be with such a diverse group of people of faith. The most touching speaker of the evening was not a pastor, or a rabbi, or a community leader. She was a 10 year old girl named Jamie Aristigue shared her story of being separated from her father. Jamie cried as she wondered why her father, who only wanted to do what was best for his wife and children was thrown in jail with thieves and murderers. I am glad there was no camera pointed at me at that moment, because Jamie's tears became my tears.

Perhaps the most astute observation of the night came from Rev. Troy Jacskon, the evangelical pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, OH. Rev. Jackson pointed to the countless times in the Bible when Jesus was given the choice between the law and the person, and Jesus always chose the person. Rev. Jackson pointed specifically to the story of the woman with alabaster jar in Matthew 26.7. In the face of his disciples objections, Rev. Jackson explained, "Jesus chose what was beautiful." To further his point Rev. Jackson compared our rally with the protesters on the street. Every once in a while we would hear the ugly, obnoxious honk of a horn (very few horns given the amount of traffic at that time of day). Between speakers at our service, we had the beautiful music of the violin, and ended by singing "We Shall Overcome." To Rev. Jackson, this contrast was a perfect picture of the immigration debate. The protesters filled with hate on the street chose the ugliness of the honking horns, but the people of faith gathered at the rally, we, just as Jesus did, chose what was beautiful.


The above image is of Jamie, her mother, and 5 year old sister. Taken by Fred Squillante of the Columbus Dispatch.

Breaking the Law in the Name of God?

As I prepare for the Worship Rally for Comprehensive Immigration Reform today at the Ohio Statehouse, I am reminded of a comment on the subject of immigration that I read a while back. The comment went something along the lines of "the Bible tells us that we should follow the laws set up by our government." The commenter then went on to say that "we must follow our laws unless they go against scripture and in the case of Arizona's new immigration law, they do not." This got me thinking. First I disagree with the commenter's point that the Bible tells us to follow the laws of our government. While it is true that there are a few references in the Bible (Romans 13.1-7, 1 Peter 2.13-17, Titus 3.1-2), these verses are often taken out of context, and are in many ways contradictory to the way Jesus lived his life. I also disagree with the commenter's point that we can only break laws that go against scripture. Again, Jesus not only broke laws, he broke laws that were specifically connected to scripture! Jesus healed on the sabbath, touched lepers, hung out with women, ate with sinners and was eventuallyreceived capital punishment for breaking those laws. All of this has been argued before, and most people know the facts of Jesus being a radical and chose to accept of dismiss it, so I don't think I need to say more about that.





What really got me thinking is this: If I believe that as a Christian, I am called to live as Jesus lived, am I responsible to break laws in the name of God? Now, I am not talking about speeding or doing illegal drugs to "stick it to the man." Or more seriously, causing harm to people in the name of God. I am talking about disobedience to a law that is so against the teachings of Jesus (and the teachings of many other religious leaders for that matter) that the church must stand up against such a law. There have been instances of the church doing this in several cases. One such example, several years ago, California passed a law making it illegal to provide any social service to an undocumented person. That means, it is against the law for a church, non-profit or government agency to give shelter, feed, or clothe any undocumented person who comes through their doors for assistance, in which case, upon seeing a person in need, said church, non-profit or government agency is supposed to ask for that person's papers and if they have none, send that person back into the streets to die. In an instance of disobedience the Catholic Arch-diocese of Los Angeles publicly announced that they would not discriminate against any person seeking out one of their churches or charities for assistance and dared the government to do something about it. As far as I know, to this day, the Catholic Church in California, along with other Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican denominations continue to provide non-discriminatory assistance to EVERY person who walks through their doors. In this case, the church saw that the law was against Jesus' teachings of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and loving the stranger, teachings that by the way weren't accompanied by any type of exclusion clause. So to answer my own question, should we break laws in the name of God when necessary? Absolutely yes!





Now, it is not enough to just disobey laws that you disagree with, and it is going too far to try and claim that all laws are subject to disobedience. Not only is the church responsible to break laws that impose on the human rights of any person, but the church is responsible to be a voice for the voiceless. In Arizona, and soon in many other states, laws are being passed that impose on the rights of many undocumented AND documented immigrants. Just as Jesus refused to exclude lepers and tax collectors, we should refuse to accept laws that will tear apart families or block educational opportunities for the brightest of students. So, not only must we, if necessary disobey laws, but we must speak out to change those same laws.





For further reading:





The Interfaith Platform on Humane Immigration Reform


Myths About Immigration



Above image taken from Immigrants and Refugees

Misplaced Passion

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the Tea Party Movement and their rhetoric over the last few months. Let me start off by saying that I don't think it is a bad thing to be passionate about the things you believe in, whether it be politics, religion, Lebron James or any combination of those. There are things that we are all passionate about, and I am not exempt from this feeling. But, on the other hand, I do think there are times when we misplace our passion and go down a dangerous road of ridiculous rhetoric and actions that we ourselves aren't even sure that we believe. For me, the Tea Party Movement has become the epitome of misplaced passion. For example, the picture to the left of this illustrates a slogan I have heard being pronounced by multiple self-proclaimed Tea Party activists. When I say 'misplaced passion' this is exactly what I am talking about. Do people actually believe that Barack Obama is the anti-christ, or do they in a fit of anger and irrationality proclaim it to be true. Being that Tea Partiers are proclaimed to be more educated than the rest of society, I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt and go with the latter. Obama being the anti-christ is just one of the many other irrational slogans of the Tea Party Movement, such as, "Obama is a secret Muslim," "Obama is not a U.S. citizen," or "Obama is the next Hitler." All of these, I hope, are the Tea Partiers way of expressing their anger, and not what they actually believe.

So what is the point? If I understand the Tea Party Movement correctly, its most basic principles are smaller government and little or no taxation. Now, if Tea Partiers are supposed to be the most educated portion of society, wouldn't they see that Obama being the anti-christ or a Muslim or Hitler have nothing to do with government or taxes? Do they not also realize that by making these claims actually hinders their credibility when actually trying to bring light to their otherwise legitimate (I disagree with them, but they are nonetheless legitimate) principles. This is what I call misplaced passion. Don't get me wrong, I do not think misplaced passion is a characteristic of all Tea Partiers, just the ones who get the most attention. If I were a Tea Partier, I wouldn't want those with misplaced passion distorting the message that I was trying to get across (but alas, I am not a Tea Partier).

I think this has bothered me so much because the idealist in me sees the potential for misplaced passion to be turned into useful passion for the benefit of humanity. What if the people who get so heated that they are moved to make ridiculous claims about the president and others got passionate about feeding people? What if instead of spending their time coming up with provocative slogans for signs for their next rally they used their creativity and artistic ability to paint a mural in a dilapidated neighborhood? What if instead of perpetuating the myth that any person who is homeless or jobless and collecting unemployment is a "freeloader" they actually spent time learning about the root causes of homelessness and poverty? What if instead of spending time claiming that Obama was the anti-christ, they spent time living as instructed by Jesus Christ? I think the answer to these questions is that we would live in a country where we wouldn't have to be so angry at the government for spending, where we wouldn't have to attempt to divide our country with the rhetoric of hate, where we would act out of love instead of out of anger. That is the kind of country I want to live in, and I hope it is the kind of country you want to live in as well, no matter what your political affiliation is.

The above image is taken from The Mo'Kelly Report.

My Office

It can be said that a person's office says a lot about them. I am no exception to this. First of all, I am very unorganized. My desk reflects the fact that I must force myself to put everything in its place. When times are busier, I often forget to do this. But there are other things in my office that are much more important than folders, binders and desktop calendars. In my office I keep many of the gifts I have been given during my travels to Africa. On my desk sits a pair of Giraffes that were given to me by the president of a Rwandan HIV/AIDS co-op in 2008. On my bookshelf, I keep a beautiful basket given to me by the wife of my good friend Jean-Claude Ndagijimana honoring my and my wife's years of support of her husband's college education. The front of my desk adorns a picture of me and Jean-Claude's family: his wife Christine, and two sons Werner and Weber. Behind me hangs a Rwandan flag. Why do I keep all of these things in my office? Besides the fact that it looks cool, these things are constant reminders of why I chose to come to work for Church World Service. It reminds me that every day when I come to work, that what I am doing has the opportunity to positively affect the lives of the people I met in Rwanda and Kenya, and others in many places all over the world. You see, many people dread each day that they have to see their office, but I have been blessed enough to have a job with an organization that is making a real difference, a job where every hour I spend, every phone call I make, and every dollar I raise gives to the amazing work of CWS all over the world. When I get stressed, I don't have to do much more than close my eyes and remember the children in Rwanda, who, because they didn't have something as simple as a pencil or a school bag, could not attend school, or the street children who had been thrown into the streets either as orphans or because their parents chose them as the ones who they couldn't take care of. When I think about these things, my stress goes away, and I am able remember why I am doing what I am doing, and for that, I am truly blessed.

And so it Begins...Again

Well it has been quite some time since I last updated, and a lot has happened since then. The last time I wrote, I had finished my master's thesis, was working on an article and was applying to PhD programs. In the time since then, I have decided not to pursue my PhD (for now) taken a job with an international humanitarian and development agency called Church World Service and started the ordination process with the United Church of Christ. One might say that things are a bit different for me than they were in April 2009, but all of this is very good. I continue to do my research as much as possible and hope to eventually finish that article. I will continue to write about that progress here, as it happens. I will also write about my work with CWS, my experience with choosing to enter into ordained ministry with the UCC, and my travels over the past few years to Africa. So, this blog has just gotten much more versatile, and I hope this will encourage me to update more often.

How Jesus became God...

On April Deconick's blog she is in the process writing a series of posts on how Jesus became God, and in light of my recent post on the messianic secret this is some interesting stuff. Wrede's classic argument about the messianic secret in Mark is that Mark used secrecy language in his narrative to reconcile the fact that Jesus was not perceived as the messiah until after his death. Wrede argues that Mark portrayed Jesus and his disciples as being very secretive about Jesus' identity and that it was not to be made known to outsiders until after the resurrection (the key to Wrede's argument is Mk. 9.9 after Peter identifies Jesus as the messiah and Jesus tells his disciples to keep quiet until after the resurrection). I don't necessarily agree with Wrede's entire argument (or that Jesus' identity was the key to the secret in Mark, more on this later), but I think he is right in at least pointing out that there was some motivation to explain why the Historical Jesus wasn't seen as the messiah during his life, thus giving fuel to the inquiry into how Jesus actually became god.

The Messianic Secret

Yesterday I finished up with translating my passages from Mark. Today I wanted to get a good start on expanding upon my research. My first step was to decide the approach I wanted to take. My task is to extract from about 37 pages an article of about 15 pages. Now anyone that has ever written an article for a scholarly journal knows that just because you have written a longer piece does not mean that your research is complete. In my case I have decided to do a great deal more research beyond what I have already done. My approach is to take the argument I have already made, and turn it into a response to scholarship claiming that the "messianic secret" is the reason for secrecy language in the Gospel of Mark. There have been many scholars to do this already (e.g. Adela Yarbro-Collins, David Aune and Gerd Theissen). My approach is a bit different though. I will be looking at secrecy language in Mark in relation to the requirements of secrecy and concealment within Greco-Roman mystery religions. So, the article will be based on my argument that the "secret" the mystery religions were trying to protect was in fact the experience of initiation. I will tie this in with the Gospel of Mark by focusing on Jesus' interaction with demons, the people he healed, and his inner-circle of disciples as initiations. I will continue to post as the article develops. I will also post in a few days my summary of William Wrede's book "The Messianic Secret." Stay tuned!