The Psalmist, Judas, and Today's Politics

“I never knew what the psalmist meant by ‘enemies’ until I came out in the church,” a seminarian told us. Her poignant words hung in the air, resonating in the experience of the small support group of LGBT Christians.

I’ve been revisiting the Psalms, and must admit many of them no longer touch me as they once did when facing opposition in the church. The praising and awe-filled ones still uplift me; but many more sound whiny, petulant, and self-absorbed—especially those attributed to the king: reminds me too much of the self-pitying tweets we’ve been exposed to lately.  I also cannot claim the innocence or the righteousness before God that many psalms do.

I believe it was Bonhoeffer who recommended understanding the psalms that plead for justice as voiced by someone else in the world more needful than we. But even this act of the imagination has taxed me during my morning prayers.

Until last night.

We watched Netflix’s Get Me Roger Stone, a film about a master of political dirty tricks, one arrogantly proud of his lies and innuendo and misinformation to elect his clients and betray their opponents.  And this morning I read Psalm 64 (NRSV), which I believe speaks to this betrayal of both the righteous and the innocent: 

Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint;

            Preserve my life from the dread enemy.

Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked,

            from the scheming of evildoers,

who whet their tongues like swords,

            who aim bitter words like arrows,

shooting them from ambush at the blameless;

            they shoot suddenly and without fear.

They hold fast to their evil purpose;

            they talk of laying snares secretly,

thinking, “Who can see us?

            Who can search out our crimes?

We have thought out a cunningly conceived plot.”

For the human heart and mind are deep.

But God will shoot [God’s] arrow at them;

            they will be wounded suddenly.

Because of their tongue [God] will bring them to ruin;

            all who see them will shake with horror.

Then everyone will fear;

            they will tell what God has brought about,

            and ponder what [God] has done.

Let the righteous rejoice in the Lord

            and take refuge in [God].

Let all the upright in heart glory. 

Then I turned to my continued reading of Matthew, which happened to be the passage about Judas’s betrayal of Jesus. Judas tells his “clients”: “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” The footnoted alternative, “Other ancient authorities read righteous,” seems truer. “Righteous blood” seems more valuable than “innocent blood,” as it suggests the life of someone who, against all odds, has done what was right and good and just.

That would be Jesus, in Matthew’s story. In our own story, that could be compassionate and justice-seeking leaders besmudged by false accusations.

“I would rather be among the killed than among the killers,” I once heard the German theologian Dorothee Sölle tell an anti-nuclear arms gathering in Los Angeles. She clarified, saying something like, “I wouldn’t want fear to change my nature as non-violent.”

Nor can we let anger change us or our methods.

“Hate is more motivating than love,” is one of Roger Stone’s axioms.

A case in point: a few verses after Judas’s betrayal in Matthew’s gospel, the fickle crowds, roused by Jesus’ enemies, elected the volatile and violent Barabbas over the peaceful and compassionate Jesus.

I pray to God that I may hate injustice rather than those who inflict it, hate “alternative facts” rather than those who promote them, hate the lack of compassion rather than those who fail at empathy.

But…

Self-righteous straight Christians claimed (and many still claim) about LGBT people that they “hated the sin, but loved the sinner.”  But we knew this was misinformation.

And Holocaust survivors should not be expected to hate anti-Semitism rather than those who inflicted theirs.

That’s why the psalmist is so honest, so truthful, so real while saying of those “shooting from ambush at the blameless”:

“Because of their tongue God will bring them to ruin.”

P.S. After watching Get Me Roger Stone, watch HBO’s The Words that Built America to get the bad taste out of your mouth.

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

"All that Is Less than God Is Not Enough for Us"

The morning I write this, religion is all over the morning paper, and not in a good way. Muslim extremists cast a shadow over Islam and the world, French Jews feel unsafe and are considering emigrating to Israel, Mormons are threatening to excommunicate yet another church member who supports ordaining women and same-sex marriage, Scientology has a full page ad decrying an upcoming HBO documentary with a story in the business section describing the controversy, and Duke University withdraws support for Islamic calls to prayer from their chapel tower due to threats. The only positive religious story is Pope Francis visiting the Philippines.

I felt so overwhelmed I couldn’t imagine writing another post for this blog as I intended. My work here seems so inconsequential.

But then I continued reading The Complete Julian of Norwich, a new book and translation by Father John-Julian, OJN, and specifically the 14^th century Dame Julian’s “showings,” the Middle English word for “revelations.” She lived and wrote confined by choice in a one-room anchor-hold which was about the size of my office, and yet she speaks to me and countless others seven centuries later. Her era like our own looked for a personal experience of the sacred.

The past few days I’ve been dawdling over a couple of sections, each about the length of a blogpost, which have profoundly moved me, prompting me to read them again and again. Though I could never hope to write with such authority, I can unapologetically offer readers the insights of this contemplative and mystic.

In one of her “showings,” God holds up something about the size of a hazel nut, explaining, “It is all that is made.” You may grimace at the stretch, but my mind went immediately to the cosmic marble that exploded into the multiverse; in others words, the Big Bang.

She continues, “In this little thing I saw three characteristics: the first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third, that God keeps it. But what did I observe in that? Truly the Maker, the Lover, and the Keeper, for, until I am in essence one-ed to [God], I can never have full rest nor true joy.”

About the world’s distractions, she writes,“For this is the reason why we are not fully at ease in heart and soul: because here we seek rest in these things that are so little…” She concludes, “All that is less than [God] is not enough for us.”

Wow, I thought, this is not only the spiritual quest, but the scientific quest as well. “All that is less than God is not enough for us.” We can’t be satisfied with insufficient metaphors for God, as we have in religion; we can’t be satisfied with incomplete explanations of all that is, as we have in science. Our lifelong quest is for the hidden God, the unknowable, the mystery from whence all that is, is.

According to Father John-Julian, she follows the insight of Thomas Aquinas “that the soul naturally seeks the Good, but is diverted by not perceiving the true good, and settling for less.”

In the section that follows, Julian explains that intermediaries—whether saints, sacraments, even Christ himself—are only efficacious because their source is “the goodness of God,” which is what makes us, loves us, and keeps us. Even so, religion is only efficacious when sourced by God’s goodness.

Some might think it presumptuous to assume benevolence of God or if not God, the cosmos, but giving us life, time, and place, as well as a magnificent outer space to glimpse, is surely not anything less than good.

I doubt she knew the teachings of the fourth century Desert Fathers and Mothers, yet she also understands prayer as changing us, not God, “for the goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it comes down to the lowest part of our need.” It is in this context she describes God as our “Lover.”

To think how I winced when I first heard LGBT Christians pray to God as “Our Lover”!

Because we cannot fully comprehend God, we “remain in spiritual contemplation, with everlasting wonder at this high, surpassing inestimable love which Almighty God has for us...”

She offers a prayer: 

God, of Thy goodness, give me Thyself;

for Thou art enough to me,

and I can ask nothing that is less

that can be full honor to Thee.

And if I ask anything that is less,

ever shall I be in want,

for only in Thee have I all.

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Bill Maher's Fundamentalism

This post appeared in last week’s Huffington Post, receiving over 200 “likes” and over 200 comments.

I am a Bill Maher fan. My partner and I regularly watch the political comedian’s show on HBO, and we share his political leanings. Though he doesn’t quite “get” the need for or role of myth, he fulfills the traditional and mythological role of “fool to the king,” using barbed wit to speak truth to power. And he expresses the anger and frustration many of us progressives feel toward “the powers that be.”

Saturday night before last we attended his live performance here in Atlanta. The friends I accompanied wondered how his religious barbs might affect me. All I could say was that I agreed with most of them, mainly because he was not directing them at the religion I practice.

For example, I agree that religion and science are mutually exclusive categories, but it’s not an either/or choice, for each serve different purposes. Some of the most respected theologians and contemplatives have been scientists, doctors, and mathematicians themselves. Personally, my faith would not be as vital and progressive were it not for scientific discoveries and revelations.

Though Bill Maher thinks he is dissing all religion and spirituality, he actually attacks what I would call grade school religion. He even hinted at some respect for the new pope, whom I would describe as representing graduate school religion and above.

His reference to “the Jewish fairy tales” of Hebrew scriptures sounded unintentionally ironic to me, given that the Jewish prophets played the same role of playing “fool to the king,” speaking truth to power, and could be said to be the moral and spiritual basis for Maher’s own criticism, both of political leaders who fail the poor and marginalized, and religious leaders who place priority on worship and purity over justice and mercy, as well as his desire to set a fire under the electorate to do something about it. Another Jewish prophet, Jesus, did much the same.

Rather than give credit to Mother Teresa’s ability to doubt her faith, referencing her posthumously published letters, Maher used it as “proof” that religion is a crock of ----.

Psychiatrist and spiritual explorer M. Scott Peck once defined evil as “the unquestioned self,” the inability of an individual or institution to even imagine being wrong. Thus I believe that in faith, doubt is a virtue. Just as in science.

Maher’s certainties about religion mirror the certainties of fundamentalists, rather than the whole of faith. I believe he would appreciate Bishop Jack Spong’s quip, perhaps quoting someone, “Religion is like a public pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.”

Each Wednesday of Lent, I am providing links for the following six days, should you wish to use this blog as a Lenten resource for reflection.

Thursday:     The Benefit of Doubt

Friday:           A New Underground Railroad

Saturday:      "One Nation Under God"

Sunday:         The Making of You

Monday:        Dust and Glory

Tuesday:       Piety on Parade  

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC supported solely by readers. Please click here for more information or to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you!

Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite.

Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

"Colored on TV!"

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

Sing My Song, the engaging new HBO documentary on Harry Belafonte and his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, includes a clip of Julian Bond saying that when the singer began appearing on TV, calls would go out among friends announcing, “Colored on TV!”—it was such a rare occasion.

It reminded me of the rare occasions when an LGBT person or character appeared on television not long ago, how the word would go out so we could quickly tune in. And it prompts me to write about my gratitude for the Civil Rights Movement, having just visited the newly-dedicated Martin Luther King memorial on the mall in Washington, where I fought back tears. This movement shaped us and inspired us.

I was 12 years old when I witnessed the 1963 March on Washington on rows upon rows of television sets in the window of a store while my family was shopping at a newly-built mall in Southern California. Later, at our doctor’s office, I looked with wonder at the Life magazine photo coverage of the march. Among the celebrities I could identify in the pictures at the time were Charlton Heston (having seen him play Moses) and Harry Belafonte. The multitudes attending made me think this must be something important.

A tattered 1962 paperback edition of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird stands on my bookshelves, read after I saw the film released that same year. I read it a little at a time over the summer, savoring my imaginary friendship with Jem and Scout and Dill and sharing their discovery of injustice, while identifying more with the closeted Boo Radley than the falsely accused Tom Robinson.

My high school principal was the one who made me want to speak and write as eloquently as he: James B. Taylor, who had served as boys’ vice principal was championed as principal by parents, yet, as an African-American, real estate practices prevented his family’s purchase of a home in the neighborhood! Through another teacher I learned he was married to a niece of U.N. shaper and Nobel Peace prize recipient Ralph Bunche. A tenor in the school choir, we loved singing Principal Taylor’s favorite song, “When You Walk through a Storm” from Carousel. He was beloved by all, and knowing he was religious, one class gift to him was a large family Bible. In 1996, I would dedicate to him a Presbyterian curriculum I wrote for older youth entitled Unlearning Racism.

I left my Baptist church in the L.A. suburbs toward the end of high school partly because of something I overheard during coffee hour. Two black ladies had visited our all white worship, and one of our members said snidely to a friend, “I bet they came to try this integratin’ stuff! But we showed ’em they were welcome even if they are Negroes.”

When I was 17, my mom and I were standing in our kitchen when my brother came in to tell us that the radio had just announced that Dr. King had been shot. That Sunday, at the Free Evangelical Church I was now attending, the youth pastor read as the evening sermon King’s profound “Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” available in his book, Strength to Love.

The Civil Rights Movement helped bring me into the Presbyterian Church. Now in college, the first Sunday of 1970 I attended the First Presbyterian Church of Van Nuys and was surprised that the seminary intern, Jim Nicholie, preached on the previous ten years of the movement. He was part of Project Understanding, a local program in churches intended to overcome racism. I would later learn that a church elder once circulated a petition trying to oust the senior pastor, Dr. James King Morse, calling him a Communist partly because he had preached on the “Christian” way to vote on Proposition 14 (no!) that would have nullified California’s Rumford Fair Housing Act that eliminated the racial barriers Principal Taylor had faced. The then recently approved Confession of 1967, which spoke of reconciliation among races and nations, clinched the deal for me and I became a member within three months.

In my own search of self as a gay Christian, it was visiting MCC Los Angeles in 1972 that for the first time, I witnessed a racially integrated congregation. And if it weren't for the strong support of a black pastor named Robert Jones, an instructor in field work, I would never have been able to do my first ministry within the LGBT community while attending Yale Divinity School.

My first visit to the Washington mall came on my way to seminary in August, 1973, and I was very aware that it was the tenth anniversary of the 1963 march. By myself, as I ascended a rise near the Washington monument, I caught a glimpse of the Lincoln Memorial in the distance as the sun was setting, and I could hear King’s words resound through time, “I have a dream…” During the 1983 commemorative march I snapped a photo of a little black girl carrying a picket sign as large as she was that read, “The Dream lives on!” 

Now in Atlanta, as often as twice a week, running errands, I pass by where Martin and Coretta are buried, near his birth home and next to Ebenezer Church. And somewhere in a storage facility in California, I still have my sister’s 45 of Belafonte’s “Banana Boat Song,” listening to which was probably my first multicultural experience.

On the day that Chris visited the King memorial, Pittsburgh Presbytery voted to disinvite him! He had been asked to speak about reconciliation, not ordination. Read the story…

Join Chris, Robert V. Taylor, and Joseph Palacios discussing Three Movements of Gratitude, a retreat for gay and bisexual Christian men at Kirkridge, Nov. 10-13.