Building a Christian nation

A reminder for folks who want a Christian nation:

Love One Another John 13 34 is a painting by Eloise Schneider

Jesus said: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you."

Paul elaborated on what being a loving person means: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

And in case we forgot who we are supposed to show that love to, Jesus makes that pretty clear saying: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these.”

And he also taught, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."

Who among our current leaders - not by party or affiliation, but by deed, word, and action - is showing God-filled agape love? Who's tweets and interviews reflect the fruits of the spirit - love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Who serves God and who serves money, because you can't serve both?

If we want a nation that embodies Christ's kingdom, we better get serious about what Jesus commanded.

My address at the NCC Community Iftar

I was a stranger

Rev. Eric Doolittle, College Chaplain

Presentation at North Central College Community Iftar

May 29, 2017

Good evening! On behalf of North Central College, I'm honor and proud to welcome you to our first community Ramadan dinner. I welcome you on behalf of President Troy Hammond, our Board of Trustees, the Central for Global Studies, our Office of Student Affairs, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and the Office of Ministry and Service. It warms my heart to see so many of our students, faculty, staff, and community members gather for this momentous occasion. I want to personally thank Lynn Pries and the Naperville Interfaith Leaders Association and Shoaib Khadri from the Islamic Center of Naperville for believing in or students enough to sponsor this dinner. I want to especially thank Esra Tasdalan and the leadership of our Muslim Student Association for all their hard work in coordinating this wonderful celebration. But as we get started, I do have a question for my friend Youssef Mekawy, who helped launch the MSA as a student organization and spearheaded this dinner.

Youssef, we've worked together for three years now. You know me pretty well. Why am I here? Don't get me wrong, I'm deeply honored to have been asked to speak tonight. But I don't know anything about Ramadan or about an iftar dinner. I mean, I know the basics - no food or drink from first light to sunset for a month. But I've never observed that fast. I obviously don't miss many meals. I didn't know what an iftar was until a few years ago. I've never been to an iftar. Why am I speaking to this group of professors, scholars, and practicing Muslims?

The only thing I might claim any knowledge in amongst this crowd is how to practice hospitality. I'm not an expert, though, but hospitality is something I try to make part of my life every day. I practice hospitality because I believe it is central to being a Christian. You cannot follow the teachings of Jesus and not be welcoming, especially to those in need. Since deep down I'm a preacher, I once again found myself looking for wisdom from scripture. In the Christian Bible, Saint Paul writes to the early church reminding them, “Do not forget to practice hospitality to strangers, because is so doing, some have entertained angels unaware.” I love that phrase - “some have entertained angels unaware.” The teaching references the story from the Hebrew bible where Abraham welcomes three strangers into his home by the Oak of Mamre. The strangers are in fact God's messengers, in the language of the Christian Bible, they are angels. Angelos is the Greek word for messenger. Saint Paul is reminding us that when we practice hospitality - true welcome and openness to the stranger - we encounter the divine. When we welcome strangers, we invite the divine into our presence.

I take the Bible's teachings on welcome and hospitality quite literally in my role as chaplain here at North Central College. I spend a great deal of time in conversation over lunch, coffee, and burritos because something special happens when we gather at the table and share a meal. That maybe pizza on a retreat, matza at our annual Passover Seder, bread around the altar table for communion, coffee with a student in crisis, or sharing a few dates and water to start a new tradition for our Cardinal family. Yes, we gather because we are friendly and caring, but we also gather because we have been commanded to love our neighbor.

This weekend, we had powerful reminder of how radical the simple act of hospitality can seem. In Portland, two teenage girls - one Muslim in a headscarf and her friend- were being attacked with anti-muslim slurs and physical intimidation. People nearby intervened and stood up for the women, even physically blocking the attacker. Then this sick man, a known white supremacist, pulled out a knife and starting stabbing those who would defend their neighbors. At the end of the chaos two of the defending men were dead and a third is still recovering in the hospital.

We need to hear the names of those who would stand up for the rights of their neighbors. Rick Best was a retired Army veteran and city employee. He had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a citizen, he had stood for public office as a county commissioner.  What better way to honor the true duty of a soldier than to willingly lie down his life for another citizen. To defend liberty and true American values in the face of evil. On Memorial Day, how shocking it is to honor a soldier killed by an extremist terrorist on American soil. His death left four children fatherless, and robs his community of a good man and leader.

The young poet who is still recovering is Micah Fletcher. Yesterday, he wrote "This is what we must do for one another. We must live for one another. We must fight for one another." I hope we hear more of his story as time goes on. For us gathered tonight though, I want to focus on the second person murdered in the attack.

Taliesin Namkai-Meche was a recent college graduate. While at Reed College, he took an intro to Islam class to strive towards understanding. His professor Kambiz Ghanea-Bassiri said that he stood out in particular for his desire to understand how other people see the world. GhaneaBassiri also said that he was a considerate student who always tried to support his classmates. Likewise, in their remembrance, his family said, "In his final act of bravery, he held true to what he always believed is the way forward...We ask that in honor of his memory, we use this tragedy as an opportunity for reflection and change." Amazing words of hope in the midst of grief. Talesin's final words are reported by another Samaritan who held him as he died,  to be, “Tell them, I want everybody to know, I want everybody on the train to know, I love them.” Truer words could never be spoken. True love, Jesus taught, is to lay down your life for our friends. Talesin was willing to put those words into action.

Sadly, we now live in a time where hospitality is foreign and loving our neighbor seems strange. My wise friend Dorothy Pleas, the Director of Multicultural Affairs at NCC, posed this question, "Why is it a radical concept to treat all people decently?" Why is it so hard to show respect and love? Why do we continue to fear and hate and kill?

Ladies and gentleman, there are people around the world who object to this dinner. People full of suspicion and hate who think we should be building walls instead of bridges and dropping bombs instead of breaking bread. People who wrap themselves in false versions of fragile faith woven from strands of fear and lies. People who will view us with suspicion because we practice hospitality and welcome and love. And as this past week's headlines shows, people in Egypt, and Manchester, and Portland and too many places in between are even willing to kill just because someone is different.  It breaks my heart to think of my Christian brothers and sisters who cannot understand how to welcome the stranger and love their neighbor. It breaks my heart not just for the  wonderful people they aren’t getting to meet. It breaks my heart that their hearts are too timid to trust that God is bigger what their small world.

So what can we do? How do we continue to practice hospitality in a hostile world? By not just building bridges, but by being bridges. I don't expect any of us to be asked to die to show love for our neighbor and the stranger. But we can specifically look for ways to live. Raise your hand is you have someone in your life that would be suspicious of this gathering tonight? Look around. We are all eager for a way to build community and connection not just between those gathered, but back to our friends, family, and community. Why don’t we commit tonight to take the next step? Don't wait for the next Open Mosque Day or community banquet to be a bridge of understanding and love. Invite someone here to your home to meet your reluctant acquaintances. Be like Abraham and invite a stranger home and into your community. Be the bridge between two worlds wary of one another. And maybe, just maybe, God will come into your home as well.

Thank you again, from the bottom of my heart for being here tonight. God willing, we will see you all again next year, and also all throughout the year in between. To our Muslim finds, Ramadan mubarak, and may you all be blessed tonight.

Breathe

Pneuma: Greek, noun, air in motion, breath, wind, and in a religious context for spirit or soul.

Right now, you are breathing. And until I mentioned it, you probably weren’t thinking about. It’s just something that happens in life. As someone who with asthma and sleep apnea, my relationship with breathing is literally troubled. On good days, I live as any other person, and the in and out flow of air happens without a thought or care. On bad days, I cough, and hack, and wheeze and fight. It’s not fun - imagine drowning without water. The natural reaction is to try to fight against the attack. The real trick is to relax and focus on steady, deep breathing. Panic makes the attack worse. Panic rarely helps any situation.

In both Jewish and Christian traditions, our breath was a metaphor for God’s spirit living within us. God breathing life into Adam is what sets humans apart from the rest of creation - the sacred spirit of ruach living inside the mud-created body. To illustrate that intimate relationship, Jesus playfully confuses Nicodemus weaving together a saying using breathe, wind and Spirit, which in Greek are all the Greek word pneuma, into a single phrase.

In most of our life, the presence of God’s Holy Spirit within us is something we don’t think about. It just is. When times are good, we become complacent and even apathetic to God’s presence in our lives. But there are times when we struggle, when God seems absent and separate. The natural reaction is to panic; to grasp for any small glimpse of the divine, regardless of the source or even the cost to others. We flail out at flashy preachers, kitschy memorabilia, or trite platitudes.The real trick is to find moments of calm in the midst of the chaos of life: the still, small voice that Elijah discovers after the earthquake, the presence of the sleeping Savior on the stormy sea, the indwelling of your divine creator hidden in your very breath.

Take a few moments to breath today - nice, slow, easy breaths. Add a few moments of stillness to your daily prayer routine. So when the storms and chaos of life break through and it’s hard to catch your breath from rushing around, you’ll be in practice to recenter, refocus, and remind yourself of the breath and Spirit dwelling within you.

Unhitching the millstone

The inevitable tide of the Church history has been expanding circles of inclusion. It started with Paul and the Jerusalem council wondering about including the Gentiles. It continued with people like Patrick reaching out to his former heathen captors. John Wesley turned his heart towards evangelizing the Native Americans and the eventual movement to reinvigorate the church in the working class it had left behind. Later, the church in America would fracture, split, and eventually try to reconcile concerning fully including and loving people of African descent. Only 60 years ago, the United Methodist church recognized the Holy Spirit working through women clergy as equal to that of men (although actual equality lags behind). All of this stems, of course, from Jesus' own teaching and actions to the outcast, the unclean, and those whom religious officials had deemed unworthy of God's grace and salvation.

During his final moments before his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus taught his closest disciples one final commandment - love one another. Not judge one another or condemn one another or exclude one another. Earlier in his ministry, when asked what was necessary for salvation, Jesus said to love the Lord with all your heart, all your mind, and your soul and all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. As he hung from his cross, Jesus looked down on those crucifying him and in a final act of love asked God to forgive them. If Christ loved so much as to forgive those who abandoned, denied, and even murdered him, maybe we should base our ministry as his people on that same principle.

To defend excluding people who want a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, people cite historical president, church doctrine, and even some scripture passages. It's the same kind of argument made by the Pharisees, the council at Jerusalem, the counter-Reformationists, the defenders of slavery, and the keepers of racism and paternalism. We've debated and disagreed and dug in our heels for centuries. Here's the real crux of the matter for me - one day, I'll stand before God and be held accountable for my work as a shepherd of God's people. Which choice better reflects God's plan for salvation: to have included and loved those whom God has judged beyond redemption or to have excluded those whom God intended to be part of the kingdom? Do I dare cause others to trip based on my interpretation of religious codes, or do i dare to trust God's grace and love others as I have been loved?

Dust: A Love Story

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

– Genesis 3:18

Thousands of millions of years ago, God spoke and everything came into being. In the first micro seconds, the infinite energy released started moving from chaos to order. For a few brief moments, while particles and anti-particles collided, the universe almost winked out. Within seconds, most of the laws of physics were in place and the stuff of the universe started to become matter.

For a while, everything was just photons: it was a universe made entirely of light. Over time, God’s hand through gravity started to pull things together. Atoms bind together as hydrogen and helium.  The dust – atoms and molecules that make everything – begins to form.

A thousand million years after the start of time, the fiery furnaces of stars light up. In their hearts, nuclear forges fuse the dust together hydrogen and helium as smashed together to form larger elements. Over generations of stars, larger and larger atoms are made. Somewhere is that vast expanse, one star fuses together oxygen and another nitrogen. Somewhere in the creation one star fuses just the right amount of carbon that on its brilliant death a billion tons of diamonds blast out into the sky. As the stars blaze into life and fizzle into dust the hand of God in gravity begins to mix and form the dust into galaxies and groups and clusters, continuing to sift the chaos into order.

Nine thousand million years ago, God brings together just the right amount of dust in just the right amount of space to do something new. A new star forms and the dust around it clumps together as a system of planets. Lumps of rock and gas and water sorted by gravity squished together like balls of multihued Play-doh with just the right gravitation balance to spin. Over thousands of millions of years, God has put into place the right mix of ingredients, the stardust of generations of stars – carbon and oxygen, nitrogen and water molecules – to create a masterpiece.

Over another thousand million years, God stirs these ingredients carefully and slowly, binding together larger and larger building blocks. The dust becomes chains of complex chemicals. And ever so carefully, life begins: a unique gift in the vastness of the universe. This is the beginning of the most beautiful piece of creation. The simple creatures are divinely molded and over a thousand million years, the simple building blocks of DNA and RNA, are carefully molded into bacteria, and fungi, and plants, and animals: Slime and ooze, mushrooms and microbes, trilobites and T. Rexes, redwoods and roses, warblers and whales. The myriad of life. Each individual as complex internally as the stars that twinkle above, and yet, the masterpiece is not yet done.

Over a thousand million years, God shapes humanity from the same dust, the same chemistry, the same lineage, the same process. But this life is something new, something special. These earthlings formed from the dust of the Earth, the dust forged from the stars itself, are nurtured and molded by the patient and loving Creator. These creatures are beloved and blessed because they are created to understand, and to comprehend the presence of the Divine. They are mirrors and images of God made real. And into these most special beings, God breathes the divine breath, the Holy Spirit.

Over a thousand thousand years, God molds the dust into generations of humans. Some seek God. Others turn away. Still God loves and creates. Amidst the rebellion and refusal, the infinite Creator of all time and space, in compassion and loves pours the fullness of the divine into a human body and is born, lives, and dies amongst the dust. Still we are too stubborn and refuse to believe, to follow, and to repent.

Then, one day, a few hundreds of thousands of seconds ago, God formed together the dust of creation – from atoms forged in stars, from DNA knitted together over a billion years – a being nurtured in the water bonded in the heavens themselves and gathered in the life sustaining miracle of a mother’s womb. On that special day, a new masterpiece of creation was created. On that day, God breathed the Holy Spirit into a new person formed by the divine hand of God over thousands million years. On that day, God made mercy and grace available to a creature so special and unique, that the creator of all was willing to be born, to live, and die for them. On that day, you were formed of the dust of creation out of the stardust of the universe. Part and pinnacle of the miracle of life.

And now, right now, we are surrounded by the handiwork of the Divine. The product of thousands of millions of years. Forged in the stars. Clumped together into a lump of earth. Woven together from the dirt and muck. Still desperate to find meaning and purpose. Still wondering if life is a random accident. Still doubting God’s love and presence. All the while ignoring the miracles of creation in our very life. In our every breath, the divine intermingled with the mundane, a tapestry of beauty and wonder. Each one of us a masterpiece of God’s own hand.

Today and every day, O mortal, remember this day. Thou art dust. And God hath done might deeds to make you so.

Does MLK still matter?

Yes. But maybe not in the approach often applied to our nation’s agents of transformation.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, has joined the ranks of national deity with his own spot of reverence on the National Mall alongside Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson. But if he is to truly matter today and in the future, we cannot afford to merely treat him as a static figurehead of our country’s success.

We have an amazing capacity to whitewash our heroes. We want them to be clean and uncomplicated and perfect. In the decades since Dr. King lived, more and more people in America know of him, but we know less and less about him. He has become a symbolic figure of the success of America to “solve” racism, just like Thomas Jefferson insured “that all men are created equal” or Abraham Lincoln assured “a just and lasting peace” between the people of the United States. We ignore Jefferson’s class and racial divisions, and Lincoln’s willingness to suspend the due process of law. We want our national heroes to be a pantheon of life, liberty, and justice. Because if they are perfect heroes we can assure ourselves that the problems that they addressed are fixed.

That’s why when we hear the popular version of King, we all nodded in agreement. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Good job, we think. Glad we got that done. We don’t need the MLK of national holiday, school textbook, and monuments. We don’t need another static figurehead with a granite statue, lest we become like the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus addresses in Matthew – “whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”

Dr. King still matters because he is a prophet whose voice still cries for justice. A martyr whose witness shames our timidity. A preacher whose speeches and sermons still make us uncomfortable.

Dr. King, the imprisoned preacher, writes from his cell to challenge religious leaders:

“The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.

“But the judgement of is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose it authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”

Dr. King, on the eve of his assassination, tries to shake the stupor of comfort from our souls:

“We’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle to the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point… We’ve got to see it through… either we go up together, or we go down together.”

“Let us rise up tonight with greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have the opportunity to make America a better nation”

Across all time, the words of Dr. King, the Godly prophet still cries out for action now:

“The oceans of hate are made turbulent by the ever-rising tide of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate… We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The ‘tide in the affairs of men’ does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to stop in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’”

If Dr. King’s true legacy still matters we must rescue him from the calcification of granite statues and bring him to life again beyond the world’s attempts to petrify him. We can pull him into our lives to join the radical Jesus rescued from the stained glass prison of the complacent church. He joins the legion of prophets whose incitements needed the spirit of life breathed into the dusty recitations of lackadaisical liturgists.

The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior, still matters today. As a vital voice of conscious for a nation and world still trapped in hatred, bigotry, and violence. Instead of commemorating him as history, may we elevate him as prophetic leader, faithful preacher, a blessed martyr by continuing his struggle. Because it is not just Dr. King’s struggle for civil rights, it is our struggle for justice. And it is not just our struggle, but God’s inexorable movement towards righteousness and peace for all humanity.

Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World. Edited by James M. Washington. HarperCollins: SanFrancisco, 1992.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963; I See the Promised Land, 1968; A Time to Break SIlence, 1967.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963.

I See the Promised Land, 1968.

A Time to Break SIlence, 1967.

Verbing Faith

Verbing, per the dictionary, is using a noun as a verb. It's fairly common in the English language especially on the internet and in business, despite the protests of formal writers. As Simon Taylor says, "The internet is amazing. It turned "Friend" into a verb and "Like" into a noun." For some time, Christians have wrestled with verbing our faith vocabulary.

DC Talk, bastion of 90s Christian rock, reminded us that "Love is a verb." They used the phrase to remind us that love was more that an emotion or possession, but an action directed towards our neighbors, our enemies, and the world. Verbing "Love" is a good start, but we can go further. What if we thought of more of our Christian lexicon as active components rather than static concepts?

What if we are not just filled with hope, but actually hope for all things?
When should we ask for a blessing to be able to bless someone else?
Should we spend so much energy defending our beliefs, or believing in God?
How can we honor the Resurrection by living as resurrected people?

This active stance is part of our DNA as disciples of Jesus. Dr. Larry Stookey pointed out in his book Let the Whole Church Say Amen, that Jesus taught us to pray using "vigorous verbs," - give, forgive, save, deliver. The life of faith modeled by Jesus was full of action and movement, not static concepts. In the first century, we weren't know as Christians. We were followers of the way. We didn't adhere to a belief structure, we lived a way of life patterned after the teachings of Jesus.

What if faith wasn't just something you had, but the way you lived?