OF DREAMS AND KAIROS MOMENTS

 

 

 

I'm writing a sermon for Sunday about Kairos - God's eternal time.  In its ancient Greek meaning, Kairos also has another meaning – the right or opportune moment.  It is the ever-present breakthrough moment in God's time that must be seized in times of moral crisis to act in history as God demands.  Such was the moment of Christ's birth.  But there are and will be others.   The German theologian Paul Tillich described Kairos in this way – " a very special time fraught with decisive consequences for good or evil when momentous things are happening, new possibilities arise, more degrees of freedom emerge, and the opportunity to seize the moment appears."

I should be working on that sermon about Joseph, dreams, and Kairos moments, but last night I had a dream about an ultimate global Kairos moment.  And this morning I find myself thinking about what to do about it.  For I do believe that God speaks to us in dreams - not just to Joseph - and that, in those dreams, a path sometimes beckons. So it is this morning.

I'll spare you all the details, but in my dream I had been posted – not clear if by my old State Department or the Church – to a prestigious American think tank (I had once, to Carnegie).  Almost immediately I was sent  to an even more prestigious global think tank on – of all places - a tropical island.  There I joined a team of much brighter folks and we talked about our specific projects for each of which the others were especially well suited.  I wanted to study China, but had no appropriate academic background or language skills.  I would, I thought, have to think deep thoughts about Germany.  Then we were informed that we were to think even bigger thoughts – outside the constraints of our academic boxes – about the world which was facing a global transformative challenge – a Kairos moment.  As the morning the morning light began to wake me, I focused on the bright ocean horizon.

Wide awake, I found myself thinking about of the nature of the global Kairos moment that indeed faces us.  I thought of how I had gone to sleep with a phrase in mind – Occupy the Vatican!  Occupy the Church!  I thought of the anarchist critique in The Coming Insurrection and the nature of the transformative moment...the end stage of a no longer sustainable capitalism bereft of any concern for community, the greedy few feeding now on the engines of their prosperity – the very antithesis of Shalom; the fading power of Western civilization, its moral underpinnings crumbling, its creativity sapped, relying now on brute force, and finding even that insufficient to the moment; the hollowing out of the moral and political institutions of that civilization and the futile efforts of their leaders to preserve the facades of their Potemkin villages and the trappings of their power, as more and more people laugh at the lack of clothes on politicians concerned only with polls and campaign funding and pastors concerned only with "church growth," careers, and rules and regulations.  And then I thought of a leader - a churchman, at that - a man named Francis, seeking, it seems, to seems, to seize the moment, to rescue us from its grayness, to show us the possibility of a brighter dream.  I read his message for the January 1 World Day of Peace (http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/francis-message-for-world-day-of-peace-2014) - brought to my attention by a rabbi - and, having just re-read his longer exhortation on "The Joy of the Gospel" (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium_en.html), I can again feel hope these closing days of Advent.

Surely this is a Kairos moment calling for creative thought and dramatic action, lest we continue to sleep walk through the bad dream of our reality.  Is it possible to wake from that reality to the brighter dream just beyond the horizon?  What lies there?  What is possible?  Pausing, I think of that closing hymn yesterday – "I want to walk in the reign," of Soweto, Gdansk, Tienanmen, and the Bronx behind us, of a God beside us bringing justice and healing .  I think of how we walked out the door of our little walled church yesterday afternoon, beyond our once narrow horizons, to a world that needs justice and healing…and how I felt God there beside us as we brought a measure of each to those who need it…including ourselves.

Does God talk to us in dreams?  Yes, I believe God does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DO SOMETHING!

As I write this, I am listening to the news from Colorado - a new school shooting, another gun death, another school name in a growing roster - Arapahoe High School.  Tomorrow, of course, is the anniversary of the massacre of so many innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  As of this morning, 33,018 Americans, 195 of them children, have been killed by guns since the date of that massacre.  Meanwhile the profits of Cerebus Capital Management, the parent company of the manufacturer of the Bushmmaster XM-15 used at Sandy Hook have risen 52%.  And we have done NOTHING to better control guns, to treat mental illness, and to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.  Indeed, this morning the NRA is lobbying to kill a congressional bill that would ban plastic guns that can evade metal detectors.  This is obscene!  How long will we continue to sin by what we have not done.

 

For Christ's sake - and ours - do something!

 

What you ask can we do?  Might you take a moment to read the letter to Congress from the 54 national religious leaders of Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence (Read it HERE)?   Might those of you who have a pulpit preach about this on Sunday December 15 or December 29, the day after Holy Innocents?  Might you make the letter available to your parishioners by including it in your newsletter or posting it on your bulletin board and drawing the attention of your parishioners to it?  Might you urge your parishioners to urge their senators and representative to pass - AS A MINIMUM - the Mancin-Toomey bill (Amendment to S. 649)/King-Thompson bill (H.R. 1565) which would close the "gun show loophole" and expand background checks.  Might you join the efforts of EPF (http://epfnational.org/what-about-guns/), the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence (www.bradycampaign.org/) , Mayors Against Illegal Guns (www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/), Gaby Giffords' Americans for Responsible Solutions (http://americansforresponsiblesolutions.org/) or similar organizations to enact more forceful regulation of guns?  Might you lobby locally and nationally for better care and treatment of our fellow citizens who are mentally ill?  And might you, my DioCal friends, publicize in our churches and communities the two resolutions relating to guns that were passed by our diocesan conventions in 2010 and 2013?

 

Do something!

 

 

RABBI WASKOW, MANDELA, JEWS...AND CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

Rabbi Arthur Waskow walks in the prophetic footsteps of his late friend and colleague Abraham Joshua Heschel. 

Today (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Mandela-the-Jews--the-F-by-Rabbi-Arthur-Wasko-Israel_Palestine_and_Israel_People-Nelson-Mandela-131209-241.html) he touched upon one aspect of the relationship between "mainstream," "official" Jewish organizations and Nelson Mandela.

Let me raise another - the role of sanctions in fostering moral and wise political action.  Over the past few days, we have heard much about how important economic sanctions were in freeing Mandela and South Africa.  And, over the past weeks, they have also been important in bringing Iran to the negotiating table.  Is it not time to begin implementing sanctions aimed at bringing about an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its blockade of Gaza.  Two days ago, in response to that oft-asked question "Where is your Mandela, Palestine?", I asked elsewhere "Where is your de Klerk, Israel?"  Fact is, we know who Palestine's Mandela is.  He is Marwan Barghouti and, like Mandela, he has been in prison incommunicado for eleven years.  Trouble is, we're still searching for the Israeli de Klerk who will free Barghouti and the Palestinians from their physical imprisonment and, in doing so, free the Israeli people from their spiritual prison of fear and hard-heartedness.  And there are a growing number of Israeli and American Jews who feel that the time has come to use sanctions to speed up that process and break open the prospects for peace in the Holy Land. 

 

Why are Christians so reluctant to join them?  Rabbi Waskow referred to "the 'sha shtill' syndrome – 'Keep quiet! – [that] still afflicts some major elements of American Jewish life."  Unfortunately, it still afflicts Christian churches, most especially my Episcopal Church.  Isn't it time for us to grow up spiritually and display the wisdom of a Heschel, the courage of a Mandela? 

 

Just asking?

MANDELA AND MOSES

 

 

 

Several parishioners of Christ the Lord Episcopal Church, where I preach once a month, had urged me to make those sermons more broadly available.  My first response earlier this year was to publish several in a book Troublemaker: Troubling Words for Troubled Times which is available at www.redmoonpublications.com

 

In response to their continued expressions of interest – and hopefully yours – I've decided to resurrect this long-dormant blog and post not only my sermons (the last four of which will follow shortly) but occasional essays, reflections on issues of peace and social justice.  Hopefully, they will stimulate conversation on the mix of faith and politics and the role of the church in the world…what some might call applied theology. So, here goes.  I look forward to your reactions and can be reached at vgray54951@aol.com.  

 

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Unlike Moses, South Africa's Nelson Mandela grew up in his own land, but, like Moses, he could say "I have become an alien in a foreign land" [Exodus 2:22].  Internally exiled, first to a Bantustan and then to the infamous prison on Robben Island, he watched from that prison, while foreigners – the Afrikaners – ruled the land.  All the while of Mandela's imprisonment, a very biblical forty years, the Africans of South Africa "groaned in their slavery and cried out" [Exodus 2:23].

 

But "God heard their groaning" [Exodus 2:24] and spoke to Mandela, not through a burning bush, but slowly, softly during the long, quiet hours that marked Mandela's four decades on Robben Island.  There were, I'm sure, probably many moments – those dark ones at night – when he, too, cried "O, Lord, please send someone else to do it" [Exodus 4:13].  How similar that plea is to Christ's on that darkest of night's – "…take this cup from me" [Luke 22:42].  While "Mandela's own faith [remains] a matter of much speculation," he underwent a transformation on Robben Island that was "essentially religious" [Anthony Sampson, Mandela, p. 230].  Indeed, toward the end of his imprisonment, Mandela's "capacity for forgiveness…amazed visitors," and one visitor, Frieda Matthews, "found him positively Christlike" [Sampson, p. 230]. 

 

To Matthews' observation, a literalist might object that it borders on blasphemy.  But aren't we all called upon to imitate Christ and to bring forth in our lives the Spirit that is within us?  Didn't Jesus say "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you"? [Gospel of Thomas in Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, p. 126].  Wasn't that what a doubting, hesitant Moses was called upon to do, to bring forth the prophetic qualities of leadership which God promised would be there when needed.  "I will help you to speak and teach you what to say….and will teach you what to do." [Exodus 4:12&15].  One must always have faith that God will provide adequate tools to do what he asks of us.

 

In Mandela's case, God brought him to this realization only slowly, not as one of those "Aha!" moments.  God is unchangeable but acts in our lives in different ways befitting who we are and what we do.  Like Moses, Mandela had reacted initially to the injustice around him by striking out violently.  Moses killed one Egyptian; Mandela's African National Conference (ANC) killed many Afrikaners.  Indeed, that, purportedly, was why Mandela was imprisoned.  But I do not find the slowness of Mandela's conversion at all surprising.  For, as Elaine Pagels notes, "Such insight [as that in Thomas' Gospel] comes gradually through effort." [Pagels, p. 126].  Not being a literalist, I am inclined to believe that God worked his way on Moses in much the same way.

 

In some ways, prison was for Mandela what life in Pharaoh's palace was for Moses.  They had time and occasion to learn their slave masters' ways.  God was equipping them for the task assigned.  "Mandela," we are told, "was developing a special interest in the Afrikaner mindset.  He urged the other prisoners to talk with the warders in Afrikaans…to understand more about their psychology and culture." [Sampson, p. 226].  "I realized," he said, "the importance of learning…how they are indoctrinated, how they react." [Sampson, p. 226]. 

 

He also befriended the Dutch Reformed prison chaplain, the Reverand Andre Scheffler, and found himself in agreement, when Scheffler "warned the prisoners against blaming everything on the white man." [Sampson 229].  Scheffler, in the event, was banned from conducting services, when he preached about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt.  How clear a parallel do we need?

 

But Mandela's task differed in the particulars.  It was not some geographic exodus to some promised land.  His people were already in their "beloved country."  The task rather was to lead his people and their tormentors on a spiritual journey to freedom.  And, as a subsequent Anglican chaplain, a Reverend Hughes, insisted, that could only be done with reconciliation on both sides [Sampson, 229].  Thus, Mandela resolved to call Africans and Afrikaners to reconciliation and forgiveness, to free the former from their physical slavery, the latter from their spiritual slavery.

 

In this, he had powerful helpmates – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who spoke to the conscience of the ruling whites, Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk, an erstwhile apartheidist,  who appealed to their reason and self-interest, and a God who equipped both Mandela and de Klerk to persevere and to work together in leading all South Africans to a better place.  In this, they, too, were afflicted with the grumbling of the "hardhearted" – the extremists – among them.

 

But persevere they did.  God had taught them well what to say and what to do.  Mandela got to see his "Rainbow Nation" – talk about covenants honored [Genesis 9:16] – and both justly shared a Nobel Prize for Peace.     

                          

 

AMDG

 

DON'T LET THIS MOMENT PASS US BY AGAIN

What a country!

How many times?  How many deaths?  Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, Newtown; the 2,519 gun deaths since Sandy Hook; the 30,000 every year; the trail of blood in Chicago, Richmond and Oakland.  And, once again, we sit in stunned silence as our elected officials ignore our wishes, wait us out, and now, as the item below illustrates, run away as fast as they can from any meaningful action to control the 300 million guns in our country.      

Witness, the AR-15 wielding senator from South Carolina who declares "there will be no assault weapons ban," his Oklahoma colleague who seeks to gut the expansion of background checks, Harry Reid who caves to the NRA, and the fading hopes that anything meaningful will make it through the House.

Against this background, the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops said March 12 that they are "outraged" by the "daily massacre of our young people in [our] cities," adding "this carnage must stop"  and calling all Episcopalians "to pray and work for the end of gun violence."

Well, this Episcopalian has prayed.  Let me now work and ask you all to call your congressmen and senators and Mike Thompson (202-225-3311), chair of the congressional task force on gun violence, and tell them we need a ban on assault weapons and large ammo clips and meaningful background checks that include a permanent data base.

 

Don't let this moment pass us by again.

 

March 22, 2013

 

TONY JUDT'S FINAL VICTORY

The lateTony Judt is an intellectual, political, and spiritual hero of mine...a Mensch of the first order.  So, too, now, is his wife Jennifer Homans who wrote this moving NY Review of Books essay about his last book and his last days:

 

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/tony-judt-final-victory/

 

I have no doubt that, had he lived, he would today be a great source of the sort of intellectual rigor and moral outrage deployed on behalf of Occupy.  Jennifer agrees.  As she wrote in this essay:

 

"Tony had always been a forthright critic of social injustice; now he had zero tolerance. Not zero tolerance for halfway solutions—even a halfway solution is a solution—but zero tolerance for political deception and intellectual dishonesty. He acquired, in a way, the wisdom of a child: Why aren't people angrier? Some were, of course, but Tony didn't live to see the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street. He would have taken a probing and active interest in both."

 

But, come to think of it, Tony is still reaching out to us "across the divide separating the living from the ever after."  Just read his Ill Fares the Land and that final book, Thinking the Twentieth Century.  On their pages you will hear his strong voice of outrage and engagement.

 

I'm also looking forward to the April release of The Path to Hope by Stephane Hessel and Edgar Morin, a follow-on to Hessel's Indignez-vous! (Time for Outrage).  The latter inspired my engagement with Occupy.

 

my reading list is growing.  I hope yours is also.

 

 

"In the spring there will be growth." - Chance the Gardener 

 

CUBA, IRAN, ISRAEL…AND US

In his March 5 convention speech, AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr invoked the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as an analogy to the current saber-rattling surrounding Iran's nuclear program, suggesting that, fifty years on, the former might contain lessons for our handling of the latter.

Perhaps.  But they might not be the lessons Mr. Kohr has in mind.  I was there fifty years ago and deeply involved in what unfolded.  To begin with, my message to the bellicose Israeli Prime Minister would be "Mr. Netanyahu, you're no John F. Kennedy."

Faced not with some future would-be "capability" of a third-rate power to build a primitive proto-type weapon but, rather, the surprise deployment of dozens of nuclear-tipped missiles ninety miles from our homeland by a superpower capable of destroying us, President Kennedy chose not a pre-emptive airstrike – a "Pearl Harbor in reverse" his brother called it – but a temporizing naval quarantine and diplomacy.  And, when the dust had cleared, peace – and our mutual survival - was saved by a tit-for-tat diplomacy that involved compromise.  The Soviet missiles were removed in return for an American pledge never to invade Cuba…and the subsequent soto voce removal of our nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles from Turkey, ninety miles from the Soviet homeland.

Therein lies the lesson today for Iran, Israel…and us – diplomacy and compromise.  And, as with Cuba and the Soviet Union fifty years ago, success depends on facing up to truth.  In the latter situation, the truth entailed acknowledgement of our missiles in Turkey and a renouncement of our already manifest attacks on Cuba (Need one recall the Bay of Pigs or the assassination attempts on the life of Fidel Castro?).  In the current situation, the truth entails acknowledgement of Israel's nuclear arsenal and its and our only faintly veiled campaign of cyber-attacks against Iran and assassinations of its nuclear scientists.

Israel's nuclear arsenal?  It is high time to end the hypocrisy about Israel's "nuclear opacity" and to end the decades-long word games – still perpetuated by Mr. Netanyahu – that Israel "will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East."  Everyone knows – as Micah Zenko made clear this week in a Council of Foreign Relations blog and John Cassidy did in the New Yorker – that Israel possesses over 200 nuclear weapons and a panoply of sophisticated strategic delivery systems.  The latter include U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter-bombers; German-supplied Dolphin-class submarines, which give Israel a second-strike capability; and Jericho III ICBMs with a range of up to 7,000 miles.

Might not Iran fear that arsenal that has already been used to launch pre-emptive strikes against Iraq and Syria?  Might it not be deployed Cuba-style in the diplomacy of peace?

Would it be so far-fetched to acknowledge Israel's nuclear capability and to use it to begin negotiations aimed at a nuclear-free Middle East with Iran and others like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who might be tempted to develop their own nuclear weapons programs if Iran did?  Would it be so onerous for Israel to submit its existing program to international safeguards in exchange for internationally-policed prohibitions against future capabilities in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt?

To be sure, "Israel has the sovereign right," as Prime Minister Netanyahu has reiterated this week, "to make its own decisions" concerning its national security.  And, so, Mr. Prime Minister, does the United States.  While we might, as President Obama has reiterated this week, be prepared to "cover Israel's back," when that back is truly against the wall as it was in 1973, we are not about to blindly follow Israel off a cliff in a pre-emptive strike that can only result in a massive regional war while we are still engaged in a decade of other wars that have drained our wherewithal and clouded our moral clarity. 

Our lessons of fifty years ago and this past decade teach us to beware of a "Pearl Harbor in reverse."  That is not the American way.  I pray it is not Israel's.  And I pray, Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. President, that you will give peace a chance.