Tag: participation

Cooperation or Coercion?

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Pastor Tim's PonderingsLeave a comment

Cooperation: an act or instance of working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit; joint action.

Coercion: use of force or intimidation to obtain compliance.

This week I was able to visit the site of Alex Pretti’s killing. With my clerical collar on, several persons came up and just hugged me, too traumatized to barely speak a word.

As I left the mournful scene, I understood that although we were all strangers, we had gathered together for a common purpose, seeking to work with one another for the benefit of justice and peace by means of a collective solidarity of humility and lamentation with a determined non-violent stance.

Right now, Minnesotans have an existential understanding about what it means to cooperate with each other. And they are equally clear about what non-cooperation is.

In recent weeks, in conversing with others not from Minnesota, some of them wrongly place the train of tragic events within the state at the feet of its leadership stating, “If they would just give some cooperation, then these killings and I.C.E. tactics wouldn’t have happened.”

Setting aside for now the bold-faced form of victim-blaming, there is here a very curious use of the word “cooperation.”

In December, when the Director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, came to the city of St. Paul, she did not come with an attitude or intention of cooperation but of coercion.

The Director unfortunately framed the concept of cooperation not as sitting down with Minnesota leadership as equals, working together and coordinating together in order to handle the “worst of the worst” when it came to immigrants.

Rather, Noem’s idea of cooperation is to have both the leadership and citizens of Minnesota keep out of the way of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and leave them alone. She also made it clear that if anyone got in the way of ICE (which for her meant protesting) there would be consequences.

From the get-go, ICE had a mandate from the government not to cooperate with state and local officials, but to coerce them through whatever force they could leverage in order sweep those state officials aside, and then do whatever they wanted to do to the state’s immigrant population.

It is a sad reality that the present Trump administration seems not to care a wit about cooperation (even though they keep using the word). They evidence not understanding at all what cooperation really is. They’ve intentionally used coercive tactics from the beginning of their entrance to Minneapolis.

The approach of DHS and ICE has nothing to do with cooperation. Cooperation is built on mutual trust, whereas coercion’s base is always a use of raw power. And that what I and the rest of my fellow Minnesota residents are presently experiencing. It is literally impossible for us to cooperate with ICE because they have no concept of the term.

Why am I bringing up all of this? Because ICE and its federal government backing is not only oppressing and abusing power; they are also about as far as one can get from the words and the ways of Jesus Christ.

Interestingly, and sadly, when I mentioned this to a Christian who embraces the Trumpian “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) philosophy, his response was: “Funny you should bring Jesus into this,” as if the Lord Christ whom he claims to serve has nothing to do with any of the things happening to the residents of Minnesota.

Somewhere along the line, this person who confesses the name of Christ bought into the redefinition of the word “cooperation” to such a degree that he allowed Jesus to be purged away along with the state’s immigrant population.

Even the almighty and all-powerful God does not rely upon coercion in dealing with humanity. The Creator God, instead, invites human creatures to participate with him in a divine/human cooperative. There is no arm-twisting, no power plays, no threats. There’s only an invitation of participative commitment to love and good works in the world.

Wherever there is an incongruence between belief and action, and a reliance upon coercive power, there we find in Holy Scripture the encouragement and exhortation toward cooperation.

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (Philippians 2:1-4, NIV)

My experience in the Twin Cities has been, in may ways, difficult because I’ve seen the destructive and damaging power of coercion by the likes of DHS’s Kristi Noem and White House’s Stephen Miller, and ultimately of President Trump.

Yet, on the other hand, I’ve also experienced the beauty of vulnerable humanity coming together in a cooperative spirit of concern and love for one’s neighbor.

If it seems to the President that there is an organized effort in Minnesota with protesters, what he is actually observing is true community and neighborliness – something that, sadly, he nor anyone else on his senior staff seems to  understand nor comprehend.

And that inability to see community when it is front of their faces is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of all. Because without federal officials seeing this spirit of neighborliness and community cooperation, the hard tactics of ICE will continue, and the violence will not end.

Nobody here in the Cities is going to compromise or stand down from practicing loving cooperative community, nor should they have to.

Real cooperation and true beauty is not found in the halls of power; it is discovered in the places of weakness and powerlessness. And it is in this place of vulnerability that I choose to live and move and have my being in solidarity with the Lord Jesus.

“Your Faith Has Made You Well” (Luke 17:11-19)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
Jesus heals ten lepers, with one returning to give him thanks

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” (New Revised Standard Version)

Ten persons seeking healing called out to Jesus. And they got it. Yet, those persons were much more than passive receivers of healing. And Jesus was more than simply a giver.

Even though the lepers had heard about Jesus, they did not personally know him. It seems that – from their perspective – they had a chance encounter with Jesus. When they least expected a healing, a healing happened.

They called out to Christ, recognizing who it was that had entered their village. There was enough faith present for the diseased persons to make themselves known to Jesus – to expectantly put themselves out there and cry out for a healing to happen.

If you think about it, the power of any healing is really in the connection of being seen and heard in crying out to Jesus.

Although the healing of a person can come through a wondrous miracle, healing most often happens by the beautiful act of mutuality and participation. That is, the healer and the one in need of healing encounter each other with the willingness to both give and receive.

It’s in real human connection that healing happens. And it’s more than a physical cure; it’s also a healing reconnection of persons who were once isolated from the community. In other words, the healed person no longer needs to be on the outside of society, but can once again be a full participant in neighborhood and community.

Faith is central to what happens in the healing process. We all have some agency in realizing our own healing. We need not be passive spectators just wishing for things to be different.

Our anxiety and/or discouragement of present circumstances can move to a different place. We can discover relief through participating in social activities, taking walks in nature, and other modes requiring us to actively make a meaningful connection.

It requires faith.

Where faith is present, relational interaction and participation happens. In this context, a healing can occur. Rarely, if ever, does healing happen in complete isolation from others.

The fact that Jesus declared to the cleansed leper, “your faith has made you well,” indicates the mutuality of the healing encounter.

Let’s keep in mind that it takes at least two in order to have a healing: the healer and the healed one. Both participate together in the healing.

What’s more, when Christ heals, he heals without prejudice or favoritism.

In my front yard is a large ash tree with broad and expansive boughs. It is the ultimate shade tree. The tree’s name is Bob (I have a tendency to name trees, especially the ones I enjoy daily). Bob and I share the similarity of being created by the same Creator; and we both glorify God by simply being who we are created to be.

For Bob, he provides shade to people and animals without prejudice or favoritism. Anyone who comes under his great limbs can enjoy his shade. All that is needed for the protective and enjoyable experience of Bob’s boughs is a person under him.

Although it is appropriate to highlight the need for gratitude and praise in today’s story, the narrative itself builds to the climax of faith, of a participatory experience between Jesus and the leper(s).

And it did not matter if the persons healed were lepers, Samaritans, or even miscreants. What mattered was the faith-dialectic of the healer Jesus and the ones to be healed. All may enjoy the grace of divine shade if they move to becoming participants together with Christ by merely coming under his mercy.

I find that many people get hung-up about faith. We often make faith either too simple or too difficult. We create an overly simplistic faith when it becomes a completely passive affair of just waiting on God, or expecting someone else to heal me. We make faith a great difficulty whenever it becomes all about our level or amount of faith through the strenuous effort of intense prayer and contacting umpteen prayer chains.

But more or less prayer, more or less work, more or less of anything misses the point – because even a puny amount of faith will do, if it moves toward Jesus and seeks the participatory experience of a divine/human relation.

There is a cost to healing. It requires participation, relationship, and most of all, the humility to be seen and heard, instead of trying to control some sort of process to get the healing I want.

We call this genuine participation faith.

When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8)

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. (Galatians 5:6)

Your faith has made you well. (Luke 17:19)

In your love, O God of all, your people find healing. Grant that the pains of our journey may not obscure the presence of Christ among us, but that we may always give thanks for your healing power as we travel on the way to your kingdom; through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit are one God, now and forever. Amen.

I Want To Know Christ (Philippians 3:7-11)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
Jesus Christ and the Apostles, by Nikolas Martínez Ortiz de Zarate (1907-1990)

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. (New International Version)

Whenever someone asks me what my favorite portion of Holy Scripture is, I reflexively turn to these verses in our New Testament lesson for today.

I resonate with these words from the Apostle Paul to the Church at Philippi, because they match what I truly believe, and how I really feel about Jesus.

We go through a lot of loss in this earthly life. We experience hardship and adversity. We grieve and lament.

Some of the losses in this life, we are okay with, or at least, we come around to being okay with them after a bit of time. Yet, there are other losses that are heartrending.

On the flipside, there are many gains we experience in this life. Some of them we worked very hard for, and others came to us as gifts.

Oftentimes, our gains and our losses are inextricably bound with each other. Something we consider precious is lost. We may even choose to set aside or give up something we have – we allow it become lost – so that we can gain something even better.

At other times, the process of gaining, losing, then gaining something good was not purposed by us, but by God.

And, to me, that’s probably the best sort of good there is.

Another way of putting the matter is: We must let go and accept how something or someone is, before we can experience what a truly good life really is.

Jesus, by Ghanshyam Gupta

Allow me, or please indulge me, as I frame the Apostle’s words in my own sort of language:

Anything in this life that I have achieved; anything I have come to possess; any sort of position or title I hold or have held; any kind of identification I have, or prestige  I have gained, is of no value. In reality, it’s all rather worthless.

If you will let me take it even further, compared to having an authentic, real, and experiential relationship with Jesus as my Savior, my Lord, and my Friend, everything else is like a bunch of garbage. That’s how much I value Jesus. There’s no other thing, no other relationship, that comes remotely close to knowing Christ.

It isn’t so much that I found Jesus, but that he found me. So, I have a faith that’s got nothing to do with keeping up appearances or rule-keeping, or keeping ahold of anything. I have the life that is truly life.

But, oh my, there is so much more to experience and to know with Jesus! I want to experientially know the power of Christ’s mighty resurrection. I  want to be like him, and participate with him, as if Jesus were living his life through me.

And, I must tell you, I know that this sort of life means suffering. But I also know that this suffering puts me in solidarity with my Lord – which is exactly where I want to be.

I only want to live up to who I’m supposed to be in Christ, to be my true self, and not some faux Christian living according to mere rules and regulations. The only thing that counts to me is faith expressing itself through love.

I understand that I took a lot of liberties with the text, and elaborated on it in order to make it my own. But, truth be told, we all need to find ways to make scripture as our own.

We all must let go of some old ways and unlearn a lot of things, in order to discover new life and be united with Christ. Everyone needs to learn from the past, so that we can live a new life here in the present.

If you don’t like my words, that’s fine. You aren’t under any obligation to read them. Yet, I do believe we have an obligation to Holy Scripture, and specifically, to ingest it as if it were the best meal you’ve ever eaten.

Indeed, we end up experiencing a lot of losses in this life. Yet, with Jesus, we will never lose him, because he will never forsake us. Christ is our eternal gain. He’s alive, always living, so that we need never be concerned about him not existing anymore.

That’s my faith. That’s what I trust in, or rather whom I put my faith in, and my trust upon. It’s all about Jesus. Anything less will not stand the test of time, nor of satisfaction in life.

What will you do with Jesus?

Christ isn’t going to strongarm you into the kingdom of God. But he will doggedly go after you, and be a pester pup in your ears and an ever-present sense in your heart.

You might as well go ahead and consider him, or perhaps reconsider him, like you’ve never done before.

After all, you’ve really got nothing to lose.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end. – The Nicene Creed, on Jesus Christ

The Need for Partnership and Participation (Malachi 3:5-12)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment

“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.

“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty.

“But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’

“Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.

“But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’

“In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty. (New International Version)

Return To God

God and God’s people were at odds with each other. The Lord was weary of the people’s constant complaining. They had a wrongheaded notion that God was absent, just because circumstances were not going their way.

Yet it is important to keep in mind that belief in God’s presence and God’s inherent goodness is absolutely essential to a faithful and good life.

If you think God is absent, then the best place to find God is at the outskirts or margins of a society. The Lord is there to protect the weakest persons and those who have been neglected by others.

The needy in Israel were on the outside without any power or a voice, which is why the prophet Malachi called the people to repentance – to change and amend their ways. They should return to God.

But what does a return to God look like? Since the people generally did not think they were doing anything necessarily wrong, they didn’t have a clue how to do this returning to God. They didn’t have the sense to know they were on the outs with God – which is why the prophet Malachi was speaking to them.

To the people at that time, and practicing the injustice that they were practicing, God responded that they should return by stopping their robbery of God.

Tithes and Offerings

Specifically, the people should reinstate the full mandated practice in the law of tithes and offerings.

Please understand that these tithes and offerings have nothing to do with modern capital fund campaigns for building churches or establishing new ministries. Rather, these words have a specific context that we must pay attention to.

The “tithe” in Israel was the temple tax, paid to the Levites, because this was the tribe of Levi’s only source of income. (Numbers 18:20-30)

An “offering” is a general term, referring to all the sorts of sacrifices offered at the temple as a part of Israelite worship. And once again, the Levites depended upon these offerings in order to eat and live.

Thus, tithes and offerings in Israel had a synergistic purpose of providing the people an opportunity to worship God and center their communal life around the Lord; and also providing for the Levites, so that they could make their living.

And then, the priests who attended to all the temple functions would use funds from the tithes and offerings to help the poor and indigent in the community.

So, a failure to provide tithes and offerings was an injustice, because it was neglecting to care for fellow members of society who needed help.

People could starve and die without practicing God’s law concerning tithes and offerings. And that is why it angered God so much whenever people reneged on their duty toward the temple practices.

Cooperation, Not Competition

Therefore, repentance and returning to God would happen only when the priests and the people cooperated together. Then, God’s faithfulness could be made effective and manifest itself among the entire social structure of Israel.

The entire society was built upon a divine/human cooperative. It required both human action and divine blessing working together.

None of this was a contract or a deal in which people do the right thing, and then God automatically blesses, like some divine slot machine that persons put coins into.

Instead, it is a system in which the laity work together with the clergy; and then all the people work together with God. In other words, God’s ideal is partnership and participation.

God will bring a great produce. But the people would have to do the hard work of planting and harvesting the crops. This is very far from any sort of name-it-and-claim-it theology in which a person prays for whatever they want and God will give it to them. That is not how an abundant life is produced.

Abundance comes wherever there are partners who participate with each other. If that system breaks down, then people are in a world of trouble.

So, people must take the social justice of God quite seriously – with its specific requirements about caring for one another.

Although we may not have the same particular system of Levites and a Temple, God’s heart for justice, for people’s basic needs to be met and satisfied, has never changed. That value still stands the test of time throughout all of human history.

Almighty God, who created us in your own image: Grant us grace to fearlessly contend against evil, and to make no peace with oppression. Enable us to reverently use our freedom, in the establishment and maintenance of justice in our communities and among the nations, to the glory of your holy Name. Amen.