What IS Fascism?

HIERARCHY and Patriarchy are the keys to Fascism, Monarchy, and all Totalitarian governments. 

The idea is that some people are better than others and should rule over them.

1. HIERARCHY is often displayed as the tip of a pyramid. 

Misogyny, Racism, Zenophobia, Nativism, Classism, and Ableism are ALL expressions of HIERARCHY. 

When we hear racist, misogynist, or other derogatory comments we should know that we are in the presence of FASCISTS.

2. On the lower right side of the pyramid is the opposite of HIERARCHY in Human Relations, EQUALITY. 

This is the principle that all people are equal, that no person or group is better than others. 

Fascists do NOT believe that all people are equal in any way. They do not accept the basis of the Declaration of Independence. 

Lincoln made EQUALITY and the Declaration the basis for what was a Second Republic or Second Foundation that resulted from the Civil War. 

Human Relations always involve Wealth and Power, which measure where we are between HIERARCHY and EQUALITY. Power and Wealth are not inherently negative. We object to their misuse and irresponsibility to society. The Wealthy and Powerful rise up repeatedly to beat down EQUALITY. Heather Cox Richardson notes that in Reconstruction Southerners fused race and class in order not to be accused of racial discrimination. 

3. The lower left side of the pyramid identifies ANARCHY as the opposite of HIERARCHY in Government. 

Government is about who shall decide issues that arise among us. This is Control. 

ANARCHY is NO control. 

Democracy, in which the people choose by majority, lies between HIERARCHY and ANARCHY.

4. The bottom line of the pyramid measures Freedom and Rights between EQUALITY and ANARCHY. 

Both EQUALITY and ANARCHY seek equal Rights and Freedom, but ANARCHY hopes to achieve them without any controls. 

EQUALITY for minorities, labor, women, children, the aged, and the disabled requires restrictions on Wealth and Power. 

FASCISTS do not believe that people without Wealth, Power, and Class Status deserve any Rights.

5. We seek balance between Control, Power, and Freedom, so I connect them into an inverted triangle within the larger one. 

Monarchs and Dictators believe that they own “Liberty,” which they dispense or withhold, and is not the same as Freedom.  

6. Within the larger triangle are the forms of totalitarianism and participatory republics. 

Naziism was race-based. 

Italian Fascism focused on class but not race. 

Communism is state-controlled authoritarianism claiming social EQUALITY. 

A Monarchy can be inherited, giving continuity to authoritarians. HIERARCHY is reinforced by the presence of an Aristocracy. 

In Parliamentary Monarchies, royal families have no power, but support national identity and stability.  

Democratic Socialists work to end capitalism. A Democratic Republic relies on voters to elect representatives in a system where they can achieve what the people want. Social Democracies, such as in Scandinavia, regulate capitalism and establish broad social welfare programs.  

7. Everything exists within the context of Social, Economic, Political, and Personal forces. 

The environment, climate, cultural controversies, and disputes with other states will also affect a nation.

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I perused many books and watched many YouTube videos to come to the above understandings. I was a history major in college, and studied much history in seminary, but never learned most of the definitions and relationships described above. Trump has taught us all the meaning of Fascism that we thought we would never see. 

I welcome any corrections, deletions, or additions that the reader may suggest.

In conclusion, EQUALITY is the key to Freedom, Justice, and Power to the people. MAGA and Trump are straight up FASCISTS. I am deeply concerned that before we can remove Trump and reverse the minority rule of the current MAGA version of the Republican party, we will separate as states and descend into another civil war, although not one that is regional. I work toward the more likely outcome, that new leadership in support of Equality will reveal themselves, and a new Constitution is written to correct the evils of the old one, and the ability of evil persons and parties to subvert it.

No Kings Day, October 18, 2025

 I descend into depression as I try to keep up 

with the news and commentary upon it. 

“What has he done today?”

Each day descends into deeper insanity 

as the president dismantles the only government I have known.

The day of protest arrives. The sky is blue. The air is cool.

I discover that thousands, perhaps millions of others feel as I do.

There is anger. 

Signs are pointed and serious. 

The sound of car horns, shouts, drums, and trumpets pierce the air.

Laughter interrupts or defines the day

in the form of inflatable frogs, dinosaurs and cartoon characters.

People line the sidewalks on both sides of the street as far as I can see.

We tell each other “This is what democracy looks like!”

It is peace, but later walking to a place for speeches, 

I see a cop with a three foot hickory riot baton.

(The state police carried them when I protested 

the war in Vietnam when I was in college.)

I told the officer, “You won’t be needing that here today.” 

The first speaker reminded us that the president wasn’t the problem

but a symptom of many larger problems with a long history.

What we want, he said, is new structures 

that will make those problems obsolete.

We need to say no not only to kings, 

but to corporations in which we have no say

and to billionaires who have no interest in ours.

Yes. 

This revolution is in our minds and hearts already.

Is a movement enough to effect it, or will it require a war?

Need I say that property is involved?

Calvin on Assassination

In the midst of my reading of Bonhoeffer I dug into John Calvin to see what he had to say about opposing a tyrant. This is my summation of the last chapter of The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559) on the matter: 

Despite strong beliefs that kings and other leaders are chosen and ordained by God to rule, that rebellion is sinful, and that individuals have no right to regicide or tyrannicide, John Calvin in the final pages of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, states that “lesser magistrates,” other officials appointed or elected to govern, have the right and duty to check the tyranny of kings “as Constitutional defenders of the people’s freedom.” 

“If they wink at kings who violently fall upon and assault the lowly common folk, their dissimulation involves nefarious perfidy, because they dishonestly betray the freedom of the people.... Let the princes hear and be afraid.” 

“Obedience to man must not become disobedience to God.” "When a king exceeds his limits and has been a wrongdoer against men, he opposes God, and abrogates his own power."

 "We have been redeemed by Christ at so great a price as our redemption cost him, so that we should not enslave ourselves to the wicked desires of men — much less be subject to their impiety." [I Cor. 7:23].

A Lost Sermon from 2020 - Leviticus: Blood and Holiness

Sermon Warrensburg Nov. 9, 2020

Leviticus 19, selections and Mark 12:28-34

In March I preached on the entire book of Deuteronomy.

Because few of you are likely to read the whole thing, 

I was your “sacrificial reader” of difficult and at first glance, boring, books.

My reason for doing that was that I saw a connection 

between the laws in Dt. and the issue of the “rule of law” 

in our current national politics.

It proved quite close and relevant.

The purpose of those laws was to establish fairness, responsibility, and justice, 

in order to have a good society and good lives.

The purpose of our laws and justice system today is the same.

What has changed in 3,000 years

is that we do not assume the laws come from God.

Today I tackle Leviticus.

The purpose of the laws here are different,

but there is no let up in the political ramifications of the Bible.

The laws and instructions in Leviticus have parallels to our own time 

but they are not exactly legal.

Here is the setting and a brief outline of Leviticus:

Moses and the Hebrews are in the desert after Moses 

has received the 10 commandments and a tent of meeting has been set up 

to house the ark of the covenant.

The Lord, Yahweh, summons Moses, speaks to him from the tent, 

and gives orders to him.

These first 7 chapters are shocking and puzzling to us.

We suddenly find ourselves in the midst of instructions 

about how to carry out various sacrifices.

These are detailed instructions for butchering cows, sheep, goats, 

and dissecting birds; 

and how to cook them and how to dispose of the remnants.

And there are a few more relaxing recipes 

for baking with grains, for grain offerings.

The detail about these offerings is intense.

Which organs do you burn in offering 

and which parts do you burn outside the tent?

What meat is for God, which is for the priests, and which is for the people?

And what do we do with the blood? 

We dash it against the altar, we mark the corners of the altar with it, 

the priests throw it against the people.

By dealing with blood, life and death become real, 

and everyone of us who has seen a crime or a horror film 

knows the awe of this.

Blood is the ultimate symbol of life.

In Genesis it was mentioned in passing that 

“You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” [Gen 9:4]

In Leviticus we learn that God says “the life of the flesh is in the blood; 

and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar;

for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.” [Lev 17:11]

This is repeated throughout Leviticus.

And the fat surrounding the vital organs belongs to the Lord. 

The subcutaneous fat is to be discarded.

The organs and their fat are burnt offerings to God, 

whom we are told will be pleased with the odor rising to heaven.

It is as if the Hebrews are feeding God, to satisfy his hunger for meat.

The burnt offerings are for various purposes, some for sin, and for guilt.

Some are what we used to read as “peace offerings.” 

The new translations call this an offering of “Well-being,” confusing to me.

It is a blessing of any meat which the people will eat for sustenance and life.

Sin here mostly involves touching things that are unclean.

Like body fluids, dead bodies, mold, skin eruptions, and eating unclean animals. 

Sin offerings to forgive and to make oneself clean again are complicated: 

Did the sinner know that he had sinned? 

Was it intentional or unintentional? 

Who sinned? Was it a priest? Or a layman? Was it the whole people, the tribe? 

Or was it a judge or the ruler? 

Different rituals are prescribed for each situation and perpetrator.

--------------

Why is Moses and why are the people asked to make these sacrifices?

What is this about?

Leviticus is ancient. Parts of it were probably written before 1000 BC.

First, There is a deep memory here of Abraham offering his son, Isaac, 

to God as a sacrifice because Yahweh commanded it.

We are told the story in Genesis as if it were a test of faith.

But the story of Abraham and Isaac 

is itself a deeper memory of a more ancient past

when human sacrifice was common 

and accepted as necessary and right.

Moses lived in more humane times, when animals and birds and grains 

substitute for humans to satisfy God.

Second, if you have to have sacrifices and offerings, 

you need priests, and a special place to conduct these rituals.

We are witnessing here in Leviticus the birth of an institution,

as we saw the legal institution created, or borrowed and expanded, in Dt. 

Here a cultus, the sociologists call it, is being created, 

or probably borrowed and expanded,

It is a system of religious and political organization and control.

In the years that follow the movable tent will give way to a permanent temple.

A permanent altar will be established, and blood will no longer be shed on it.

In Christian churches the altar will come to symbolize 

the death of Jesus as a sacrifice, 

And during the Reformation up to our own time 

priests with godly powers will become ministers,

and later will include men and women.

And the altar itself will give way to the communion table we know.

around which we share bread and wine as symbols of blood and flesh.

 --------------

But there is more to know: if sacrifices are the answer, what is the question?

These sacrificial offerings answer basic questions:

How do we please God, how do we get on the right side of God, 

especially when our consciences tell us we have done wrong?

How do we deal with our different needs for blessings 

and the different kinds of wrongs that are committed 

and which need to be atoned for?

I said earlier that blood was used for atonement, 

one of those religious technical terms. 

Atonement is first of all reparation or payment for wrongs done.

Atonement is redress, restitution, or redemption.

In atonement we are making amends.

It is reconciliation of God and humankind.

It is “at-one-ment,” the making of different parties to a lawsuit, one.

Or as the signs and billboards in the fields of Minnesota declared fifty years ago,

“Get Right with God!”

These sacrificial offerings were made to achieve blessing and forgiveness 

and reintegration of offenders into the community 

when they have done wrong.

By following the ritual, appointing the right people to lead it, 

who wear the assigned clothing and take the prescribed actions; 

when they give the appropriate directions and say the right prayers, 

then God will be satisfied and come near to the people again,

and accept them.

We will know that this has been accomplished 

because the altar and the priests and the people will be covered with blood.

It will be a fearful experience and sight 

that will convince us of the power of God and of the priests.

The ordination of priests requires even more blood. [Chapters 8-10] 

Lots of blood. The sacrifice of two rams to ordain the priests.

To ordain Aaron as high priest a bull calf, a sheep, and a goat, 

all without blemish, are butchered.

The priests must be better than the people: 

So they cannot drink wine or strong drink;

they must avoid the unclean or they will die.

We are only up to chapter 10, but I will move along more quickly.

Chapters 11-15 are about temporary uncleanliness and impurity:

Touching or eating animals and birds that are unclean, touching bodily fluids, 

and skin diseases, and the mixing of fabrics make one unclean.

Yes, we are all unclean because of the clothing we wear today.

There are instruction on how to cleanse houses where lepers have lived, 

and then more on what to do about bodily fluids.

Chapters 16 and 17 are about the annual Day of Atonement.

Here we learn about ritual and vestments and sacrifices 

that will return us to acceptance by God. 

Here we learn of “the mercy seat,” 

the cover on the ark or box in which the covenant was kept.

Here we learn about the “scapegoat,”

how priests wrote down the sins of the people and who committed them,

and then drove the goat out into the wilderness 

to be attacked and killed by wild animals.

Chapters 18-20 are about Moral Purity, holiness, sexual integrity, care for the poor

Here is the text for today.

Leviticus 19, selections:

When you reap the harvest of your land, 

you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, 

or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 

You shall not strip your vineyard bare, 

or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; 

you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: 

I am the Lord your God.

You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; 

and you shall not lie to one another. 

And you shall not swear falsely by my name, 

profaning the name of your God: I am the Lord.

You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and 

you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. 

You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; 

you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

You shall not render an unjust judgment; 

you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: 

with justice you shall judge your neighbor. 

You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, 

and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor.

You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; 

you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. 

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people,

but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

You shall not let your animals breed with a different kind; 

you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; 

nor shall you put on a garment made of two different materials.

[We are all guilty of this. 

These rules may have sensible reasons, which I will not discuss here.]

If a man has sexual relations with a woman who is a slave, 

designated for another man but not ransomed or given her freedom, 

an inquiry shall be held. 

They shall not be put to death, since she has not been freed; 

but he shall bring a guilt offering for himself to the Lord, 

at the entrance of the tent of meeting, a ram as guilt offering. 

[We see here how slavery and rape were handled; 

by these rules people at least knew that rape was wrong.]

You shall not eat anything with its blood. 

You shall not practice augury or witchcraft. 

You shall not round off the hair on your temples 

or mar the edges of your beard. 

You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead 

or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.

Do not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute, 

Do not turn to mediums or wizards; do not seek them out.

You shall rise before the aged, and defer to the old.

 

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.

The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; 

you shall love the alien as yourself, 

for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

You shall not cheat in measuring length, weight, or quantity. 

You shall have honest balances, honest weights: 

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 

You shall keep all my statutes and all my ordinances, and observe them: 

I am the Lord.

Back to sermon:

Many of these laws are repeated from Deuteronomy.

It is likely that the writers of Dt. Inserted some of this into Leviticus.

But these laws are placed here for a different reason: 

It isn’t to set up a legal code, a justice system, and a legal institution 

to create a rule of law, in which abstract laws 

are above the rule of a king who also must obey them.

as it was in Deuteronomy.

Instead they are rules of moral and religious behavior.

These rules are here not first of all because of the desire 

for a well functioning society,

but because God is seen and experienced as holy, 

and therefore the people must be holy.

The core of this book is called the Holiness Code.

For the Christian who has been shaken by all the blood and the rules in this book,

the statement “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” jumps off the page

like the rabbit jumps out from under my deck when I come outside.

All the rules here are given because God is holy, 

and therefore the people must be holy.

The priests and the people will be holy, set apart from all their neighbors,

by the different and righteous ways they live.

The core of Leviticus is called the holiness code [17-26] for this reason.

To be Holy is to be perfect in goodness and righteousness.

I thought of having us sing Holy Holy Holy this morning.

It was sung frequently in church when I was a child.

I thought it was both scary and glorious. That is what holiness is meant to be.

Holy, Holy, Holy, though the darkness hide Thee,

Though the eye of sinfulness Thy glory may not see

Only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,

perfect in power, in love and purity.

You shall be holy, Leviticus says, for I the Lord your God am holy.

-----------------

But I am always asking, “What are the values inherent in this description 

of these sacrifices and the institution of this priesthood?”

A few years ago I preached on Jonathan Haidt’s book on values, 

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Haidt is a social scientist and has identified six sets of values 

Care as opposed to Harm. 

This includes security over lack of safety and fear. 

Liberty from Oppression

Fairness without Cheating

In a general sort of way Deuteronomy is about these values and problems.

The next sets of values are:

Loyalty not Betrayal

Authority not Subversion

Sanctity or holiness or purity not Degradation and sin over uncleanness

These are the values and troubles Leviticus is concerned with.

They are conservative values which are needed by every society.

Loyalty is about maintaining community.

Authority is about living within social and political norms and rules.

At the extreme authority is demanded by a hierarchy,

so that we are supposed to give deference to those above us.

In our time it is respecting institutions because of the good they give to us:

Not only religious institutions, yes, 

but also educational, medical, economic, and social institutions.

Sanctity is about perfection of purity.

At the end of Leviticus we read about God’s blessings on those who obey

and curses on the faithless who are hostile to God.

Fortunately, and unfortunately, depending on your point of view,

God will not strike us dead

and our legal system will not allow priests or dictators to do so.

Marcus Borg in a great little book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time [1994], 

explained the purity system and why Jesus opposed it:

These rules are NOT just about religion or social customs

This is a political system.

A way of dividing and separating and controlling people.

One of the easiest ways to control people, 

is to declare some people as impure and unclean – 

The sick, the poor, the immigrant, and the homeless.

We can see the good side to rules about cleanliness.

It prevents sickness, but such rules can control people in cruel ways; 

We are suspicious of Puritans, who want to fit us into boxes.

Here is the fight between those of us who wear masks 

so that we and those we come in contact with do not get the coronavirus,

and those who see masks as an infringement on their freedom

and interference is business.

But it is a false freedom to choose a sickness we do not fully understand,

Jesus challenged the laws governing pollution and purity

so that the people would be free to love their neighbors.

This is very different than being willing to sacrifice 

our neighbors and our loved ones.

The basic problem with Leviticus is obvious: We cannot be perfect in holiness.

The good news is that ancient Israel never lived strictly under these laws anyway.

They were the ideal, and the model for a religious way of life under law 

that would allow Israel to live by it’s covenant with God 

even when there was no land or temple or king. 

It was written when they were losing it all,

but they remained a people, who gave to us both law and liberty

because they never forgot and they never forget

that their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt.

May we not forget their creation of social norms and the rule of law. Amen.

Two Thoughts and More for Easter This Year

(I Samuel 8:1-22; The Gospel of John 20:19-31; The Gospel of Thomas 1-3) 

I have two of everything today.

I have two short sermons. Which make a long sermon!

When I go for months without preaching, I accumulate much to say. 

The first sermon is an overview of all of human history and the Bible, all in just a few minutes!

The second is a more personal and pastoral sermon.

This is for those who live in their heads and those who live in their hearts.

Most of us live in both places.

The first pair:

There have been two ways that people have lived in human history.

Many people lived in families and tribes, hunted and herded animals, and raised crops.

They traded with each other and lived in relative peace with each other. 

But everywhere in some places and in all times there was change, which led to differences, 

        followed by conflict and violence. 

All conflict arises from change: we either want change or we oppose it.

Leaders came forward; some good and some bad, but always some who love power 

        or who come to love power when in a position of authority.

Many who love power accumulate great wealth, and for some reason oppress the poor.

Wealth is power because it can buy almost anything and almost anyone.

Wealth is the power to compel and control.

Most of us have been greatly blessed.

A professor in seminary impressed me with this thought:

If you and I had been born anywhere else at any other time, 

        we would have been peasants, serfs, or perhaps slaves, poor and needy, possibly sick and weak. 

Life was brutish and short for the 99%.

If measured by all who have ever lived, we are in the upper 1% or .1% in wealth.

Those of us here today have lived in what may have been the longest period 

        of peace and prosperity in the history of the world. 

We did not know this in our lifetimes, as we lived through it, 

and we are mostly less than grateful having taken it all for granted.

To teach us what we need to know, there have been wise story tellers, 

        who wrote wisdom to last through the ages for our benefit.

So we have the Bible as such a repository of wisdom, but not everything in it is wisdom 

and some of it is easily misused to our detriment.

My point is this:

If you are concerned and worried about the times in which we live, 

rest assured that there have been worse times and events, 

         worse leaders, worse economic turmoil, greater reason to fear war, famine, and plague. 

Most people have worried about all these things forever.

And there are always the few who have wealth sufficient to avoid everything except death and taxes 

(but they have found many ways to avoid taxes and even to prolong life beyond what is natural).

There is nothing new under the sun.

--------------

The Second Pair:

There are two major stories in the Bible.

Most of us are so overwhelmed by the size and variety in the Bible, that we do not see them.

The Hebrew scriptures tell of the Exodus, led by Moses, and 

the Greek scriptures tell us of the Resurrection of Jesus.

The Bible is constructed around those two stories.

What we need to know is that both stories are about freedom.

But what came before freedom?

For the Jews it was slavery in Egypt.

They were oppressed by Pharoah, a dictator whose rule was law.

As a matter of interest, there was no written law in ancient Egypt,

so later the Jews made sure that they had written laws.

In Egypt the Pharoah or king was the ruler; the king was law.

With a rule of law the law is king, as Thomas Paine taught us.

The Hebrews said this law was given and enforced by the true king, who is God.

Ancient Israel had a terrible controversy about government and leadership:

Here we have A third pair:

There are two different histories of ancient Israel, woven together into what seems like one.

As you read it you can see that some verses favor a king, 

and the next verses tell how terrible they are.

Usually the winners write history, but the ancient Levites wanted to preserve this dispute.

These Levites warned the people of all the terrible things that would happen

if they had a king like all their neighboring countries.

They knew that they had to proclaim the unseen God as the true and only King, 

and the rule of law in order to maintain freedom of the people.

[That would be another sermon on how the law gives us freedom.]

So in these two competing narratives about kings, we have stories of great kings 

who were heros to be praised, like David,

        and stories of kings who were corrupt, even mentally deficient, 

        and who led the people into unnecessary wars, like Saul.

The ancient Hebrews fell into slavery again and again.

--------------

Before the resurrection of Jesus there was the Roman Empire,

just as before the Exodus there was Pharoah. 

The Jews in the time of Jesus, ruled by the Romans, were again in a kind of slavery.

Jesus addressed this slavery by telling people to live by God’s values and rules, 

to live in God’s Empire (or Kingdom) 

    as if the Romans were irrelevant because Caesar was not God. 

When Jesus was killed his followers were able to hold on to and hold up the values of God 

        and God’s Empire that Jesus had taught them.

So powerful was this experience of Jesus, their loss of him,

his teachings and his healings, that he lived on for them, in them.

I think that their experience of their loss of Jesus, and their response to it, 

they called all this his resurrection.

The followers of Jesus experienced his resurrection as a new freedom 

that transcended and overcame all of the problems of life, even death.

This is my reading of the Bible. It may be shocking to some.

--------------

But there are two ways to read the Bible, a fourth pair:

In an odd, mystical way, as we read the bible, the bible reads us.

We can look at a single story within the larger story and feel ourselves written into that story.

It becomes real to us in our experience on a psychological level.

The words and metaphors used in that story suddenly apply to us, 

and the story becomes not a story of what happened to others, but our own story.

It becomes a story of our experience in our time and place,

and so a power rises from the story as it becomes greater than the words with which it is written.

We hear the Bible story of Thomas and Jesus and realize that even after Easter, 

when we are supposed to be joyous at the news of resurrection, 

we are afraid like those first disciples:

“When it was evening the doors were locked because they were afraid.”

The text says “for fear of the Jews,” a phrase repeated many times in the gospel of John. 

This is one of those places where scripture is misunderstood and misused.

The gospel of John is often read as a tirade against the Jews, blaming them for his death, 

but it is about conflict among the Jews and all of them in conflict with the Romans.

What is meant is “the authorities,” “in fear of the authorities,”

both Romans and other Jews who worked for them.

That is how I read it. Remember, they were ALL Jews.

So the question now for us is What are we afraid of?  What are you afraid of?

Are we afraid of “the authorities?”

If you are Brown, or the head of an institution receiving Federal money,

a teacher, a librarian? Maybe so. 

Most likely we fear shrinking retirement savings, or shortages of goods in the stores, or online.

How are we locking the doors in our lives these days, physically, emotionally, or spiritually ?

Some have reason to fear their neighbors.

Many are afraid to listen to the news.

When we let the Bible read us, we can see that A LOCKED DOOR 

represents whatever it is that PREVENTS US FROM LIVING more freely and more fully.

Jesus then is our own power to overcome what prevents us from living.

Jesus doesn’t tell the disciples they were wrong to lock the door; he just walks right through the door. 

I read from two gospels, yet another pair; one of them not in the Bible.

I am convinced that the “doubting Thomas” title of this story is wrong.

The writer of the gospel of Thomas, and the writer of the gospel of John, 

unknown to us, were in a dispute with each other.

John won the fight. The church went with John over Thomas.

John got in the Bible; Thomas did not.

Their argument was this: John taught in his gospel that we must “believe” or accept

some things about Jesus in order to belong to him.

We are told to believe that Jesus was divine, 

        that he said and did many things that are not attested to by other witnesses, 

                such as the writers of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Most of all we are told to believe that the resurrection of Jesus was a physical, objective reality.

John’s gospel says “Do not doubt but believe.” 

But we don’t have to believe these things to be Christian.

These things are not taught explicitly by the other gospels or by Paul.

This shows us that there are many ways to be Christian.

I want to protect that, because we are not all the same.

Here is what Thomas taught:

        Believing is about seeking the truth in Jesus.

        The seeking is of value because it disturbs us.

        Being disturbed will save us because it will lead us

        to discover that the rule of God and “the living Jesus” 

        are within us and indeed all around us, everywhere.

We tend to think that all the gospels are telling the same story but they are not.

We tend to think that all the stories about Jesus can be “harmonized,” but they cannot.

There are many stories about Jesus and what he said and did.

They are meant not to convince us of certain facts; 

they are meant to open our hearts and change our minds.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 

Yes, each of us, whatever we believe, has come to believe it without seeing, without proof. 

--------------

What sticks with me this week, after Easter, is that we in the United States are living in a spiritual crisis.

We either deny it, run from it, or are eaten up by it.

Our crisis is something we cannot see, but we feel it.

Things are happening beyond our control. We feel threatened.

Who we are, and what our country has been and what it is about,

are suddenly in doubt as never before.

That is our spiritual crisis.

Some of you may think that our situation is not so bad,

or maybe even that the direction we now are moving is the right one.

I do not think so.

Things are happening that grate against our core beliefs, our deepest values,

so many of us fear where we might be going,  and we don’t see yet any effective way to respond.

Each of us must find the rule of God within us. 

The prophet Micah helps by asking, “What does the Lord require of you

but to do justice and to love kindness

     and to walk humbly with your God?”

Jesus helps by tellling us, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, 

and all the things you need will be given to you as well.”

 

A Disturbing Dream

I had a dream. I was walking through the woods in early spring , seeing a few small flowers on a few dead stalks, but I had been in these woods the day before and saw no visible living thing. I observed several dead trees.

In the dream I came upon a dead stump about 4 inches in diameter and 3 ft tall. A flower bloomed on the edge of the top of the stump. Smoke came from the other side of the blossom. Within the rising smoke wafting around the top of the stump, small flames no larger than what comes from a match came into being, retreated, and burst out again.

I was shocked, a bit frightened and didn't know what to do. Would this start a forest fire? What was causing it? 

I awoke and could not return to sleep. This had been a Jungian dream, with much symbolism and of import to my life. I had read a lot of Jung in the 70s. Somehow it was connected to another symbolic event,the vulture that fell dead from the sky into my backyard three days before. I, the secular, atheist was now thinking about omens,a foreboding of something to come that would change everything, possibly for good, but likely for ill.

Now I was thinking of Moses and the burning bush, and what symbolism was at work there and in my dream. The burning stump seemed to indicate the mysterious presence of a primordial power that called for my attention. “Listen up, Dennis, to what is going on and what you must do,” would be the voice in the flame. The fire symbolizes “spirit” in the Biblical story of Pentecost, and probably in the myths and legends of every religion. Coming to awareness of the divine within and from without, and self-awareness have often been described as a burning. It has only been 50 years since Christians began speaking of "spirituality," and about that long that psychologists ceased to describe religious experiences as mental illness.

Before the dream, as I fell asleep, I thought about how all of our political and economic problems are essentially spiritual. As a nation, we are in a spiritual crisis, and yet few of all the opinion commentators and theologians I read and hear speak of this. And what does “spiritual crisis” mean? I came of age in the 60s and came to a Christian faith, which led me to attend a seminary during the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements. I had seen a spiritual crisis in the nation’s unresolved racism and its choice to make war in Asia against “communism,” a complex symbol for undemocratic authoritarianism that threatened capitalism and our way of life. Complex because religious Westerners accused communism of being “materialistic” because it denies God and the Spirit, whereas we Westerners were deeply materialistic in our greed for goods and greater wealth. So both communism and capitalism are expressions of spiritual crises.

Following the dream I was struck that we mostly have forgotten what Trump's first term was like. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have wiped our memories of that period. We were drowning in fear of what would happen next and anxiety that we or those we love might die from covid. 

That is our problem; we are afraid, and we have been afraid. From the beginning of Trump’s entrance into politics, he fanned flames of fear and hate. We forget the many frightening events of his first term, and the many malicious characters that surrounded him. We have forgotten the two impeachments. The Senate protected him and did not convict him of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in December 2019, and again in January 2021, for incitement of insurrection. We took Trump lightly the first time, thinking that guardrails would protect us from harm. 

We were relieved to elect Biden and a Democratic Congress and Senate, but half the country was offended by the return to liberalism, the belief that we should accept all people, including those we really hate deep down, and that government should actively better the lives of everyone. 

Conservatives, those who wanted to preserve the past and move slowly toward change, were replaced by a large minority that supported Trump in wanting to tear down old systems that they perceived had harmed them and rewarded the undeserving. Liberals and even many former conservatives fear this. We are fearful now of almost everything. Even if Trump dies then we have to worry about Vance. We know only a little about him, but we know he is cruel has to do with the future, but our spiritual crisis also touches on the past. Now, we feel guilt that we did not act decisively against Trump and the ideas he represented during his first term.

This guilt is like that of the French after World War II for not having done enough or anything to save their neighbors who were being taken away by the Nazis.

Moses encountered his burning bush when he was living well in Midian after escaping from Egypt. Now he had family, and Midian was far east of Egypt, across the Sinai and the Gulf of Aquaba in what is now northwest Saudi Arabia. He was safe and had no reason to involve himself in Egypt. But the burning bush was a revelation from God that his people were slaves in Egypt and that he should go and free them.

So am I fat and safe, and old as well, not inclined to accept a new call, especially one without the detail from Yahweh of what to do and how. Actually, I am in the same position as everyone else who opposes Trump, his aides, and their program of government destruction.

But response to a spiritual crisis requires, first that we recognize and confess our fear and guilt and analyze our errors and failings. Then follows the articulation of visions and goals and the identification of new leaders who will unite us in our exodus from autocracy, mendacity, and cruelty.

Vance Doesn't Understand Jesus or Love

The scripture this week follows last week and is fitting

for all that has transpired in our national government:

Jesus was driven from his home synagogue 

for saying good things about foreigners and non-Jews,

and Paul’s famous words about love.

So first I will speak of things we need to hear

and then I will share some good news for our future.

I will not talk about politics this morning,

but one of our politicians has distinguished himself

by speaking out on the gospels and the teachings of Jesus.

This is my territory.

I have free reign to respond to Vance on issues where I have expertise.

JD Vance said, 

“You [should] love your family and then you love your neighbor 

and then you love your community 

and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, 

and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.

“A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. 

[He says that those of us who do not agree] 

“seem to hate the citizens of their own country 

and care more about people outside their own borders.”

You know this is wrong.

Religious leaders have objected, and I join them.

They write: We lift up the parable of the good Samaritan

After Jesus tells a lawyer that you should ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’

the lawyer asks him, ‘And who is my neighbor?

“In response, Jesus tells the story of a Jewish man 

who has been beaten by robbers and is lying by the side of the road.

The man is helped not by those closest to him (a ‘priest’ and a ‘Levite’), 

but rather by a Samaritan. 

At the time, Jews and Samaritans 

would have considered one another enemies.

“So Jesus’ fundamental message is that everyone is your neighbor, 

and that it is not about helping just your family or those closest to you. 

It’s specifically about helping those who seem different, foreign, other. 

They are all our ‘neighbors.’

So when JD Vance says “The idea that we love family first,

is “the simple concept of America First,”

this is what most of us call “Christian Nationalism.” 

This is the idea that Christianity is the dominant religion in the world and

that other religions must be kept out, put down, even eliminated.

Sometimes it means that Jesus cares more about the US 

than any other country.

It is closely linked to White Supremacy and authoritarianism.

This means Whites are superior to others and we ought to have kings or 

CEO’s who are smarter, more competent, 

and more deserving than the rest of us.

All of this is closely connected to our myths of money, success, and power.

We have been bamboozled to think that successful, rich people 

are smarter and more deserving, 

and should be allowed to rule over the rest of us.

Our declaration of independence says that all people are created equal; 

The Bible says everyone is a child of God.

Each of us has some disability, and so we must help each other through life.

Unfortunately, some of us take evil paths and must be restrained 

and kept from open society.

JD Vance may have talents, but he is not to be respected 

as a teacher of religion or Jesus.

Vance is Catholic and part of a movement within Catholicism 

that seeks to overturn Vatican II reforms from the 1960's.

He disregards historic Catholic social teaching and opposes Pope Francis.

Jesus said disturbing things about our families:

Someone told Jesus, 

“Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”

He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 

Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 

For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven 

is my brother and sister and mother.” [Mt 12]

Even more troubling, Jesus said we should love our enemies, 

but that is another sermon.

We have learned the golden rule, 

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

The street version, the cynical version of this teaching, is

[“Do to others before they do to you.”]

The really terrible idea of what “golden rule” means:

[“Whoever has the gold, rules.”]

These alternative rules tell us how the world really works,

without reason and without Jesus.

Helping others doesn’t help you get ahead.

Thinking of others first just puts you behind.

These rules imply that Jesus is a wimp and his teachings are for losers.

The value here is not love, but survival, and dominance.

The way to survival and dominance is not the value of giving, but greed.

The goal here is not compassion, but competition and winning.

The values supporting competition and winning are animosity, 

even meanness, and cruelty, if they are necessary to get ahead.

The famous love chapter by Paul tells what love is not 

and then extols what love is:

Love doesn't envy. 

It doesn't boast. 

It doesn't bluster. 

It doesn't make a scene. 

It doesn't look after its own interests. 

It doesn't throw fits. 

It doesn't dwell on the negative. 

Love takes no pleasure in injustice, but is delighted by the truth.

Love upholds everything, 

trusts in everything, 

hopes for everything, 

endures everything. 

We must above all, hold on to these truths.

In the 1st letter of John, where we read that “God is love.”

I asked my theology professors why we could say “love is God,” 

They were horrified, 

but I am now convinced that what we mean when we speak of God 

is Love, social Justice, and Peace.

But Christian nationalists will say that “love” is a weak, naïve, idealistic, 

and impractical response to the current political moment.

If you can take your eyes off the current president and vice president,

and Putin and Orban for a few minutes, 

you can think again of Jesus, MLKing, Mandela,

Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, Lincoln, Jefferson, Madison

and others who had larger visions

for a much greater way of life.

We are told that MLKing’s birthday and Black History Month 

will no longer be observed by the dept of defense or the dept of state.

Such observance and every mention of diversity as a positive, 

or equality or equity may be removed.

But they will return.

Because love and openness only move in one basic direction.

We have heard that 

“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.”

We see that often a step backward is taken 

when two steps forward have been achieved.

Jesus may have been crucified, but we still remember him and his teachings.

And I think something wonderful is happening to Christians in America.

Yes, I have good news.

I see that more and more people in more and more churches

are recognizing that we have misunderstood Jesus and Christianity.

Much of the history of the church has been about power and control.

Now we see more clearly that the teachings of Jesus 

are more important than the things we were taught about Jesus.

We are finding that Jesus wasn’t about salvation 

or making us feel better when we are facing ill health or death.

Jesus was a Jew, and Christianity like Judaism 

is at root a religion of Ethics not salvation.

Jesus didn’t come just for me or you. 

Jesus didn’t come to make us feel good. 

He came to set us free.