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Enough

After hearing Jazebel continuing on her state policy of murdering protesters of her injustices.

Elijah sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors who have already died.”
– 1 Kings 19:4

I have had enough!

Enough of

Bullets sprayed on Black bodies and Jewish bodies and any-body deemed a no-body

Enough of

Hatred spewed from pulpits and pundits

Lies promulgated by preachers and presidents

Enough of

the Apotheosis of White America

IT IS ENOUGH

Enough of

this world where you can get gunned down while shopping,

this world where you can get gunned down while worshipping,

this world where doors of synagogues and churches and mosques
must be locked to keep out machines of death and their mad wielders

I am no better than my ancestors

So   Let   Me   Be,

with my lynched fathers,

shot-dead grandmothers,

chest torn mothers covered

with blood soaked prayer shawls,

raped sisters,

maimed brothers,

my murdered ancestors

ENOUGH!

Here, get up and eat.

here, get up

get up

eat

And I stood up and walked for forty days without hope but not hopeless,

Without any expectation but not apathetic,

Tired, just tired,

But I walked,

I walked

I walked to where my people once gathered

And received God’s dabar

I climbed the mountain without faith but not with fear

I was too tired for fear

I went and sat,

survived a hurricane,

survived an earthquake,

survived a forest fire kindled by God and Man,

until there was a quiet,

Until a whispering wind inquired,

“What are you doing here?”

And I returned

With words rooted in quiet resolve

To the cities of human tragedy

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A Letter In Response to John MacArthur’s Statement against Social Justice

To my brother John MacArthur,

You recently wrote a post warning the selling out of the gospel for social justice fad. Like Paul did in Galatians, you warn us about this “different gospel.” I tried to keep my mouth shut because I didn’t want to fan the fire your post ignited. But like the jackass whose tongue was loosened by an angel and saved Balaam, I (yes, I’m comparing myself to an ass) can’t keep my jaws clamped. Corrected, Balaam turned a curse into a blessing — so you aren’t beyond meta-noia/repentance. I’m going to take your same no-nonsense approach and warn you that you might be the false prophet, the one “bewitching” people to a “different gospel.”

I’m not arguing here for any social justice commitment you call a threat to the gospel. I’m only pointing out the huge lumber in your eye. I know you can’t see it. I can’t see mine and you are eager to dislodge it from my eyes — and thank you for warning me against identification of any movement with God’s Kingdom and the self-righteousness oozing from such absolutism. With that same compassion and eagerness, I’m returning the favor. You don’t seem to know you also stand in a particular culture and language because you are a human person, like the rest of us, bound to time and space by your flesh. You are part of an American evangelical movement, which is not the Kingdom of God. You are, of course, trying to be faithful to the gospel in your context, but the lumber-in-your-eye is that you don’t think you have a context. That lumber-induced blindspot is more dangerous in you due to your prominence. You have inordinate influence and you are not being careful with that. I will try my best to pull that lumber out by spelling it out. I hope at the least I can give pause to you, if not, a pause to anyone ready to jump into your crusade.

Here are some of the flaws in your argument.

You brandish the word “biblical” as if you have a vantage point guaranteeing your access to the “true” meaning of Scripture(thus you know what “true justice” is in contrast to social justice). By “biblical,” do you mean the original intent? Of course you can’t mean that because originally, every biblical text spoke to an audience distanced from us by language, culture and history. What Isaiah meant by “righteousness” is not what an American Christian means by “righteousness.” We are always translating what the author said. And like any translation, there is a transference, accretion and loss. That is, as much as those advocating for social justice are influenced by the culture of their times, you too are influenced by the culture of our times, only that you have chosen other subcultures. You are translating everything you read in the Bible with the help of your culture, that is, your language which …..
(you can continue to read more in Outlook)

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Celebrating July 4th, Lesson on Repentance

I attended two different churches on the Sunday before July 4th. They incorporated the holiday differently in their worship.

One church had each military division carry their respective flags to the stage while the orchestra and the men’s choir played a rousing tune. Then six men clad in green army gear from World War 2, ran down the stage and lifted the American flag, reenacting the famous Iwo Jima flag raising. It was an inspiring production that brought everyone to their feet. When the pastor preached, he made sure to credit God for the blessings of America and that they were celebrating the cost of freedom and the men in service and not the violence of war. He also warned of the danger of idolatry, that as Christians it is always God, first, then country.

In the second church, a head of the American bald eagle with its defiant stare and a wood panel painted in the stars and stripes stood astride the stage. They stood at the foot of the lectern and the pulpit. The liturgist prayed for the country giving praise saying, “It ain’t perfect but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” and the congregation shouted a loud “Amen.” Then in the sharing of prayers of the people, one member offered a historical lesson, that African-Americans never celebrate the 4th of July because on that day, they were slaves and remained slaves even after they helped fight and win Independence, and that until the Civil War where they joined the celebration of the independence from Britain with emancipation from slavery, July 4th never felt like a holiday for them. She then quoted Frederick Douglas who said, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” And the congregation nodded.

I went and looked up that quote. It was part of a speech before a large, mostly white crowd in Rochester, New York on July 5, 1852, where Douglas continued to say it’s “a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he [the slave] is the constant victim.”

I think you might’ve guessed that the second church was a black church and the first, though there were a scattering of people of color, was a white church.

I wondered, the days after,  what would’ve happened if someone in the white church pointed out the fact that July 4th was experienced differently and continues to be experienced differently. What if someone recalled the fact that as this new country was forming its own constitution, it debated and finally made a decision to legalize slavery?

If a person raised this historical fact, some would accuse her of being an agitator and ruining a celebratory day with the baggage of the past, that slavery has ended long time ago and let history be laid to rest. Which would be ironic because any holiday, especially a holiday celebrating a birth of a nation, is actually saying history matters. July 4th is about the importance of history, that how we tell our history shapes us.

Which also means, that how we tell our history reveals who we are today and how we want to define ourselves. I’ve, subsequently learned that right after Civil War the most passionate celebrants of July 4th were the recently freed slaves. They’ve experienced the promise of the ideals of Independence day.

So there was a concerted effort in “taking” back this holiday that was becoming “too black.” Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts marshall historical events that show how “Union and Confederate veterans, for instance, buried the hatchet in reunions that emphasized the bravery of all combatants and avoided any reference to slavery or the legacy of emancipation.” Pushing out the memory of slavery and emancipation was a way to choose to whom the holiday belonged.

I think a more honest history makes us more honest about ourselves today, and the more honest we are today, the wiser we can be for tomorrow. The danger of hagiographies is that it imprisons us to our past. We tend to circle back to our past when we don’t mark where we’ve been.

This is why God demands repentance from his people. Repentance is a way forward through and with our past. Repentance is an honest remembrance of the past, not for rueful or masochistic dwelling, but so we can move on because we move on not by forgetting but actually by never forgetting.

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Starbucks & Hypocrisy

…This story is a headliner because it happened in a Starbucks store in Philadelphia and not in a rundown diner in Selma. Starbucks touts its progressive values. During the great recession, the company didn’t withdraw benefits from employees, though they were under great pressure to do so. It’s Race Together campaign, where they asked their baristas to engage the customers on issues of race, fizzled, but you can’t fault it for its noble ambition.

Now, the company that attempted to single handedly make conversation on race a normative, didn’t talk about race with its own people. It didn’t practice what it preached. I’m a bit comforted by exposure of Starbucks’ hypocrisy because it makes the church’s hypocrisy on race less egregious. Finding comfort in another’s hypocrisy is horrible, but the self-righteous heart is devious and will dig for any dirt to make itself look less dirty.

My phone’s news notification tells me that Starbucks will be closing all 8,000-plus stores on May 29 for a mandatory implicit bias training. CEO Johnson is backing up his apology with immediate action. I envy such decisiveness. It takes years for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to formulate an action, let alone implement one ….

(continue reading at Presbyterian Today blog series: Gospel & Inclusivity)

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Snoring Through Communion

My middle schooler son, Ian, was snoring on stage as the bread of Christ was being passed. This was not a pastor-parent’s worst nightmare, lingering for a minute when I woke up, then fading out as I fell back to sleep. This was Palm Sunday, a few days ago, at Harvey Browne Presbyterian Church. Oh, and across from Ian was his younger sister, Elina, who swilled the blood of Christ, and then promptly spat it out, screaming “Yuck!” She slammed the communion shot glass on the floor, because it was her first taste of real wine and not the Welch’s white grape juice meant for children. She was also on stage.

The morning had started off well. Elina slung her ….

(continue reading on Mocking Bird)

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The Kiss

So Judas came straight to Jesus. “Greetings, Rabbi!” he exclaimed and gave him the kiss.
Jesus said, “My friend, go ahead and do what you have come for.” —Matthew 26:50

Come friend,

The air is warming with spring,
and the stars are pregnant with Abrahamic promise.
The cicadas are humming new hymns
and the moon is dressed in bridal splendor.
This is a perfect evening, wouldn’t you agree,
for a long walk through the woods with friends?

My friend?

Now, why do you come slithering with a long procession?
Why do you lead a march of flaming suns?
Are not the stars enough to light our way?
Why have you come with a river rushing
with the drowning sound of human feet
stomping in military weight and precision?
I can’t hear the praises of cicadas.

Why did you not….

(continue reading at Presbyterian Outlook)

Judas’ kiss is a moment of profound human drama in history (and literature). To dismiss it as the wiles of evil is to miss how our loves are in constant struggle with distrust and hatred specifically because love risks trust and vulnerability. We hate what we love and the depth of betrayal is commensurate with the height of our devotion.

 
The gospel writers draw us into that drama by not exhibiting the internal tensions of the characters – the tendency of today’s novels – but by simply reporting the event that culminates in the kiss. That night, the kiss as the ordinary middle eastern greeting becomes a passionate kiss as it encompasses all previous exchanges of friendship in the daily greeting kisses, both summarizing the relationship and questioning it, the way a routine goodbye become weighed with significance when it becomes the last one by a death.
We also the know the kiss burned on Judas’ lips for he hurls back the 30 pieces of silver regretting he had betrayed a good man. His regret is the storm of his love for Jesus. His hanging is his penance (whether acceptable or not is not our judgment). But the passion necessary for self-destruction is a passion stirred by love underserved. He was wracked with guilt because Jesus loved him still. Jesus was not passive in the kiss. I believe Jesus never gave up on Judas, that he received Judas’ kiss with a kiss. It was the extension of the supper he gave hours before. Only if Judas was brave enough to believe that Jesus’ love was not only good but was enough to pardon him.
 
For me, this is important because I don’t think I’m too far from Judas.
 
This is a poem trying to capture what I’m fumbling to say in prose.
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Black Panther and the Challenge to the Church

If the church dares to embrace the badass decision for intercultural congregations, it already has everything needed to make that happen. The church only needs to be faithful to its source material. Do you remember the origin story of the church? The tongued-fire of the Spirit gifting supernatural powers? Powerful apostles – men and women, young and old, masters and slaves – proclaiming the gospel, regardless of threats from authorities? People from all corners of the earth hearing the same message, but understanding it in their heart-language? 3,000 getting baptized? All because superhero Jesus defeated death and now lives in a new form in their assembly, which we have come to call the church, the body of Christ.

(to continue reading go to Presbyterian Outlook)

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How Does a Poem Work?

i’m not sure

but it’s what you look for when your father dies
and you were expecting it for awhile,
because he had a full life, the pastor says,
like a pear, ripe with sun,
snaps from the branch
and falls to earth,
and no estranged child,
everyone came
and kissed his face
the week before
he passed away,
ain’t that a blessing, amen,
the church people say,
and yet

that emptiness in your
60 year old chest,
is so vast even
the night can’t fit in it,
and you don’t know how to say it,
so your hands go fumbling through
you old poetry anthology
from college, the one book
you didn’t throw away
through all the filtering of your life’s
moves, that poem you don’t remember
fully but always lingered, all your life,
in the background,
like the dark energy
that keeps everything visible
together, the scientists say
though they’re not 100% sure
if that is how the universe works
as i’m not sure, as i admitted
how a poem works

i know how death works

it takes

—

Published in  Gyroscope Review Winter 2018.
It is a wonderful collection of contemporary poems.
Download the whole pdf or get a kindle ebook or paperback.

 

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Waiting

For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. – Romans 8:22

My wife has been in labor for 20 hours
but the boy’s not ready for his revealing

What’s he waiting for?

I shuffle back and forth, from my wife’s bedside
to the waiting room, where both mothers
are wondering if they should stay put
or run some quick errands, they ask,
What time does the doctor say?
I say, Anytime.

A n y     t i m e  s t r e t c h i n g  i n f i n i t e l y.

Earthquakes of the womb
are getting longer and frequent.

She refuses epidural and Demerol;
going to go the old fashioned way,
hicks breathing.

How can counting counter pain?

hee-hee-whoo-whoo
hee-hee-whoo-whoo

In the waiting room, our mothers are watching
reruns of “Friends.”

A child is going to rearrange your friends,
a father of two told us
when we told him we are expecting,
every car a death machine,
each window a death trap.
The world is a threatening place
when you have a fragile being.

Isn’t there any bright side?
I asked, as I sipped some wine for my wife.

Well, you get new eyes, see the world
as if for the first time with your child,
discover the origami folds of roses,
delight in the moving puppet clouds
and their theatrics on the blue stage,
and you can dance silly and no one will think you silly.

Finally,
on the 24th hour, my son comes,
all glutinous, bloody and alive,
and the nurse washes off the waters of birth,
swaddles then gently lays this new creation,
on the bend of my wife’s arm,
and she brings his hungering lips
to her bosom welling with honey milk.

None of us remember the 24 hours of waiting
as the newborn shows us what wind looks like
in his small body filling with life.

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Silent Night on December 24th, 1914

German and British soldiers, in the thick

of the first war of the worlds

crawl out of their

blood drenched trenches,

rifles slung over sunken shoulders,

and shovels across the other,

meet halfway in the dead man’s land,

carry back and bury the remains of their friends,

then return to exchange prisoners and cigarettes,

lighting them for each other, like Advent candles.

 

They gaze at the stars, name them in their mother’s tongue,

fabricate stories of the girl they will finally

propose to once they return home.

 

They take turns singing carols

their mothers sang to cease their tears,

then as if there was a conductor

invisible except to these boys’ eyes,

they all stand up

in unison

like a church choir

and blast

 

  Silent Night,

  Holy Night

 


frightfully off tune

and boisterous — as if they can

stop the sun from returning

with its violent red

if they are loud enough

as drunks fervently do —

ein Deutch and English,

sound of their different worlds.

strident, strong, full of alcohol

and mirth and death and loss

crash like the flames of the raging bonfire

from where sparks rise defiantly towards

the graying sky as if to reach and tear down

heaven to earth, until they die forgotten.

 

When they part, they embrace as

if they’ve been friends for a life.

 

Tomorrow,

 

they will aim at each other,

the only way they know how

to make it back to their mothers.

 

but today,

 

  sleep in heavenly peace,

  sleep in heavenly peace.