Lectionary Readings – Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1:11-20 and Luke 1:68-79

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 68-79

God has raised up for us a might savior in the house of his servant David. On this Christ the King Sunday we are reminded that the gospels announced the kingship and reign of Christ through this connection to David. For even amidst all his foibles and flaws David defined for Israel what it means to have a leader who serves the people not just in the name of God but in the way of God. We understand David through the ideal image of the king God called him to be, and we have access to what it means for Christ to be our king through the narratives told about David.

And amidst those stories of kingship that reveal to us what it means to be a king we find a somewhat surprising thread running throughout – that to be a king is to be a healer. Yes, some kings rule or conquer, but in the biblical text a king after God’s own heart is a king who heals.

Now if you are an extreme sci-fi/fantasy geek like me this idea that kings are by nature healers will come as no surprise to you. Just read some of the medieval legends or the Arthurian tales and you will repeatedly encounter the theme that the health of the people and the land depends on the king. If the king is wounded or not serving the land as needed, his country becomes a wasteland that can only be healed by the king choosing the right path.

I think the story of king as healer is probably most well known as it is presented in the Lord of the Rings through the tale of Elessar. It’s a story that I found so meaningful that I actually gave my son the middle name Elessar (I did mention that I am a huge fantasy geek, right?). If you don’t remember the story, in Middle Earth during the period the books describe there was no king of men and the land around Gondor had become a wasteland. Aragorn was the rightful heir to that throne and the tale is in part about the return of the king to heal the land. Interestingly, all throughout the stories we see Aragorn healing others. He has knowledge of herbs for healing, and constantly presses people to restore the use of the lost healing herb (the aptly named) Kingsfoil. It is in fact his use of this herb in the houses of healing that allows the old and the wise people of the land to recognize that the king has in fact returned. It is simply part of his nature to heal. To that end the elves in the world gave him the name Elessar, which is also the name he uses once he becomes King. The term elessar actually refers to a green jewel (in a ring of course) that contained the light of the sun. Anyone who looked through the stone would see things that were withered or burned healed again, and anyone who wore it would bring healing to whatever they touched. The person who had the right to wear the stone is also referred to as the elessar – in other words, a healer. But the idea behind this type of healer is not just one who can heal physical wounds, but one who can look at any person or situation and see the good underneath. The healing occurs by the elessar being able to see things as they should be (not as they are) and bring forth that inherent good in people and in the world. I personally loved that concept and so gave my son that name, praying that he could be (to use another Lord of the Rings quote) one of those people who see that "there's good in this world and it's worth fighting for."

But this concept of the king as the one who heals the world has its roots in the biblical conception of King. The world is not as it should be and it is to the king that one should look to make things right. In the tales of David we often hear of him presented as one who has the ability to heal troubled situations and calm tormented hearts. As a young man he was the one called into play the lyre for King Saul whenever Saul was troubled – David’s presence and song would bring healing.

It was this memory of a good king being one who can heal that prompted people when they encountered Jesus to refer to his position as an heir of David when they came to him for healing. For instance, once when Jesus was leaving Jericho two blind men shouted out to him “Have mercy on us, Lord, Son of David” and Jesus healed them. Or when the Canaanite woman approached Jesus to beg him to deliver her daughter from a demon she too asked “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.” The people knew that to be a king in the royal line of David was to be a healer.

The passage in Jeremiah today states, “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” Jesus was the ideal king that David served as prototype for. I think though we can often get bogged down in trying to understand our idea of a king as one who rules and dominates alongside our other conceptions of Jesus as one who brings love and justice. For me though it is in remembering that to be a king is to be a healer that helps reconcile the two. For what our hurting world needs now is not fear and dominion, but healing. When people in Haiti are still living in tent cities amidst the rubble of the earthquake, being flooded by recent storms, starving because they have no food, and falling ill to cholera – there is serious healing that needs to be done.

To celebrate the reign of Christ means to embrace the mission of Christ our King to heal the world. It means not being afraid to put an end to injustice no matter how uncomfortable or counter-cultural it may feel. It means letting Christ reign in our hearts in ways that push us out beyond ourselves into the place where we are full of compassion for others. It means ensuring that the world around us is not a wasteland plagued with the horrors of sex trafficking, or child labor, or abusive sweatshops, or environmental degradation. It means joining in on this work of healing – of recognizing that there is some good in this world and it is worth fighting for.

It means being like the people at International Justice Mission who not only rescue women and children out of slavery and bonded labor, but who work to help them build new lives. They heal the whole person. It means being like the groups that instead of seeing immigration as a divisive wedge, see it as an opportunity to help people by eliminating the need for people to flee to another country so that they can help their family survive. So they start fair trade companies that treat people with dignity and respect and allow them to live with their families farming their own lands. They heal the root causes not just the symptoms. It means responding to places in this world where fear and extremism have taken hold, not with more fear and extremism, but with offers of healing. With microloans that help people provide for their families and schools for children so that people will no longer have to turn to just the extremist for the basic necessities of life. We can choose to heal a culture instead of destroy it. We can join in with the work of the king who executes justice in the land through these healing acts.

Christ the King is a healer. To be part of his kingdom where all things are being reconciled through him is an invitation to join in on this work of healing the world. So as we acknowledge the reign of Christ today, I encourage you to reflect on what it means to serve not a king who dominates or conquers, but a king whose heart yearns for the healing of the land and who desires us as faithful subjects of his kingdom to join in on that mission. For in acknowledging the reign of Christ our healer we can help justice flow out to all.

I love the use of the Celtic “wild goose” as the symbol of this gathering exploring creativity, justice, and spirituality. It evokes that other distinctly Celtic idea of peregrinati – journeys or wanderings of an undefined but spiritual nature. It is the wild goose flying where it will, exploring new territories and discovering new horizons amidst even the everyday and the familiar landscapes of home. The Celtic monks followed that call of the wild bird on their peregrinati, journeying with the spirit on undetermined paths. They served, and worshiped, and reflected along the way but often had no real goal or destination beyond the journey itself. They embodied Tolkien’s famous “not all who wander are lost” phrase, for it was their wanderings – their wild goose chases -that held the meaning in themselves.

Over the last decade or so I have come to embrace this idea of peregrinati. Static systems that enforced doctrine, demanded conformity, and discouraged questions had left me hollow. Those were expressions of faith focused primarily on enacting a transaction that guaranteed what would happen to me after I died. There was no continual quest for truth, no moving to where the spirit led, no grasping of the idea that following Jesus was the purpose of my faith and not just a means to an end. It was at the point when I was about to walk away from that façade of a faith that felt so lifeless and bereft of soul that I stumbled upon the most basic of truths – that the wild goose cannot be caged.

It was freeing to discover that to be led by the Spirit was what it meant to follow Jesus. Both require movement – intentional wanderings where the life of faith is to be lived. My peregrinati were not just missional moments in my faith journey, they were the shape of my entire embodied faith. Embracing how God’s image is creatively reflected in my life and pursuing the call to seek justice for the oppressed became more than just optional additions to an unchanging faith, but the very substance of the journey itself. To follow Jesus and be led by the Spirit means engaging in this intentional wandering. I am now free to be always seeking, always serving, always following as I wander on this journey. And it was stepping out on that wild goose chase that not only saved my faith, but drew me onto the path where that faith is ever developing and discovering new things.

So: I look forward to merging our peregrinati at this gathering and sharing our stories of where this wild goose chase has led us.

See you in June!

To find out more about the Wild Goose Festival click here.

That's right – a free digital copy of Everyday Justice!

From midnight to midnight on Thursday April 22 (Earth Day) downloading Everyday Justice from Amazon will cost you nada. So there's no excuse to not find out simple everyday ways that you can care for our world and the people who inhabit it. And I know, not everyone has a Kindle. It doesn't matter, there are Kindle apps available for Macs, and PCs, and iphones, and BlackBerry's, and ipads. If you are reading this blog, you most likely own at least one of those. Remember – this is only a 24 hour deal, so seize the opportunity while it's hot.

So celebrate Earth Day and download your free Kindle copy of Everyday Justice.

I saw his lawyer make that assertion in a TV interview and the reporter could barely hold it together, saying “what idiot fed you that line?” The lawyer simply said that most Christian theologians would say that Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, to which the reporter said something along the lines of “good luck with that.”

On the human level, I wish these parents weren’t using their daughter as a pawn in their bitterness and revenge games. And I also don’t claim to understand the struggles parents of differing traditions face in choosing how to expose their children to the diversity of their faiths. But on a theoretical level, I am interested in how this has played out. I know that the theological emphasis on the historical roots of Christianity is fairly recent, and that a willingness to see Jesus as the Jewish rabbi he was has been slow to emerge. But, one would think there enough of those cheesy “My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter” bumper stickers around that the wider culture would catch on that Christians are finally acknowledging our roots. I honestly don’t know of any Christian who wouldn’t say that our faith is based in Judaism, worships the same God, and treasures at least some of the same scriptures (it is a very different story when it comes to acknowledging the mutual roots of our faith with those who practice Islam).

Granted, most of the public perception of Christians is that of hate-filled crusaders fighting to keep away those that are not exactly like them. Since there is such a poor history in how Christians have interacted with Jews in the past, no wonder people would be surprised to hear a Christian claim roots in Judaism (especially for such manipulative ends). I doubt that this case will spark real theological dialogue, but I find myself wondering what can (or should) be done to help promote our commonalities. Christianity cannot be understood apart from Judaism (wouldn’t exist apart from it). How can that best be discussed in the wider culture without prompting displays of incredulity?

In it, I list ten very tangible ways people can be aware of the injustices in the world and do something about them. The list includes ideas from the book, Everyday Justice, but it also expands to topics beyond the book. I've had a couple of people comment though that they wished the article included more links and resources of where to find ethically sourced items. If people are interested, I'd direct you to the Everyday Justice site where I link to online organizations and stores that seek to promote justice and carry ethical items. I've also been trying to compile a list of where in Austin one can find fairly traded and ethical goods. It's still being formed (and there is no way I could list all the coffee shops in town that serve fair trade), but here's the list for now. I know this only helps Austin friends, but it's a start -

In Austin
Austin Baby (S. Lamar) – baby items, personal care, and home goods
American Apparel (Guadalupe, S. Congress, Round Rock Outlets)- fairly made clothing
Central Market and select HEB stores (Lamar)- fair trade chocolate, sugar, teas, coffees, and spices
Costco (183) – select fair trade food items
Eco-Shoppe (Great Hills Tr)- environmentally friendly home goods, clothing, jewelry, and cleaning supplies
Ecowise (S. Congress) – home goods, cleaning supplies, clothing
Ten Thousand Villages (S. Congress) – all fair trade home goods, gifts, and select food items
UT Co-op (Guadalupe)- limited selection of fair trade logo wear
Wheatsville Co-op -(Guadalupe) fair trade food products, beauty supplies, and limited home goods
Whole Earth Provision Company (N.Lamar, SanAntonio, 290) – select fairly made clothing and shoes
Whole Foods (N. Lamar, 183) – fair trade food options, home goods, beauty products, and gifts
World Market(multiple locations) – limited selection of fairly traded food and gift items

Various Coffee shops and restaurants – like Austin Roasting Company, Kerbey Lane, Ruta Maya, Genuine Joes, Tacodeli, Cafe Pacha, Fair Bean Coffee, Terra Burger, Progress Coffee, Zhi Tea, Texas Coffee Traders

I had read The Da Vinci Code before it got really popular (I was on a “intellectual thriller” reading kick at the time). A year or so later I heard the pastor at the church I worked at talking about an upcoming Sunday School series he was leading about how evil the book was. He was shocked to hear that I had actually read the book, since he had not and had no plans to read it (even as he taught a class about it). I soon learned that his was the typical response of many evangelical Americans. When confronted with an idea that is outside the way they had been taught to see the world, they engaged fight or flight – denounce the work as evil or protect themselves from being exposed to its ideas.

Hence Dan Brown’s asides in The Lost Symbol.

I don’t agree with all of Brown’s ideas in The Da Vinci Code or The Lost Symbol (that’s not my point here), but I appreciate how he started a conversation around topics that might otherwise remain hidden. There is truth in the fact that the church is driven by ideology. The Bible we have today was shaped by opinions of factions in the church. Systems of patriarchy marred the name of Mary Magdalene by suggesting then upholding as doctrine that she was a prostitute. With the way Bible history is taught (or isn’t) in churches and schools today, this side of the story gets forgotten as embarrassing history to the point that basic biblical scholarship is labeled shocking heresy by the average Christian. Whether or not one agrees with Brown’s ideas, he at least helped some people ask if perhaps their way of viewing the world isn’t the only way.

It’s when we are willing to think about our beliefs in those ways that we truly learn. Granted we might end up believing as we always have, or we might tweak our beliefs a little, or change them entirely. And while I understand the people that instinctually engage with fight or flight when presented with anything other, what I don’t understand are the people who go through the charade of pretending to engage with other ideas only to reassert their original belief because they feel like they have to. I read a book recently that did just that. It claimed to be a fresh new perspective for evangelicals on a controversial topic, and while it did a great job deconstructing why a new perspective is needed, in the end it simply reiterated the same old traditional answer. In that evangelical tradition only one answer on the topic is acceptable, and so instead of actually allowing the intellectual wrestling to actually inform his perspective, the author ignored everything he had written about and parroted back the one acceptable answer. It made no sense. It wasn’t intellectually honest. But it kept the author (and publisher) safe within the box of their tradition. It wasn’t about truth, it was about allegiance.

So that’s why I am beginning to care less and less about being labeled a heretic. The term has nothing to do with truth (as much as they accuse us postmodern of abandoning truth). It has everything to do with toeing the line of a particular tradition. Call it what you will – “orthodoxy” “historic Christianity” “biblical Christianity” – all it is is the box that you feel comfortable in and pledge allegiance to. People who look, think, and act like you are in and everyone else is out. And while I fully acknowledge the need for community and tradition and admit I have allegiances, when that box becomes a shield to defend against ever learning anything new or entering a conversation in order to grow, then I have no use for the box. So while I love and appreciate (to varying degrees) The Apostles’ Creed, Augustine, Martin Luther, Calvin, Barth, and McLaren, I’m not going to exchange my faith in the living transforming God in order to cement myself in their camps. I may be a heretical Barthian or C.S. Lewisian, but since that really isn’t the point of my faith, I no longer really care.

I'll see y'all when I get back.

Jamie asked -

I get so overwhelmed with the interconnectedness of justice and consumerism. I feel sometimes like I have no choices. How do we even live as humans in America without going completely off the grid?

I think there are a lot of people out there who would say the only answer is to go off the grid. We already have all sorts of intentional communities and communes that do their best to go off the grid to some extent. And I respect and even admire that. But for as often as I am labeled an idealist, I am a very practical person. In my opinion, it just isn't feasible for everyone to step off the grid. Or even for, say, all justice minded Christians to do so.

Part of the problem with that is sustainability. There are just too many people to totally abandon the infrastructures that are currently in place. We still have to eat and have clothing and shelter – we need those structures to survive. Sure it is possible for groups of 50-100 to remove themselves from the system or for powerful countries to force smaller non-industrial countries to live in primitive conditions. But New York City can't just step off the grid.

Why? Because the way many people remove themselves from the grid these days is by surviving on the excess waste and remnants of that grid. For example, the freegans who live off of dumpster diving survive only because the rest of us throw away perfectly good food. Veggie-mobiles often run on the used fry oil from fast food restaurants. The earthship recycled homes are built from the discarded tires and glass bottles of others. I think what they all do are fantastic ways to reduce consumption and waste in this world, but they are not sustainable solutions. If we were not creating this waste to begin with, then people couldn't live this way. If everyone stepped off the grid in the paradigms we have available at the moment, we couldn't survive.

But I am also not comfortable with the idea that living justly is therefore only for certain people. Sure, some people can step off the grid in those ways, but it isn't feasible (for a variety of reasons) for everyone to do so. They can be off the grid redeeming the waste the rest of us produce. Others of us through need to be working within the system to make it more just. We have to act to reduce our own waste, and to call the system to take a hard look at itself. I might despise the grid, but sometimes it takes working from within to affect change in the long run.

Justice has to be everyday and doable for it to make an impact. Subvert the system and improving the system are just two sides of the same coin. Both take a lot of work, and we may never see the outcomes, but we can each do our part wherever we are at.

Destroying the earth is not a human right.

There I said it.

Today is Blog Action Day and the topic is climate change. I thought about writing well reasoned pleas as to why we all need to be aware and care for the earth. I thought about addressing the Christians who even in their gnostic rejection the earth can find reason to care for people. But I'm tired and I'm fed up with self-centered excuses. So I'm just going to say that we need to get over ourselves. Our profit, our laziness, our pleasure are not sufficient reasons to do whatever the hell we want with the earth. Listening to Fox News and Christian radio give the minority opinion that climate change is a fable shouldn't change anything. We either act like responsible mature human beings or we act like spoiled brats. We either clean up after ourselves, take care of what we have been given, and choose to respect the poor in our global community or we might just as well tattoo "It's All About Me" on our foreheads (cuz that seems like a fairly appropriate mark of the beast imho).

Sure, we'll struggle. Sure, we'll stumble. Of course it's going to be hard. That's life. We just deal, pick ourselves up and move along. Our inability to be perfect should never become our excuse to be self-centered jerks.

I really don't care if that is harsh. I don't care if that is unpopular. That's not the point. The point is to love God by stewarding his creation. And to love all people – including those that live next to refineries or smelting plants or whose islands are sinking or whose fishing economies have been destroyed. It's not about what is easy or profitable. It's about what is just and loving.

So let's cut the crap and call it like it is – we can act out of selfishness or out of love.  But we have to choose and we have to own our choice.

Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections. Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society.

As one could easily guess, most challenges to books arise because the book contains some reference to sex, drugs, curse words, or LGBT lifestyles. Some people would rather pretend such things didn't exist by preventing others from reading about them. I understand opposing certain things, but denying reality always seemed a bit too extreme for me.  I recall how annoying it was in high school when parents would raise some stink that the book we were reading in AP literature actually made reference to sex. They would insist that their (18 year old) child not be exposed to such reality and instead read an alternative "safe" option. I found this so nauseating that it almost kept me from attending a Christian college to study literature since I assumed the censorship would just be that much worse at an all-Christian institution. I went anyway, and yes, met with some censorship but not as much as I've continued to encounter in the greater church world.

I've known people fired from churches simply for owning books by Brian McLaren and N.T. Wright. When we were under the gun at our baptist church, our library was censored and Mike was taken to task for quoting the "heretical" Karl Barth. Instead of thoughtfully engaging issues some people made the issues disappear by simply pretending they didn't exist. And the church as a whole has done a good job at it too. Whole sections of the church don't know that any theology exists apart from the last 50 years of evangelical thought or that Dispensational theology isn't the way the church has always believe. There's good reason why people lose their faith in college – when confronted with the messiness of religion, or theology, or textual studies their sheltered minds are taken by surprise and they feel lied to and betrayed by the church that did it's best to keep them from encountering reality.  But some still think it's better (or at least easier) to pretend than to deal with the messiness that is reality. Instead of wrestling with church history or helping our kids respond with love to all the people they encounter, the very discussion gets banned. So kudos to Banned Books Week for forcing us to face those fears instead of hiding from them. For not letting ideologies be used as silencing weapons of oppression.

So to celebrate this affirmation of reality let's share our favorite banned books. (For all the books banned and challenged from May 2008-May 2009, check out this bibliography. And the most frequently banned classics are listed here.) So do you read to your kids books about a family with two mommies? Do you encourage a new generation to discover the angst of Holden Caulfield? Do you enjoy the fantasy realms of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? Or do you like deepening your faith by digging into theology? How do you affirm the access to knowledge and the beauty of wrestling with ideas?