An annual tradition:

CHRISTMAS SONNET, 2015

It jumped so quickly in the news 

And not for the latte that they brew 

Old Starbuck got their dander up 

Because of some old plain red cup.

In Paris France the blood ran deep 

As music fans were shot like sheep 

On our West coast another scene 

Of guns and hate is now routine.

As leaders from around the world 

The global warming issues swirl 

They search for ways to give to all 

Solutions that preserve the ball

Yet somewhere in this ugly mess 

God’s grace is born for us to bless.

--- -rick brand 

May the season of the year renew your hopes and courage!

Rick

Go Back to England

I heard a story about a man in a check out line in a large supermarket. Behind him was a woman talking on the phone. The conversation was in a language which the man did not understand.  When the woman finished her call, the man turned to her and said, "If you want to speak Spanish, go back to Mexico. This is America, we speak English."  The woman calmly looked at the man and said, "I was speaking Navajo, and if you want to speak English, why don't you go back to England?"

A rather powerful way to remind us that almost all of us are here as the results of some body's immigration into this country.  Almost all of us are here because we have ancestors who came to this country.  Some were brought here by the desire to create their own religious community. Some were brought here by the English to empty their prisons. Some were brought here by ships as slaves. Some came as a result of famine and crop failures. Some came looking for land. But almost all of us are the results of immigration to this country.

Yet now there are some who want to stop this process. They want to build walls to keep people out of the country.  There is even talk by some that we should round up all of the recent immigrants and ship them home.

The great irony of this passion to stop the influx of Mexicans and Latin American people is that all of this focus on the Mexican border ignores the fact that the Hispanics are no longer the largest group of immigrants into our country.  The expenditures of billions of dollars to build a wall on the Mexican borders, (and who really thinks that we could build a wall on the Canadian border as well as one politician suggested) is to try to stop the second largest group of immigrants.

According to the Pew Research center the figures for 2013 show that the largest group of immigrants was Asians. The Asian portion was 35% of the immigrants while the Hispanic percentage was 33% and going down.  Our focus is in the wrong direction if we want to stop the largest group of immigrants now coming into our country.  One does not hear a word about stopping the Asian influx.

The immigration issue is not just a United States issue.  Europe is currently besieged by the flood of immigrants from the Middle East because of the wars and fighting which was unleashed by the USA invasion of Iraq.   This is an issue that all of the nations are going to have to face and find a way of dealing with all these people on the move. It is a position our congress has refused to deal with. But it will not go away.

Put it to use

He was a very well known preacher in his day. In the 1950's he was a special guest at lots of preaching missions. I know he was always a special preacher in the East Tennessee yearly preaching mission in Johnson City, Tenn. His name was Charles Allen, and he was the pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas for ages. He proved to me that the Methodist do not always move their ministers every four years.

He once told me that when he found a great story or an illustration, it did not matter what he was preaching he was going to use that story the very next Sunday. He did not want anyone else to use it before he did, and he knew that even great stories lose their power when they are no longer timely.

He told a story about a man in his congregation who made buckets of money. He was super successful in his business and he did some great financial planning. It was a good thing because the man died very young. The business man had set up a trust fund for his son that said that the son would get a regular income, a living wage, as long as he was in college.  So the son spent 48 years in college, earned 11 degrees and did absolutely nothing with any of his education.

It is a painful story because I think it reminds us that all of us have been left incredible resources and opportunities, and the question that has to haunt us all is what have we done with it. What kind of contribution have we made to the betterment of our community, our state, our world with what we have received?  48 years of college for one man is amazing, but 500 years of accumulated wisdom is available to all of us and how have we made use of it?

First Citizens Bank has a commercial that suggests the same thing, "Money isn't everything, but so much depends on what you do with it."  Having the gifts, having the abundance and advantages that we have as citizens of this country, the question is still what have we done with it?  How have we helped the other countries in the world?

Bird in the Garage- sound familiar?

I have a garage with an automatic door opener. I opened the garage to get the car out so I could get the lawn mower out to take care of the two week's worth of grass I had from vacation.  I had left the garage door up. This garage has two windows at the back of the garage.  When I brought the mower back after finishing the mowing, there was a bird beating against a window in the back. I watched for several minutes. It was a good size bird. I kept trying to get out of the window. It would back up and fly into the window. Finally, I decided I had had enough so I got a broom and got between the bird and the window and swung at the bird. It turned around saw the wide open space where the garage door had been, and flew out of the garage.

It struck me that I had been that bird, and I think a lot of other people have been that bird. We are so narrowly focused and see only one source of light and we keep trying to get to it, and fail, and fail, and never realize that there is another way out of the mess, if we would just turn around.  A friend of mine, Ernie Campbell, who used to be the pastor at the Riverside Church in New York, wrote a book called "Locked in a room with open doors."  He suggested that we often keep ourselves in a place thinking that we are locked in when the doors are really unlocked if we would just try them.

There may well be a large open way out of our situation if we would stop beating ourselves against the window and look around.  It might actually be in the opposite direction of where we are trying to go. Like the bird had to fly in the opposite direction to get out of the garage, but it would have never made it out of that window.

What is Truth? Wanted More Pontius Pilates.

Someone suggested that the first encounter with Jesus makes you confused. That Jesus undercuts your absolutes. Jesus makes you doubt yourself.  The author pointed to Nicodemus who comes to Jesus seeking to get a handle on all this stuff. Nicodemus starts with the polite conversation, but Jesus confronts him with "You must be born again."  Nicodemus is blown away!  "How the hell is that possible?"  The first conversation with Jesus makes Nicodemus confused and outraged.

When you come to the end of Jesus ministry and Jesus is at Pontius Pilate's court (John 18:38), Pilate's encounter makes him ask the question, "What is truth?"  Pilate's encounter with Jesus and his political experiences makes him unsure of what is true and what is false.

I was watching Sen. Ted Cruz answer questions before the 2000 delegates to the Iowa Christian Convention.  Senator Cruz said that it was his intention on this campaign to speak only "the truth". He would not shy away from offending people, if they were unable to handle "the truth".

In fact, it seems to me that is one of the marks of the many candidates who are currently running for President. They all claim to know "the truth". They are absolutely convinced that they are right. When Senator Cruz said that he was going to speak "the truth" on this campaign, I knew immediately that what I wanted was more Pontius Pilates.  I think we need more politicians who are not sure they know the truth but are willing to seek it by listening, by talking with others, by exploring all the possibilities, and by being willing to say this is how I see things and there are others who see it differently and we can both enjoy the rights and privileges of this country.

What I think we need is more Pontius Pilates, more politicians who admit that they do not know what the "truth" is and who can live in that kind of ambiguity.

A Compromise Proposal--about marriage

Since there is such a great outcry from all those hurt by the Supreme Court's decision about the rights of same sex couples to be married, and all the religious people claim marriage is between one man and one woman, here is a proposal.


Since it seems to me that gay people have to have the right to get "married" because all the laws, tax codes, insurance policies grant to "married people" certain benefits,  being allowed to be "married" grants to gay couples those same rights and privileges.

Now supposed all the language was just changed to "civil unions".  All couple, gay or straight, would have to be "civil unioned" by the state.  Being "civil unioned"  would grant all couples gay and straight all the same benefits.

Any couple that wanted to be "married" would have to go to a religious group and have that group perform the ritual that blessed their civil union and made it a marriage.

I can understand why gays would not want civil unions if straight couples got married by the state. Gays want the same respect from the laws of this country as other citizens, but if all couples had to be civil unioned and that gave all of them the same rights and benefits, then the religious orders could do what they wanted about whether or not they would add the blessing to the civil union.  Religious orders might conduct services they call marriage for gay couple or they might refrain from performing those services.   The term "married" would designate that a religious group had blessed a civil union.  Those who did not go to get a religious blessing would, gay or straight, be called civil unions.

The civil union suggestion was first made as an effort to appease the gays, but it did not satisfy because it was different from what straights got from the state. This way all couples get the same certificate and the same benefits, and those who want the religious stuff can talk to a religious leader.

Future of Faith

It is going to be a new world we live in.  The Christian faith is going to be, as it has always been in this country, one of many. The major difference will be that it will not be given preferred status by law. The situation will be more like the church in the first two or three centuries when it was competing with the Roman and Greek religions. It was not given preferred status until the Emperor declared it the religion of the Empire.

The Christian faith will no longer be privileged before other faiths. The Jews, The Muslims, the Buddhist and others will have equal standing in law. The people who want to be Christians will have to be intentional about it the way Jews have to be intentional about their faith. The way Muslims have been intentional about their faith.

The impulse of all Religions to impose their values and laws upon the rest of the society will have to be rejected. Shari law can not be accepted in our society nor can the religious practices of Christians be imposed upon the rest of society.  Any laws and rules will have to be rooted in some common and general sense of values that are good for all society.

This will be a very rude awakening for most nominal Christians. The thought that this is a Christian nation has been an illusion.  The reality is that most of the early Christians came to this country to be able to practice their religion they way they wanted to and they all attempted to impose their religion on the whole community. That is how Roger Williams had to flee to Rhode Island.

It will be a great benefit for the Christian faith because it will decrease the number of joiners who simple tag along for various personal reason.