Surprising Vision

  

That sharp-tongued genius G. K. Chesterton once said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”[1]

Well, not quite. There are a few who have actually tried it, but such a few it should make us blush to celebrate the feast of All Saints. So what is a saint and what manner of people are those we call saints?

First is the way that we speak of exemplary people of faith. In the strict sense, “saints” as the Christian Church uses the term, are those people who have been exemplary in the way they have lived the Christian life. They are the people that have believed when it would have been easier to lose faith, those who have persevered when it would have been easier to give up, who have loved when it would have been more natural to hate, who have given generously when everyone said it was foolish, who have risked life and limb when it would have been easier to run for safety, who have stood for justice when the mass of people cried out for vengeance, who have been cheerful when everything in them knew that their situation was desperate, and who have never asked for credit, who have seldom been recognized as particularly good until they were dead, and who have honestly thought of themselves as quite ordinary people following a quite extraordinary God. It has never been easy and it still is not.

Dancing Saints
Church of St. Gregory of Nyssa, Episcopal
San Francisco

A second use of the word saint is associated with persons who have endured great suffering. The Book of Revelation, reflecting an age of persecution in which it was composed, speaks of “those who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” In that sense, saints are martyrs, and martyr means “witness.” They have borne witness to the Power of the Crucified Lamb of God, and they have paid for their witness with their lives. So they are before the throne of God and worship God day and night with palm branches of victory in their hands. Indeed they are a polyglot bunch, from every family, language, people and nation.

And a third use of the word “saints” or “holy ones,” the ‘αγιοι of the New Testament, is to denote the entire people of God. You see this usage when St. Paul, for example, begins an epistle by saying, “Paul…to all the saints who are

Church of St. Gregory of Nyssa

at Ephesus,” or some such place. He means the entire assembly of Christians there.

It is pretty clear that All Saints celebrates all three categories of persons. But precisely because saints are seen to be moral and religious exemplars, most of us are generally uncomfortable with the idea that we could seriously think of ourselves as saints. And perhaps that is not altogether bad. Because if we walked around thinking of ourselves as any more exemplary than we already do (in some cases, not in all), we would have one huge problem of a world even fuller of inflated egos.

Yet there is a great big fly in the ointment. The irony is that the more reticent we are to see ourselves as holy, the more likely we are to give ourselves permission to oppose not just holiness but goodness as well. Drink that in for a moment. The more reticent we are to see ourselves as saints, as holy people, the more likely we are to give ourselves permission to oppose not just holiness but goodness as well.

How so? You and I both know that we have seen individuals, including our very own selves, who can be shockingly insensitive, downright mean and nasty, perfectly hateful one minute, and turn around the next and do something generous or nice or helpful. One of the mysterious qualities of many of us is that we can be as sweet as pie on an individual level—never coming close to doing something cruel or unkind to a person we can actually see—but then turn out to be virulent haters of people who are different from us that we deem unworthy of ordinary human decency, let alone mercy. We continue to imagine that people who are personally congenial and polite to friends and close associates wouldn’t think of lying or cheating or stealing or taking advantage of the vulnerable or powerless. The truth of the matter is that much of the time good behavior is popular because it is socially approved, not because of some notion that it is connected with holiness or sanctity. We are good generally because it pays to be good, and we get complimented when we are. We are trained to be good and most of us are—to a point. More bluntly, we are ready to be good when it suits us to be, but ready to excuse ourselves from goodness when we find it inconvenient or taxing.

But are we saintly? Holy? Not only are we reluctant to see ourselves as either of those things, but few of us aspire to be much different from what we already are. Unless, of course, what we are is so uncomfortable for us that improvement seems to be the better course. What would it mean to be saintly? To be holy? To take seriously our vocation to live—dare we say it?—as the baptized persons we actually are?

Christ dancing, Church of St. Gregory of Nyssa

That is actually how saints are made: by baptism. But not because baptism is something magical that transmutes common people immediately into examples of holiness. It is because to be a baptized person is to be on a lifelong pilgrimage to explore what the Life of God is all about and how we can embody that life as Jesus did. You see, Jesus was not about pointing to himself as an object of worship, but rather modeling for humanity what a life lived in union with God is truly like. That is what holiness or sanctity really is: taking on the characteristics of the heavenly One, and living as nearly as possible as God is. That is why, by the way, that Jesus is so indispensable to the would-be lover of God sharing God’s life: he demonstrates in his words, life, and death just what it is for a human being to embody God. Impossible? Of course. But in and with God, all things are possible, even the transformation of quite ordinary people into very extraordinary human beings.

In the Baptismal Covenant we answer five questions after we have confessed our faith.

·      Will we continue in that faith, the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers of the Church?

·      Will we, whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

·      Will we proclaim not only by word but also by example the Good News of God in Christ?

·      Will we seek and serve Christ in all persons loving our neighbors as ourselves?  

·      Will we strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?[2]

Baptized in the River Jordan

If you want to know what being a Christian is, there is your answer. Do those things and you will be following Christ. Do those things and you cannot help but move in the direction of becoming more and more like the God who created you. Do those things and you will find that your false self, the ‘you’ that fears letting go of control, the ‘you’ that worries about whether you are enough and whether you have enough, the ‘you’ that is never really sure that you are worthy of love will slip further and further away. Instead there will be born in your body a new person who trusts more easily, frets less, quarrels less viciously, speaks the truth, and takes up causes like justice for the powerless that once frightened the starch out of you. Do those things and you cannot avoid becoming more and more holy. Indeed you will be on the road to sainthood though you may know nothing about it and in fact never have believed it possible. Faith is not about believing the possible. It is about trusting that the glorious impossible is worth giving one’s life to.

St. Dallán Forgaill

One way to put it is to let the vision of God be your vision for yourself. That is far from having an ego two sizes or more too large. It is indeed a way of losing your life—that is your cramped, false self—in exchange for the true Self that amounts to becoming the Christ who already lives within you. There once was a man known as a saint who left the world some words that have inspired thousands since they first were spoken and written in the 8th century, or maybe as early as the 6th, and translated into English and other languages in the early 20th century. Their supposed author is Saint Dallán Forgaill, who was said to be have been blind, which would make them even a more powerful prayer, since they are about true vision.

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart,

Naught be all else to me, save that thou art,

Thou my best thought by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping they presence my light.

Be thou my wisdom, and thou my true Word,

Thou ever with me and I with thee, Lord,

Thou my great Father, thine own may I be,

Thou in me dwelling and I one with thee.

Be thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight,

Be thou my whole armor, be thou my true might,

Be thou my soul’s shelter, be thou my strong tower,

O raise thou me heavenward, great Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor the world’s empty praise,

Be thou mine inheritance now and always,

Be thou and thou only the first in my heart,

O Sovereign of heaven, my treasure thou art.

High King of Heaven, when victory is won,

May I reach heaven’s joy, bright heaven’s Sun.

Great heart of my own heart, whatever befall,

Still be thou my vision, O ruler of all.[3]

Eastern Orthodox Baptism: candidates are naked and fully immersed
symbolizing union with Christ's death, burial, and resurrection 

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[1] Quoted at https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/spiritual-life/inspiring-quotes/20-wise-quotes-from-g-k-chesterton.html, accessed November 4, 2017.

[2] The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Publishing Company, 1979), 305-306.

[3] “Be thou my vision,” Irish ca. 8^th century, translated by Mary Byrne (1880-1931), versified by Eleanor Hull (1860-1935), as found in The New English Hymnal (Norwich: The Canterbury Press, 1986, 1997), 339, and adapted by comparison with the text in The Hymnal 1982 (New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1982), 488, and other translations. A history of the text may be found on the internet at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Thou_My_Vision, accessed November 4, 2017.

Just a Moment

A couple of days ago a Facebook friend of mine wrote and asked me where to find in the Bible a passage that says the dead have no consciousness. I had no earthly idea what he was talking about. I pulled down my exhaustive concordance to find that there are about 358 appearances of words translated “dead.” I could not find one on the list that remotely resembled anything he might be referring to. When I wrote back, he explained that he and his boyfriend were mentoring two castaway brothers who knew nothing about how to live and behave. They wanted to teach them something about the Bible. Wasn’t it true that only a hundred thousand or so people would make it into heaven? Didn’t the Bible say that we are at peace when we die until God comes back and takes us to heaven?

It is almost impossible to give people a handle on something so massive as the biblical tradition when they understand virtually nothing about it. And if you feel anywhere between ignorant and less-than-secure about the Bible, be aware that you are not alone, nor in this place will you be put down because of what you do not know. On the other hand, we don’t want to encourage illiteracy. So, I pointed my friend to the online Book of Common Prayer and the Outline of the Faith that it contains, which is a totally accessible summary of Christian teaching at least having the virtue of being dependably accurate without being simplistic.

If you happen to pick up a copy of the King James Version of the Bible, you don’t have to read beyond the title page to hit upon the main idea in the whole book. Because on the title page you will see “Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments.” The word “Testament” is the same as the word “Covenant.” And there you have the point of the Bible. It is a book about covenant.

Today, as always on the Second Sunday in Lent, we focus on the seminal story of Covenant in the entire tradition. It is, of course, the story of Abraham. There are several stories of the Covenant involving Abraham. The one we hear today comes from a priestly writer who lived several hundred years before the time of Christ. It is based on much older stories, and probably reflects even stories that are older than anything in the Bible itself. Because the quintessential story of humanity is the story of a journey, and that is essentially what the story of Abraham is. A few chapters before our reading today, God calls Abram to leave the land of his upbringing and to move to a totally new place. Abram obeys. He strikes out on a journey of faith. There is no covenant at this point, only a call, a promise, and a response. A little later on we discover what the journey is all about. It is about the unfolding intention of God to create a human community that will respond in faithful obedience in a way that the first humans did not.

There are all kinds of covenants, both in the Bible and outside it: covenants between friends, between equals, between kings and vassals, between superior and inferior parties, between husbands and wives. God is clearly the initiator of the covenant with Abram, and its everlasting nature is rooted in the sovereign will of God, not in human behavior. What is interesting is that Abram does not ask for anything in this story. He does not have to. He is offered “the world,” so to say. “You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” Get that. This is not a covenant that encompasses just one people, but a whole array of peoples. Moreover, the covenant involves not only a whole new relationship, but a profoundly new identity. Abram and Sarai are no longer known by their old names but as Abraham and Sarah respectively, "Ancestor" and "Princess." A part of the covenant is that Abraham and his descendants will have a land to call their own, and another part of the covenant is the way it is sealed: with the rite of circumcision. And most important, God says, “I will be their God.”

This has everything to do with you and me. This is our story, our holy story, because the story has claimed us. And I am not talking about “us” as an in-group. I am speaking of anybody in the entire human race who cares about finding a place in this world, the meaning of his or her life, a way of living that accords deep joy, a ground of hope for the future, and a profound sense of identity. It is open to you and me, and while the expectations and demands of living in a covenant relationship are serious and rigorous, it is the most freeing—and free—thing you can imagine.

You can claim your part in the heritage of Abraham, if indeed you have not already done so. And if you have, you can renew your place in that great caravan of people that are more numerous than the sands on the seashore and who have it in them to outshine the stars of heaven. But be aware. This story, and its facets like covenant and blessing and promise, is not the only one out there, nor the only one competing for your attention and allegiance. And the stories that have the most appeal tend to be the stories that claim to be valid expressions of the Will of God. I am not talking, of course, about other religious traditions, but certain versions of the very biblical story itself. There is a quite popular gospel of prosperity that hooks up religious affiliation and behavior with material success. There is also a version of so-called biblical religion that presents the relationship with God as fundamentally making no demands whatsoever beyond what we consider to be our convenience. And there are versions of our own story that twist it beyond recognition into a program for self-aggrandizement and tribal promotion. You know what I mean.

But the covenant story that we inherit from Abraham and Sarah is quite different. It is, if nothing else, counter-cultural. And it is so precisely because it cuts across cultures of all sorts. It started out as a simple story of God calling a man to move and start a new life. Before too many centuries had passed, it became a story that his descendants used to ground their identity. “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” became a way of referring to God that distinguished them from other tribes and peoples. But the story did not stop there. The covenant came to be seen as embracing all people everywhere, and the covenant people came to be called a light to the nations, so that all could be drawn into this community that acknowledged the God of Abraham as the universal God, indeed the only God.

But the Covenant did not stop there either. Centuries rolled by, and, as usually happens among humans, people took the very instruments of covenant and made them not a way to include the human family but a way to exclude those who somehow did not measure up to the terms of the covenant. God’s initiative in inaugurating the covenant was replaced by increasing emphasis on human behavior. And when humans messed up and transgressed not necessarily the covenant itself but various human interpretations of it, group upon group found themselves outside the covenant, which more and more became regulated by a power group. Sound familiar? It is, because it is that ordinary human cussedness that continues to assert itself and play itself out in human history.

Then, out of the blue one day, so the holy story goes, there appeared a messenger from God to a girl in a very improper town in a remote section of the Land promised to Abraham, which had been overrun time and again by armies and occupiers. Its people were worn down with waiting, and the dream of God’s community, when it had not become a nightmare to the disenfranchised, had dimmed beyond recognition. Like her ancestor Abraham, the girl said yes. “Be it unto me according to your Word,” said she to the messenger. The covenant was on its way to being renewed in a way that no one—no one in the world—could have predicted.

The girl, whose name was Mary, gave birth to Jesus. From the beginning he was the instrument by which God initiated once again the construction of a new humanity. His life manifested a breadth of acceptance that set the teeth of those controlling the covenant community on edge. Full of Spirit, everywhere he went he made things come alive. The sick recovered. The hungry ate. The blind saw and the lame leapt. Good News finally got preached to the poor, and the old idea of Jubilee took on new meaning as joy ran through the wadis and wastelands of Israel. Suddenly the Promised Land was abloom, and looked as if God might actually be walking around in it; for how else could one explain the dead being raised to life? The Covenant God, El Shaddai, the Mighty One, who had appeared to Abram at age 99, and who had delighted old barren Sarah with the promise of a child in her old age, was known to bring life out of bodies as good as dead. Now in the person of Jesus people saw the old power return with indescribable results.

In the middle of it all arose a thing called baptism—which initially was a simple ritual bath outwardly signifying an inner change of heart and mind. Jesus’ disciples took it over from a prophet known as John the Baptizer, and made it the way of making disciples that would follow the Way that Jesus walked, an entrance into a radically reshaped covenant community. But one does not reshape communities radically or otherwise without running into resistance. Conflict brewed. Fear proved to be just the heuristic needed to manipulate the right people into doing what Power always needs, which is to secure itself. Again, you know what I mean, because it is a dynamic you see every day. Power had its way. Jesus was executed. Not only did Jesus die, so did the dream of God. But if there is one thing God knows how to deal with it is death. In bodies as good as dead, like those of the Ancestor and the Princess, God had stirred new life and brought forth the first birth in the covenant community. So God did it again. In a tomb, in a lifeless body, God stepped in and became the midwife of a new birth.

It took awhile for people to realize what had happened. But clearly what had happened was not just the raising of a corpse, as wonderful as that might been. It was the raising to new life of the ancient dream of a covenant community. It dawned on them what Jesus meant on that night before he was handed over to suffering and death when he had given them bread and wine saying, “This is the New Covenant in my blood.” The covenant had not died, but had rather awakened in a new body. And that body was this group of people that Jesus had managed to collect around him. They took this thing that they had been using to make disciples—baptism—and realized they could no longer pour water all over people without staging something that looked quite like burial and resurrection. Within a few years what had once been a simple bath became the community’s way of broadening the covenant community to include all comers. No longer did one become a member of the covenant people by circumcision—by definition and nature something reserved to males only—but by birth-bestowing water, a gift from God to women and girls as well as men and boys. The covenant community was at that moment blasted open so that every man, woman, and child in the entire human race had an invitation to join the caravan—as equals.

And join they did. The covenant community grew. Persecutions could not stop it. Martyrs’ blood merely nourished it. They surprised themselves, and maybe even surprised God. For something like four or five hundred years they took seriously for the most part that they were not just ordinary people on a pilgrimage to self-actualization or something of the sort, but indeed the body of Christ, doing what he had done, healing and feeding and teaching and guiding.

Through the years and centuries the covenant has been sidetracked, hijacked, warped, twisted, manipulated, bought and sold. And every now and again, such as in the thirteenth century, there appears a Francis of Assisi who, like Abraham, says yes again. Or in the sixteenth century, a Luther who, like Mary, says something memorable like, “Here I stand. God helping me, I can do no other.” And the covenant struggles with the birth-pangs of renewal, as the community, sometimes stalled, sets out anew on its pilgrimage.

And that is where we are, you and I, today. This is a moment in some ways like any other. But so was the moment just before El Shaddai appeared to Abram saying, “I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless. I will make my covenant with you and make you exceedingly numerous.” So was the moment before Gabriel appeared to Mary saying, “Hail, favored one! The Lord is with thee.” So was the early morning before the sun had risen and some dejected women padded their way through the darkness to a tomb. The world is waiting for the covenant once again to take on new life, hesitant to believe that it really could be true that God will once again open up the future, call together a liberating people, and announce through them to all the world, “I shall be their God and they shall be my people and I myself will be with them.”

Where is Abraham? Where is Sarah? Where is Mary? Could one of them be hearing this?


© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2012

A Pile of Sin, and What to Do About It

Practicing Repentance:
A Pile of Sin, and What to Do About It

A sermon preached at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, September 28, 2008

Sometime shortly after the assassination attempt on President Reagan’s life in 1981, Earl Brill, an Episcopal priest then on the staff of the College of Preachers, noted that he had gone the following Sunday to the National Cathedral and was stunned by the fact that not a word was said about the assassination incident. “Ronald our President” was dutifully prayed for in the Prayers of the People. That was that. Brill was horrified that the Church was so out of touch with what was going on in the nation.

A decade and a half later, I was on vacation during the week of the bombing of the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. When I returned, I opened a very thoughtful note from an upset parishioner who wondered how on earth such a thing could happen and merit not even a word of prayer in the liturgy the following Sunday. She was horrified that the Church was so insensitive to what was going on in the nation.

The chatter about billions and bailout, economists and politicians, Treasury and the Fed, Wall Street and Main Street this week has me dizzy and bewildered. I was almost at the point of dodging saying anything at all about what by all accounts is the most serious economic challenge since the Great Depression. Then I heard the voices of Brill and my erstwhile parishioner. Does the Church have nothing to say about all that is happening in the nation?

And if we do have something to say, what? Shall we just be somebody else, flailing about, blaming the fat cats on Wall Street, calling for the resignation of first one and then another official? Shall we speak in platitudes about “the market” and “corruption”? Or do we join the chorus of economists, editorialists, and columnists who apparently know what ought to be done?

The Christian faith does have something to say about all this, different from any of those alternatives. And it might surprise you that it has to do with a theme imbedded in today’s gospel lesson. Jesus’ parable about the two sons, both of whom say one thing and do another, is about the simplest and easiest to understand of all his parables. On one level, of course, it is about the religious establishment who politely say that they will go and do what God bids them, but do nothing of the kind. In contrast, those who at first refuse but later accede to God’s will are the outcasts and sinners. They catch on to the message, change their minds, and change their behavior too.

When we open up the parable we find that what distinguishes the faithful son from the faithless son is not what each one believes but how each one acts. And the distinguishing activity of the second son is that he changes his mind. To put it another way, he repents. I don’t normally like sermons that do word studies, but this one I can’t pass up. The New Testament term for repentance is μετανοια, which means a change of mind. Matthew does not use that word here, but one that makes the same connection between repenting and changing one’s mind. So his story sets up a model that is key to understanding an urgently important dimension of the Reign of God, or what I like to call the Realm of Truth. That model is repentance: changing one’s mind and thus one’s whole program, issuing in radically new behavior.

Thus we come to discuss another practice in the Christian life in a series of sermons that focus on basic Christian practices. You would think, wouldn’t you, that the connection between the practice of repentance and the near catastrophe in the economy would lead very quickly into an easy, superficial moralism that wags a bony finger in the face of greedy financiers and says, “Naughty, naughty. You should have been less greedy and more generous.” What would happen, however, if we were to suspend blaming and shaming long enough to take a good look at what repentance involves? Might we come to see that what has happened on Wall Street is not an isolated case of something gone wrong on a massive scale? And we might come to see that it surely won’t be fixed by draconian measures to make private debts public.

In my opinion, it is impossible to talk about repentance without first coming to terms with the fact that there is such a thing as Justice in the universe. There is a thing called Equality and its twin called Fairness. If you go down to the Justice Department Building you will see the ancient symbol of Justice: a blindfolded woman holding scales. The very image of impartial weighing suggests that there is something about Justice that brings things into balance. Justice in the moral realm is like gravity in the physical realm. It just is. And ultimately the nature of the universe, through and through, is that what is out of balance will be brought back into balance. Nature ultimately rights itself, which, by the way, is one reason why climate change is so horrendously disturbing. Nature will not remain out of balance forever. Justice is the name we give to the same principle applied to human behavior. We cannot get away with imbalance and inequality forever.

Lincoln in his Second Inaugural dealt with the ultimacy of Justice when he said,
Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-men’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’

In other words, Justice is not just a good idea. It is something that is built into the fabric of the universe, an inescapable reality in the world of human behavior. Like Lincoln quoting the Hebrew scriptures, I understand Justice to be divine business. Justice is what God uses to bring balance to a severely unbalanced world.

And the thing that we humans most need to understand about Justice is that we participate in it by acting justly. One of many ways, but certainly not the only one, that we can act unjustly (and therefore be out of balance) is to be grasping, seizing for private use what belongs to another or what belongs equally to all. As one of our hymns puts it, “…we hoard as private treasure all that [God] so freely gives.” When we begin doing that, whether we live on Park Road or Newton Street or Wall Street, we are skating on ice that will assuredly break.

And so repentance, a change of mind, becomes essential and even urgent. We need to move back into a right relationship with God the Source and Creator of all things, and we need to move back into a state of balance—equality—with our neighbors. Now if you have noticed I have gone this far and have yet to mention the s- word: sin. Maybe now we can talk about sin without getting hung up on the the fallacy of relating it to a cosmic-sized list of no-no’s. Sin, before it is an act, is a condition. And the fundamental condition is being estranged from God, out of proper balance with creation, with our neighbors, with ourselves.

In order to become more and more just, we have to be able to recognize our sin. As our baptismal covenant puts is, “Will you persevere in resisting evil and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?” The only way we can do that is by being able to recognize when we are in fact out of moral whack. The next step is to confess it. And the next is to accept the forgiveness that is freely offered us. Then we are in a position to change our minds, which means really to change our entire direction, and thus our behavior.

What we have just done is open up the gospel story of the two sons, view it all in slow motion, and see what happens when the first son moves from a willful stubbornness that disregards his father’s will to a changed behavior that begins to be in line with the truth, which includes his own wellbeing. And we can begin to connect the dots and see how all this applies to the economic mess we are in at the moment.

The whole thing got out of whack. Greed, avarice, unbridled competition, unregulated risks, all fueled what everyone knew and could have predicted would eventually happen. There would be hell to pay. You can say it in one of many ways. “Nothing is free,” is one. “Justice will finally exact her wages,” is another. “God’s will can be denied at one’s own peril,” is a third. It all boils down to a scenario that develops when humans start behaving in a grasping, overweening, unaccountable manner. And I would emphasize that the lesson to be learned here is not one that applies only to bankers and investors, but to everyone.

The thing that we as individuals and we as the Christian community need to be on the lookout for at this stage is the danger of piling on sin upon sin by extending the inequity by letting the rich and powerful avoid Justice by skating over the faces of the poor. People don't like to come to Justice, especially if they are going to have to pay. We can reasonably predict that a result of the economic calamity will be drastic reductions in government budgets on all levels. And who will pay? The most vulnerable, who are dependent on government services: the poor. That would be a grave injustice.

There is some Good News in all this. We do not have to remain stuck in willful disdain of Justice or the God of Justice. We can change. One son in Jesus’ story did. Might that son have been you?

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2008.