Fixing the Economy

Thanks to my brother for sending me this. It's from Jim Caroon, who proposes the following wonderful solution to the Current Depression:

Dear Mr.President,

Patriotic retirement: There's about 40 million people
over 50 in the work force; pay them $1 million apiece
severance with stipulations:

1) They leave their jobs. Forty million job openings -
Unemployment fixed.

2) They buy NEW American cars. Forty million cars ordered -
Auto Industry fixed.

3) They either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -
Housing Crisis fixed.

Much cheaper than the trillions being ineffectively spent
on the financial industry

What a neat idea! We can fix the economy by paying 40 million people $1 million each. Not sure if you noticed, but that's $40 trillion total. President Obama's budget is less than ten percent of that, and the bailout package is only about 2.5% of that number. So, are you saying that Obama's plan is insufficient? I thought that President Obama's plan was too costly, that the deficit was too high. Which is it?

Now, as to the details, what constitutes a new American car? Toyota has plants in Alabama, Kentucky, Indiana, Texas and West Virginia. Honda has plants in Alabama and Indiana. Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Nissan and Subaru also have plants in the US. The Big Three automakers depend on Canadian manufacturers for major pieces of the cars they assemble in Michigan. Are their products to be considered American, or not? Remember, the jobs of tens of thousands of Americans hang on your answer.

Buy a house. You need to stipulate that the house not be mortgaged, that's how we got into this mess in the first place. To be safe, you should probably also make sure that the people buying the house can afford its operating costs and property taxes. I know this sounds like "controls," but who wants to create a problem when you're trying to solve one.

It may well be true that trillions are being spent ineffectively. After all, Secretary Geithner has fully bought into the concept of socializing losses (that means we pay) and privatizing gains (that means that the wealthy receive). I have an alternative proposal. Until the government funds are repaid, we socialize the gains as well. Yes, I said "nationalization". Yes, it also smacks of socialism. Nasty word, but tell me: how's capitalism working out for you these days? If you're not a rightwing journalist on a major media salary (and bonus, don't forget), you may be affected by the economic calamity created by the ideologues of the Far RIght. Boom and bust cycles are endemic to the philosophy of free enterprise; the current bust is directly related to the the freest, least regulated period of capitalism in modern times. It's all part of and linked to the millions that have been funnelled into the salaries, bonuses and retirement plans of the privileged few that control most of the assets of the United States of America. Those of us who take it on the chin? Collateral damage comes to mind. It's all part of the plan, in order to make an omelette, you need to break some eggs. Thank you, Josef Stalin, for reminding us of Adam Smith.

Transfiguration Sunday

Transfiguration Sunday was the second time I've preached, but it was my first sermon.

From today’s Gospel:
Jesus [led] Peter and James and John up a high mountain . . . And. . . was transfigured before them, . . . And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus . . . and Peter did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”

The Transfiguration is one of the “big events” in our Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s not as big as the parting of the Red Sea or the crucifixion, but it’s still pretty big. It’s easy to look at the “big events” in the Bible as the main message, the extent of what we learn about God’s presence in our midst. After all, this is what most of us learned in Sunday School. When we stop at the “big event,” though, we miss one element that runs through so many of these stories. That element is how we as observers react when “the Kingdom of God comes near”.

For example, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, it was such a big deal to the Company of Heaven that a band of angels got together, formed an impromptu chorus, came down and sang Christmas carols all around the neighborhood, then flew back to Heaven and probably drank hot cider or something. I’m sure they were satisfied with their performance, but it terrified the observers, the shepherds. Before they collected their wits and went to see the infant Jesus, I said a few years ago that I imagine they washed more than their socks that night.

Let’s take another example. In Mark 5, Jesus goes across the Sea of Galilee (on the way, he dozes off in the back of the boat in the middle of a major storm that scares the wits out of his disciples). He goes to the country of the Gerasenes. A demoniac, a man possessed by demons, approaches Jesus and begs not to be tormented. Jesus confronts the unclean spirits and gives them permission to leave the demoniac and enter a herd of two thousand swine. The swine promptly stampede down a slope, into the water, and drown.

The observers are the swineherds. Their reaction? Probably panic. They run into the town and inform the townspeople. What do the locals do? “They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion [of unclean spirits]; and they were afraid”. The demoniac, the one too strong to be restrained, who lived in the cemetery howling and bruising himself with stones, running around naked or nearly so, the townspeople were willing to live with; it was Jesus they asked to leave.

So, in today’s Gospel, Peter and James and John observe Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah, the very Jewish embodiment of all the Law and the Prophets, Jesus’ clothing dazzling white, and “[Peter] did not know what to say, for they were terrified”.

They were terrified. This is our typical reaction when the Kingdom of God comes near us. We come to this Table and eat the Body of Christ and drink His Blood, and, little by little, the Kingdom of God comes closer and closer to changing our hearts, to turning us away from cultural expectations and dicta—the world—and toward his call to each of us. It’s terrifying.

Who isn’t terrified today? We see that fear all around us:
1. A woman struggles to reconnect her emotions to her true worth, a connection damaged by physical and psychological abuse;
2. A young man, overwhelmed by the cultural expectations he perceives demanded of him, hides his imperfections in an outburst of sexual promiscuity;
3. Yet another person, terrified by feelings of guilt or shame, resorts to alcoholic anesthesia rather than deal with them; and
4. A middle-aged man, a thousand miles from home, trapped in a parking lot between a culture that expects him to maintain his marriage and family, and an orientation that drives him to seek a relationship with another man.

We know fear, even terror. To a greater or lesser extent, it controls all of us: the more we react to fear in our lives, the more we are controlled by others, and the less freedom we have to respond to God’s love.

What does God say about fear? Just about everywhere, God says, “fear not,” do not be afraid.

As Bishop Gene Robinson pointed out in a sermon last year, Jesus’ life is bookended by calls not to be afraid. Bishop Robinson, of all people, a man not afraid to be open and honest about his sexual orientation in a culture that, more often than not, punishes such honesty and condones the violent suppression of homosexuals by fear-filled people.

At the front end of Jesus’ life are Joseph and Mary. In Matthew, just as Joseph has just decided to dismiss Mary quietly, an angel tells him not to be afraid to marry her. The angel Gabriel visited John the Baptist’s father and scared the wits out of him. Gabriel got much the same response from Mary, who was “much perplexed” by his appearance. Gabriel told Mary the same thing he told Zechariah, “Do not be afraid”.

At the end of Jesus’ life, after the Crucifixion, the two Mary’s who went to the tomb on the first day of the week encountered the stone rolled away and one or two men in clothes dazzling white. The guards were paralyzed with fear. The women were so terrified they couldn’t even look up. The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid”.

And even after the Resurrection, the disciples get together in an upper room and lock the doors and windows “for fear of the Jews”. After Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, the Lord speaks to Ananias in a vision, calling him to go to Saul and lay his hands on him. You can tell from the ensuing discussion in Acts 9 that Ananias has a very clear impression of what will happen to him if he does. He obeys the Lord, but one can easily imagine the fear he must have felt on this mission, God’s reassurances notwithstanding.

How do you overcome fear? I have a few practical ideas.

First, name your fear, just as Jesus asked the unclean spirits, “What is your name”? Write down what you’re afraid of, pencil and paper or keyboard and Microsoft Word. Write it down exactly, graphically, all the details, don’t leave anything out.

Second, assess if you can the risk that what you fear will actually occur. For example, If you’re afraid to drive on expressways or fly on commercial airlines, find out how many people actually do without incident.

Third, move toward the fear, not away from it. Jesus spoke directly to the unclean spirits; Ananias went to the house where Saul was staying. Reacting to the fear means the fear controls you. Moving toward the fear puts you in control. It has been my experience that my irrational fears vanish like smoke when I move toward them and stop giving them control.

Finally, and always, trust in God. Love God; God loves you. And love your neighbor as yourself, which I interpret to mean that in order to love others, you must first love yourself. You are, after all, “fearfully and wonderfully made”.

And when you have overcome your fears and love God and know that God doesn’t love you less than anyone else, or more, but that he loves us all beyond our wildest imaginings, you will be able to say to others with genuineness and conviction from your heart, the peace of the Lord be always with you.

New Year's resolution, or Lenten discipline?

I have been encouraged - driven, even - by my friends to write more. I agreed to do so as a New Year's resolution. That didn't actually work out. Starting now, it's more of a Lenten discipline. Considering that we're now past the Second Sunday in Lent, I'm a bit remiss here as well. But the time has come, and I am finally resolving to write.

Why so reluctant, when I love to write? Embarrassment? Modesty? The old fear of being "discovered"? There is something about writing that exposes the writer to all his readers. My prior essays, by and large, were triggered by outrage or injustice. Easy enough to hide behind righteous indignation. Writing as a discipline and a practice, divulges who I am: just and unjust, kind and cruel, global and petty, deep and shallow, loved and, in all my faults, human. Honesty demands humility.

It has been nearly two years since my separation and only three months since the divorce. I may never shed all the embarrassment and shame of having to go through it and put my now ex-wife through it. By writing this blog, all my laundry will eventually be hung out for all my readers to see. It is time to shed the modesty. I am who I am. Enjoy the view.

Taxes to Caesar

Well, it's taken this long for the family legacy to bloom. I'm thinking of my Christmas cactus, which waited until April to finally blossom. Now, amidst the communion of saints, a grandfather and four great-uncles watch as I deliver my first sermon, which follows.

“Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emporer, or not?”

Elk Grove Village is not occupied by troops from a distant emperor, and the Archdiocese of Chicago doesn’t make the laws for this state, at least not officially, so permit me to rephrase the question: is it moral to pay taxes to the nation and state, to the administration led by the person Garrison Keillor calls The Current Occupant? Is it moral to pay taxes for the war in Iraq, for imprisoning enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay without due process? We pay income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and the hidden tax of inflation brought on by deficit spending. How do we, supposedly the source of political power in this country, express our disapproval of spending we find immoral? What can we do—what should we do—to express God’s call to us, to resist our understanding of society’s encroachment on Christian moral values, whatever we interpret them to be? The Mennonites and Quakers have a long history of tax resistance in this country, on theological grounds related to the Gospel we heard today. Should we follow their lead, or some other?

Today’s Gospel “pitch” has a rather long wind-up. Let’s review the run-up to it in the prior week’s Gospel readings.

Four weeks ago, Jesus called Matthew to follow him, which he did! Matthew was a Jew. He collected taxes for the Romans under King Herod. The tax was especially hated because it was a poll tax. It tested how much revenue could be squeezed out of the Jews for the Roman Empire. The Zealots actively opposed it. Matthew, quitting his job and following Jesus, directly affected Herod’s ability to collect those taxes. Encouraging Matthew to quit his job as tax collector could have been regarded as tax resistance, the sort of thing Zealots encouraged.

That was four weeks ago. Three weeks ago in the Gospel, the chief priests challenged Jesus, “By what authority are you [teaching]?” Jesus responded by calling them to justify their rejection of the baptism of John. Effectively, he trapped them between their rejection of John and their fear of the Jewish people. Jesus told the chief priests that the Jewish tax collectors would get to heaven before them, and put tax collectors and prostitutes in the same phrase, twice. That’s putting prostitutes and tax collectors—and, by implication, their managers, the Pharisees—in closer proximity to each other than Alaska is to Russia. That was three weeks ago.

Two weeks ago, we heard the parable of the landowner and the vineyard. In this parable, Jesus accused the chief priests and Pharisees of mistreating, stoning and killing God’s prophets. Layed it on their doorstep. He predicted that “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you [the mainstream Jewish leaders] and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom”.

Last week he did it again, repeating, in the parable of the king and his wedding feast, the same accusation. Jesus predicted that everyone except God’s chosen people would be invited to the heavenly banquet.

So, it should come as no surprise to us that the mainstream religious leaders of the day would mount a counter-attack, a sure-fire, lose-lose proposition for Jesus. It was a political battle for the hearts and minds of the Jews, Jesus speaking truth to power, power fighting back.

Let’s see, how can we catch him up in his own words? Let’s ask him about paying taxes to Caesar. If he’s a tax resister—and remember, that was one of the accusations against Jesus when he was brought before Pontius Pilate—we can arrest him and throw him in the klink. If he says it’s legal, why, then the Zealots and their supporters will abandon him: besides, it makes him a blasphemer, and we can discredit him within the community.

Why would he be labeled a blasphemer? Because the inscription on the coin, the denarius, read “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus.” Tiberius was the son of God. You can almost hear them say, “Yes! we’ve got him!”

And so, we come to Jesus’ answer that lives for us today: render unto our emperor (or president, or prime minister or whatever), that which is his, and unto God that which is God’s. How perfect, and yet how perfectly incomplete!

God is creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. If this choice is exclusive, what’s left to render to the emperor? Jesus’ response is much more ambiguous than a simple “choose one or the other”. He leaves it up to us, not him, to make the decisions, the moral choices.

We decide what to give to civil authority and what to withhold. We: you and I, as a community. Our actions and our inactions are moral choices, just as they were moral choices for the Pharisees and Herodians back then. Remember, somebody in that crowd of spiritual leaders produced a denarius with that blasphemous inscription engraved on it: they made the decision to trade in that coin. We are called by Jesus to make the same kind of moral choices today. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were left amazed and speechless. Here was an answer to their question that required them to take personal responsibility for their decisions, their moral choices. Throwing up their hands, saying “it’s not my fault, it’s the rules—see, it’s written in Scripture” was not an option, then or now.

On November 4th you will vote for John McCain or Barack Obama, for Dan Seals or Mark Kirk, or you will stay home and not vote. Those are all moral choices. We, collectively, are accountable for them. Our current state of affairs in this country, our foreign policy, our domestic policy, our financial crisis, our environmental state of global warming, can all be traced to our collective decisions or indecisions over the previous decades. As the late Walt Kelly rephrased John Paul Jones so well, “We have met the enemy, and they is us.”

Pray, then, but do not neglect to act, as a community, a state and a nation. Pray that we make the right moral choices on November 4th, and in the days to come, Pray that we avoid the traps and snares that our enemies lay for us, to deny us the kingdom of God on earth, as it is in heaven.

Tattoos for gays

Thinking Anglicans covers the opinions of The Rev. Peter Mullen, chaplain to the London Stock Exchange, and their fallout, news articles in The Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent and BBC. Link to it here.
After being rebuked by his bishop, Rev. Mullen made a "full and complete apology" for remarks he claimed were attempts at humour (can't resist the British spelling).

Is Father Mullen so insulated from the real world that he cannot distinguish really funny comments from really offensive ones? Is he so ignorant of history that he fails to recognize the connection between his allegedly humourous proposal and the tattooing of Jews in the Third Reich? No sooner did I read this article in TA than I made that connection.

It would be a real laugh-riot if Peter Mullen just cut to the chase: re-open the camps, gas all gays and throw them in the ovens. It took the Third Reich years to get to that point, presumably to acclimate the populace to the treatment of their Jewish, gay and Communist neighbors as sub-human. That's the end objective, though, isn't it, and the same reason for working to achieve it. Gays aren't really human. Heteros can fall in love, form bonds of affection that last a lifetime, commit to each other; gays can only copulate.

I hate ignorance, especially willful ignorance enforced by hidebound clerics who don't get the Word God sent them.

The latest chain mail

An acquaintenace of mine sent me the latest "outrage," expressing severe umbrage that the new $1 coins don't contain the inscription "In God We Trust" and urging me and all my contacts to refuse to use them.

This is such silliness. The European Union uses €1 and €2 coins and probably saves a lot of money not printing paper bills, which don't last nearly as long as the coins. But the point of the outrage, of course, hasn't anything to do with running the government more efficiently. It's the missing slogan.

What is it about these people, who insist that our government recognize religion? Insisting on this motto bends our government to a particular ideology. It cheapens the motto. As Theodore Roosevelt pointed out, it is irreverent to the point of sacrilege. I believe it is another form of idolatry, to recognize the motto and worship it in place of true religion, which is helping widows, visiting prisoners, etc.

Buying Another Iraq

I've been distracted for about five weeks, caring for a man recovering from a traumatic brain injury, the victim of a vicious mugging. I'll have a post in the near future talking about the different types of love we encounter or exhibit, relevant to this topic.

But today's topic is about the $700billion dollar bailout that our Current Occupant has proposed to solve all the financial problems he and his cohorts created in the past eight years or more. And I titled it "Buying Another Iraq" because that's about how I see it: it hasn't been enough for Dubya to bury us in debt for a specious war, he has to double-down by rescuing Wall Street for the excesses he facilitated. The effects of this bailout will be felt for over 40 years.

Who benefits from this plan? Surely it must be the few hundred Wall Street financial leaders, aided and abetted by GOP-sponsored legislation that deregulated the financial markets. Surely those who supported Senator Phil Gramm's deregulation mania. These are the same people who benefited from the Bush tax cuts, during a time of war when we are all supposed to sacrifice. Sacrifice indeed. Now it is we, the middle class and below, who once again sacrifice. It is the wealthy few who get off the hook.

Who is being bailed out, who lives and who dies, financially? It is one of the tenets of capitalism that reward results from risk. This bailout should shout to all Americans that the free market system has serious flaws that only government can correct, through regulation and controls, assiduously applied.
The companies who are "bailed out" should be nationalized, no less than FreddieMac and FannieMae. The executives and boards should be fired for cause and their golden parachutes confiscated. Trust in our financial system will not be restored until we have people running it who are doing so for better reasons than their own portfolios.