Pastor's Pages

The Trouble with People and the Bible

2011-02-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

There are reasons we do what we do here.
I have heard it, from time to time, that people don’t like it that I talk about politics or about race in America. I know that many people think that religion ought never to talk about anything but Jesus.
But the Jesus I have studied was a participant in and a critic of the political system in which he lived. Jesus got in trouble, and ultimately lost his life, because he dared challenge the injustice the political system propagated.
Liberation theology has its basis in interpreting the Bible as a book which supported justice, but many people reject that interpretation. Were we to put James Cone and Glenn Beck in the same room to talk about liberation theology and its validity, fireworks would fly.
There are so many ways to interpret important documents, and that is a problem. Those who are oppressed interpret both the Bible and the United States Constitution, for example, far differently from those of the privileged class. Heterosexuals interpret the Bible differently than do homosexuals; men interpret the Bible differently than do women, and the Constitution, it seems, is consistently interpreted in a way which supports people in power.
At the end of the day, though, we all have to go inside ourselves and ask God to reveal God’s self to us. Is God on the side of the downtrodden and oppressed, or is that just someone’s opinion? Did God ordain the American brand of slavery, and did God intend for black people to be mistreated by nearly everyone who is not black? Is God good all the time, to and for all people, or is God snob, liking some people better than others because of their skin color or social class?
When another way of looking at scriptures is presented, many people get offended and say that said interpretation is “revisionist,” yet, surely God knew that His people would interpret the words in that sacred text to fit themselves. We humans are always trying to say God is on our side, instead of living our lives so that God can clearly see that we are on His side.
As long as there is injustice in this world based on class and color and sexual orientation and ethnicity and any other reason, I will continue to preach that it is not right, not of God or from God. At the end of the day, you see, I believe in a loving, yet stern God who makes us accountable for how we treat each other. I have ingested the words that Jesus said, “How can you say you love God, whom you have not seen, when you do not love your brother, whom you do see?”
I believe that God, the Father, and Jesus, his son, are against oppression in any shape, way or form. I believe that God the Father, and Jesus, his son, want us to practice loving those whom we don’t necessarily like, and practicing forgiveness, no matter how difficult. There may be many ways of interpreting the Bible, but in the end, there seems to me a theme that runs throughout the Bible, and that is, “all have fallen short of the glory of God.” This God, it seems, loves “all” whom he has created, and we are to do the same.
I may be wrong. We may all be. There really might be just ONE way to interpret the Bible, and we’ve all missed it. God may be shaking his head at everything that everyone is saying, has said, and is teaching, but I have no way of knowing that. I know that I incline my ear toward God and I give what I believe God tells me – as does everyone else who teaches and preaches.
So, in this house, you’ll keep getting these lessons of and from the Bible from a perspective which may be different from the perspective you’ve had before. I hope that in spite of the difference there is room for you to grow and to get closer to God than you ever have before.
Have a good week!
Pastor Smith

Kasich a Reminder

2011-02-01T15:13:00.001-08:00

There is a cost to those who can least afford it when we do not exercise our right to vote.
We didn’t always have the right. People died getting us the right, and when we, I mean, African Americans, do not exercise that right – for whatever reason- it bugs me.
But bigger than how it affects me, it affects our quality of life. When we do not vote, we leave the way open for people who do not particularly care about “the least of these” to get into office and make policies which do not work in our favor.
John Kasich, our new governor, showed his colors this week when he said “I don’t need you people” when challenged by Ohio State Congresswoman Nina Turner about his cabinet. As of this writing, the governor has not appointed a single person of color. When Sen. Turner challenged him on it, citing the value of diversity, Mr. Kasich said, “I don’t need you people.”
Excuse me?
Mr. Kasich later said what he meant was that he didn’t need Democrats. OK, so we’ll be stupid today. Sen. Turner wasn’t talking about having Democrats in his cabinet. She was talking about him not having any person of color in his cabinet. Mr. Kasich reverted to the oft-repeated excuse that he could not find any qualified people of color. He then said the whole discussion was about quotas, and, he said, quotas are “so yesterday.”
Excuse me again. Quotas? No, we’re not talking about quotas. We’re talking about being representative of the people of Ohio. Like it or not, Mr. Kasich is duty-bound to represent us all, red and yellow, black and white, Christian, Jewish and Catholic. That mandate, that responsibility, seems lost to Mr. Kasich, who didn’t even want the media to cover his inauguration.
Excuse me?
But …we brought this on ourselves. Just a few more of us going to the polls might have made a big difference. Mr. Kasich did not win by a big margin. He just won. And now, he is in the seat of power and I shudder to think what his policies will mean for “the least of these.”
The move has been on since President Obama got elected to make sure he is a one term president. Trust and believe that the machinations to make him lose in Ohio are in motion. What will we do? Will we wring our hands, or get to work?
The Bible says that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord, and who are called according to his purposes. We are called, by the blood and suffering of our ancestors, to vote, not less, but more, always more. We are called to get people hyped up and moving for a big victory.
Otherwise, what Mr. Kasich is showing us will be nothing. I am not sure of the shenanigans that will be put in place to make it more difficult for people to vote in the 2012 election, but I know to expect it. I read that some lawmakers are trying to make it mandatory for every voter to have a picture ID so they can control and reduce voter fraud.
I think that if the powers that want to be want to play hardball, then we ought to enter the game. We ought to be proactive and not reactive. I truly believe that we might have a different song to sing as far as Ohio had more of us turned out to vote, but that is water under the bridge.
We need to gird up and work as our ancestors did, to work with the passion of Fannie Lou Hamer who risked her life to get herself and others the right to vote. It was she who said, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Me too, Mrs. Hamer. Me,too.
Pastor Smith

Success, not Justice

2011-01-25T11:06:00.001-08:00

In an interview with Tavis Smiley, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter made a remark that hit me like a ton of bricks.
Carter, who was tried and convicted twice for a triple murder, was imprisoned for 19 years. He and his apparent accomplice were both sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. Carter to this day thinks it is miraculous that they were not given the death penalty, but he attributes the sentence they did receive to perhaps serious doubt on the part of the presiding judge as to their guilt.
What struck me during Carter’s interview with Smiley, however, was not his story; I had heard it and read about it before, and Denzel Washington starred in a movie about Carter’s life. What struck me was Carter’s summation of the justice system.
“The justice system is not about justice,” he said. “The justice system is about success.”
He went on to explain that police departments, prosecutors and judges have much at stake in criminal cases. The more the system convicts of wrongdoing, the more it looks like police, prosecutors and judges are doing their jobs. “A good prosecutor, with lots of convictions under his belt, can and does look to becoming a judge, and ‘good, successful’ judges might get to the governor’s mansion.
Meanwhile, many innocents sit in prisons, on death row or in the general prison populace.
“Nobody listens to you when you are innocent,” he said. “There are a lot of people in prison who are innocent and who are trying to get someone to listen, but that doesn’t happen very often,” Carter said.
His statements moved me, because for the longest time, I have marveled at how, when newly discovered evidence becomes available that will prove that someone was wrongly convicted, prosecutors seem unwilling to even consider that evidence. I watch a lot of “Dateline ID” and I have been disturbed for some time at what appears to be closed minds on the parts of prosecutors.
In fact, I have been long disturbed about the lack of justice for the poor and disenfranchised. I am still reeling at the case of the Scott Sisters, recently released, for a robbery which they not only steadfastly maintained they had no part in, and a robbery which involved no violence and netted only $11.
The Scott Sisters were convicted of two consecutive life terms, and even though Gov. Haley Barbour arranged for their release “for medical reasons,” even he, these many years later, refuses to say he believes the justice system was wrong in their case.
It seems that we the church ought to do all we can to provide programs and services for our young people so that they never get wrapped up in our unjust justice system. If it is a fact, as Carter says, that the justice system “is not concerned about justice; it’s concerned with success,” then we ought to do all we can to keep our children and youth away from that system. It is not meant to provide rehabilitation; it is set up to support the “success” of police and prosecutors. We in this nation spend so much more to imprison people than we do to educate them. The prisons, therefore, have a steady supply of people to entrap and keep their profits coming. Profit, after all, is the supreme indication of “success” in this world.
There is not a one of us who can close our eyes and pretend that there is nothing wrong with the justice system, or who can say that prisons only have “the bad people” in them.
That would be a nugatory, as my daughter would say.
Ask Rubin Carter.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith

Thank You for Serving

2011-01-19T13:26:00.000-08:00

I am really worried.
The new governor of Ohio is none other than John Kasich, a Republican, who is also a fiscal conservative.
There is nothing wrong with being a fiscal conservative, except that it is pretty common for fiscal conservatives to favor cuts in spending which disproportionately adversely affect “the least of these.”
Cuts usually come in education, health care and social services, and other areas which help poor people stay afloat. I heard this week that a Republican is sponsoring a bill to repeal the estate tax, proceeds of which generally go to local governments to help fund needed services.
Fiscal conservatives also generally oppose tax hikes.
I am afraid and worried for “the least of these” because if some sources of financial support for “the least of these” are cut, and there are no tax increases, how will the masses of people who are suffering and who have been suffering more in the current recession ever survive?
The need for good, solid, expansive and sensitive outreach amongst churches becomes even more critical, which is why I appreciate Advent UCC so much. Despite having sparse resources, Advent has always stepped up to help, to minister to, “the least of these.”
We may have to step up even more.
We are already upping our work to feed the hungry. You are bringing food to the church which we will use to feed the needy in our own congregation and in the community. We will increase our intake of clothing so that we can make sure children in our community have needed clothing.
We are working to get a Freedom School here in the summer, and an overall literacy program to aid our youth and the youth in our community so that if cuts in education funding occur, we can still do our best to be “repairers of broken walls,” as the prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 58.
Hopefully we can institute a program where we give art and music education to the youth as well, as those programs are among sure cuts in the schools.
There is so much we can do, we, the “little church that can, that always has, and will always do.” There is a place for every single one of us here to step up to reach “the least of these.” Money will come because money follows mission. If we concentrate on the mission, God will insure that we get the money to accomplish the mission.
There may be even more that we will see that we will have to do, but God will reveal it to us. We have Governor Kasich in office and some Republicans in office who may not care about “the least of these” the way we who love God are called to care. They, however, are not greater than our God.
We have all been through some rough times and times may get worse before they get better. The course of what will be for any of us is not something I know…But this I do know: that we have been given much, in spite of our struggles, and to whom much is given, much is required.
I am proud to be the pastor of a church which has so many willing servants, servants who love God enough to serve, to “do” the word in spite of their own circumstances, their own needs …and their own state government which may not, in the long run, be as concerned for “the least of these” as God calls us all to be.
Thank you ...for YOU.
Pastor Smith

No Roomfor Bigotry

2011-01-12T15:29:00.000-08:00

There just is no room for bigotry in God’s world.
I have long felt that the underlying ethos of the Tea Party is racism. The Tea Party, at least, has been honest, to a point, about their anger and anxiety about a black man being president of these United States. Others have been much more disingenuous.
But the saddest thing of all is that this American bigotry, so special and so unique, is even worse because nobody in America wants to own it, admit it. People want to act like everything is all right and that racism is a thing of the past.
It is not, and it is in fact even worse because America has insisted on denying its existence.
The horrendous shootings in Tucson cannot be blamed on any person, but we cannot deny that toxic political vitriol played a part in the anger which we saw in the most recent congressional campaign, and I believe that the rhetoric spewed by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others fed into a culture of resentment based on race and bigotry.
People in America, black and white, have never gotten over slavery and over the years of racial indignity which has been the characteristic identifying mark of these United States. The teaching of white supremacy is deep in the souls of still too many people, and the feeling of inferiority is still too much a part of the psyches of too many African Americans.
That feeling of white supremacy, coupled with white privilege, has fed into this culture of resentment I mentioned, and that resentment has morphed into outright anger on the parts of too many people. The imagery of guns voiced by Sarah Palin was no accident; she fed into the culture of resentment and anger, and though it was couched in rhetoric about cutting spending, those who know racism and how it feels knew otherwise.
The shootings in Arizona may have produced the groundwork for some good conversation, about race, about violence, about gun control. It may get people to talk about the responsibility of having the gift of free speech. Just because one can say something doesn’t mean one should.
All that being the case, however, what these shootings have said to me, loud and clear, is that there is no room for bigotry in God’s kingdom, be it blatantly or subliminally stated. No person ought to fear for his or her life or safety because he or she advocates for “the least of these,” be they black, brown, handicapped, Jewish, Muslim or anything other than white, male, and healthy. This American bigotry is stale and moldy. It is despicable for those who say they love God.
We should internalize the great commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul…and thy neighbor as thyself.”
Beginning now.
Have a good week.

Nurture the Children Now to Save Them Later

2011-01-05T14:05:00.000-08:00

The Pastor’s Page

Last week, a man named Cornelius Dupree was released from prison, after having been there for 30 years for a crime he didn’t commit. He was convicted in 1979 for rape and murder, and maintained his innocence from the beginning.
Had it not been for the tireless work of the Innocence Project, and a feisty, brilliant Dallas District Attorney named Craig Watkins, Dupree might still be in prison – as are, I am afraid, way too many innocent people.
There is a huge reason for my being so passionate about us reaching and teaching the children in our community. A recent study reported that only 11 percent of African American males, by the time they reach 4th grade, are proficient in reading, compared to 38 percent of white males.
Neither group has anything to brag about, but I really believe that when a child begins to falter in school, his or her self esteem plummets and they become ripe for anti-social behavior. All any child wants to do is to excel and to be loved, and if he or she cannot excel in school, and/or feel love from his/her home, then that child will do what he or she must in order to have those basic needs met.
It seems to me that kids who are encouraged and helped and loved have a better chance of staying out of the system than those who find themselves looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places.
It also seems to me that the more of our kids we can embrace and empower, the fewer of our kids will wind up in the system, guilty of a crime, or, worse, accused and convicted of a crime, but who are innocent.
I don’t know what Dupree’s youth was like. I do know that he was only 21 years old when he was accused and convicted of the rape and armed robbery.
From what I have come to understand, law enforcement personnel are very slow about admitting when they are wrong. District attorneys, judges and police officers, it seems, work to support each other and uphold convictions, even when compelling evidence is unearthed that suggests a mistake might have been made.
Mr. Dupree could have been released sooner had he “admitted” that he committed the crimes for which he was convicted, but he refused. It was DNA evidence that cleared him.
He is fortunate, but what I want is for us to educate and empower our kids, especially our young men, but our young women, so that they will be less and less likely to get caught by a system which has never shown African Americans any love …or justice.
I cannot imagine being in prison for 30 years, period, much less in prison all that time when I knew I was innocent. I cannot begin to imagine how much brilliance and talent is wasting away in prisons all over this country.
I know that it isn’t right, and I know that if we know the situation but do nothing to share what we have with kids who need us, we have forfeited an opportunity that our people need in order to bring hope to kids who are lost and who need to see sermons, not hear them.
Someone wrote on my Facebook page that she couldn’t believe cases like that of Mr. Dupree are still a reality. They are, and will continue to be until we take up the mantle and say “enough.” We can challenge the system, as Craig Watkins and the Innocence Project are doing, and we can take our children and nurture them when they are young, so that they become less and less likely to be the bait for a prison system which has an appetite for African American men which has never been satisfied.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

Justice, Finally

2010-12-29T23:28:00.001-08:00

The Pastor’s Page
The last days of 2010 saw justice delivered to two young African American women who have been in prison for 16 years.
Jamie and Gladys Scott were accused and convicted of a robbery that occurred on Christmas Eve in 1993 in Forest, Mississippi. About $11 was taken and nobody was hurt, but the sisters’ conviction netted them both two consecutive life sentences. The girls were accused of luring two African American men into a situation which resulted into their wallets being taken.
Outrage about the convictions was swift, and activists began advocating for their release almost immediately, to no avail. At the time of their release, all appeals had been exhausted.
At the time of their arrest and conviction, Gladys was 19 and pregnant with her second child and Jamie was 22 with three children. Three teens boys also arrested in the case reportedly said at the outset that the Scott Sisters were not involved in the incident, but were said to be pressured to implicate the young women in a plea deal.
The teen boys received far lesser sentences and the Scott Sisters were sent to prison…for two consecutive life sentences.
On Wednesday, December 29, 2010, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who is said to be considering running as a Republican presidential candidate in 2012, suspended the sentences of the women. Jamie is seriously ill. Both her kidneys are failing – and Gladys’ release is said to be on the condition that she donate one of her kidneys to her sister.
This case has not received a lot of attention from mainstream media. There have been activists in Mississippi, however, who have been relentless in getting news about the plight of the women national attention. Recently New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote about the case, commentary was heard on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, and Ben Jealous, head of the National Association of Colored People, have taken the case on. The Innocence Project also took up the case.
Gov. Barbour’s interest in the case is most likely political. He recently praised the Citizen’s Council, a known white supremacist group, for helping schools in Mississippi integrate quietly.
What the Council did was make sure the schools integrate as slowly as possible, threatening and carrying out actions that intimidated people into not stepping over the color line, federal law notwithstanding.
The report about the release of the Scott Sisters said it would take 45 days for the paperwork for the release of the Scott Sisters to be completed. Once out, they will be allowed to travel to Florida to live with their mother, who has been caring for their children since their incarceration.
I hope that Jamie holds out that long, that she holds out long enough to get to Florida and get the help she needs. I also hope that those who love and demand justice never give up and give out, no matter how hard the journey.
Even as I write this, in the wee hours of December 30, there has been no mention of the case on CNN, the so-called “most trusted name in news.” I guess this doesn’t qualify, not like the blizzard, or like the missionary in Haiti who was released from prison after being accused of kidnapping a Haitian child.
Hooray for the Scott Sisters. Hooray for those who worked tirelessly for their release. And shame on Mississippi for handing out such an inhumane sentence for this crime. We still have a way to go in meting out justice for minorities and poor people.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

Christmas and Chanukah Not Seasonal

2010-12-07T09:14:00.001-08:00

I read a fascinating article this week which talked about the difference between Christmas and Chanukah.
Rabbi Michael Lerner noted that both holidays, the one celebrated by Christians and the other by Jews, share a message, that it is possible to bring a message of light and hope in a world of darkness, oppression and despair. But he said that ‘whereas Christmas concentrates on the life of a single individual who was supposed to bring liberation, Chanukah is about a national liberation struggle involving an entire people who seek to remake the world through struggle with an oppressive social and political order.”
The political, economic and social order is so oppressive that people will do anything to survive. Women sell their bodies; people sell drugs, even to kids, not caring whose lives they are messing up. Just this week, a 14 year old boy, an American citizen, was arrested for killing four people. He was under the direction of the Mexican drug cartel and was paid to kill people. He said he did it because he wanted to escape the squalor in which he lived, and he said he “loved” killing people.
Surely, there is a need for light in this world. And who but we who love God should be bearers of that light?
We celebrate the birth of the Christ, but as an isolated holiday where the emphasis is gifts to each other, not provision of light to the world. How wonderful it would be if we as Christians would take on the national liberation struggle seeking to remake the world through struggle with our oppressive social and political order?
This week, the Republicans forced a compromise on tax cuts that will allow the most wealthy people to continue to get tax breaks for at least two more years. That was their price for extending unemployment benefits for another 13 months for the long-term unemployed. There was no justice in what they did; the wealthy will only get more wealthy, and the tax cuts for them will add about $500 billion to the federal deficit.
In the end, the poor will bear the brunt of suffering for the spoiled habits of the rich. There is no justice in that.
We need to be the light of Christmas and Chanukah, long after the tree is down and the lights are put in storage. We need to concentrate on being the light to those who live consistently in darkness, from homeless kids to homeless adults to people suffering from HIV/AIDS to inmates trying to make it in a society which is so closed to them to abused women … we need to be the light of Christmas every single day.
I would say that we give food consistently to feed the hungry; the number of homeless and hungry are increasing, not decreasing. We need to make sure we take care of our children, making sure they can read and write and compete in this world. We cannot afford to think that Christmas is a one day a year thing, or that the Christmas season is only a December event.
Not so. There is too much darkness in this world, due to oppression. The tax breaks given to the wealthy does not mean that there will be more jobs for people, or relief for those suffering. We who love God need to take the spirit of Christmas and Chanukah and make it a year long center of everything we do.
We cannot afford to do anything less.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith

Not to Fret ...

2010-11-30T12:42:00.000-08:00

We can do all things through Christ.
When I came here, way too many years ago, that scripture from the book of Philippians was our mantra. We had so little; all we had was God. But I was convinced then, as I am convinced now, that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
These are not “pie in the sky” words. They are, in fact, a statement of fact. When an individual has the faith that no matter how daunting the task, because he or she believes in the something “greater” than him or herself, all things are possible.
All things? All things that are within the will of God. It is God’s will that we pull through our current financial crisis, and because of that, if we hold onto the truth of the words Paul spoke to the Philippians, we will see God pull yet another miracle here.
What we cannot do is pull back on mission and ministry. We cannot hold our heads in our hands and wail with a sense of hopelessness. We can be frustrated; we can get angry or even anxious, but we cannot go into a tailspin of dismay. Our God is an awesome God- when times are good and easy and when times are not so good and difficult.
I saw a news story this week about a young girl who was in Haiti the day the earthquake hit. She was under literally tons of rubble; big pieces of what looked like a cement building covered her, but she was alive, and a young man heard her cry.
With his bare hands, he began pulling that rubble off her. I don’t know how long he dug, and the story did not indicate that he had any help. He dug, though, with his bare hands; he moved those big pieces of destroyed building with none but God, breathing into him, fueling him, releasing the adrenaline that was obviously being released …and he got her out.
She was alive but badly injured; one of her legs was badly mangled. She was flown back to the United States, and though she lived, she lost that leg.
How about it hasn’t stopped her? How about with one good leg and one prosthetic she is rock climbing in Arizona, and how about, with one good leg and one prosthetic, she is about to run a marathon?
She recently went back to Haiti, to see where she had been trapped and to see the young man who rescued her. She wanted to thank him and she wanted to say “good bye.” The young man who had dug literally tons of debris off a girl with his bare hands stood next to and embraced the young woman who lost her leg yet is rock climbing and is going to run a marathon.
Those kinds of stories fuel me, and it is those types of stories that I want you to think about and even seek out as we pass through this leg of our wilderness journey. If we do God’s work, God will provide for us; money follows mission. Our primary emotion in through here should not be desperation but rather determination to be steadfast and immovable, putting God first. God sees us; God hears us; God loves us.
The way we love God back is to proclaim that we can do all things through Christ …who does and who always has …strengthened us.
Have a good week!

Pastor Smith

Let's Read to the Children

2010-11-11T10:41:00.000-08:00

Let’s do something beautiful for God …and for our community. Let’s say, “Here we are, Lord, send us.”
I read a disturbing report the other day about the underachievement of African American males being a “national catastrophe.” The report, posted by Richard Prince of the Maynard Institute, quoted a nreport done by the Council of the Great City Schools which said that “black males continue to perform lower than their peers throughout the country on almost every indicator.”
The study said that there has been no “concerted national effort to improve the education, social and employment outcomes of African American males, who are not receiving appropriate attention from federal, state and local governments, or from community organizations.”
Dorothy Gilliam, a journalist who founded a group called Prime Movers, which provides mentors for high school journalists, said that the lapse for black kids starts early. “If young children are not being read to and communicated with at a level that encourages them to be inquisitive and learn, they are behind from the beginning.”
The report cited a host of social realities for black children which contributes to their academic performance.
We know all those factors. We’ve heard them all before.
So, let’s do something. Let’s do something beautiful for God …and for our community.
Beginning in 2011, let’s have a literacy program for young children. Let’s make it simple: having kids here at the church, with those who are so inclined to be here to read to them, get them to talk, open their minds and their natural inquisitive natures.
Let’s read to them stories we have all taken so much for granted. Let’s read to them so that they hear words and notice sentence structure. Let’s read to them so that their little eyes glisten and their spirits yearn for more.
Let’s do this. Let’s be a part of the solution, loving our kids and our community enough to do what we must for our kids. Perhaps the nation, the state, and the city will provide grants for us to build our program. Perhaps if we take one step, the Lord will take two.
That’s what we always say, right?
One of the reasons I always want a 12 foot Christmas tree in front of the church is to make a statement that Jesus is the light of the world…and Advent is the light of the community.
Let’s be a light; let’s serve our children. Let’s do it and set up a quantitative tool so that we can measure our progress and the progress of the kids.
It is a fact that all kids want to do well in school, and when they don’t they get discouraged. They become behavior problems, and eventually, they drop out. Once they drop out and begin to get into trouble, they become food for a greedy and unjust justice system.
So, let’s do something beautiful for God. Let’s make it a goal to help our kids, to keep a few more kids out of gangs, to raise the self esteem of our little black boys and prepare them to be competitors in this world that loses no love for those of our community who fall through the cracks.
Anyone interested, email me. Let’s meet and get this going. Let’s plan it out so that it has substance and form. Let’s set it up to be a success, to draw any kid who needs to come and who wants to come.
Let’s do something beautiful for God …and read to the children.

Pastor Smith

Let's Do Something Beautiful for God!

2010-11-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

Let’s do something beautiful for God.
That’s what Mother Teresa said to her young novices as they worked and lived with the poor of India. Her demand that they see the poor and suffering as God would see them set a movement in motion that literally spread all over the world.
There is no losing when we as people of God set our sights on serving. There are so many who are in need, and so many willing to ignore them or blame them for their situations. There are young people “out there,” kind of making it on their own. There are old people who live lonely, solitary lives with nobody around to check on them. There are little children in our own community who do not have coats or gloves or food to eat at dinner time. If we as people of God ask for the eyes of God, we are able to see the world as God does, and can easily serve, because the need is so great.
I had a dream not long ago that we, Advent, changed course. We had a short praise and worship service on Sunday morning, and then we hit the streets. We went to the homeless and the hungry and the lonely and the lost, and we gave ourselves. We were identified by tee shirts and hats that said Advent United Church of Christ, but we were more identified by the passion with which we served. We sang to those who would listen; we danced for those who would watch. We hugged those who needed hugging and listened to those who had not been heard.
We served.
With the results of the last election, the need to serve will be even greater, I am afraid. We will have to do more to serve “the least of these” because the gap between them and the wealthy is widening. Not only that, but the rich really are becoming richer; corporations have been posting record profits while the vast majority of us are flailing in deep water with strong currents going against us. If we who love God do not serve, we will have missed an opportunity to show the world that God is real, that God is good, and that God cares.
I am proud to be the pastor of a congregation which, in spite of having few resources, does much with little. God has given the vision to serve and God will provide for that vision. We need only step up with joy and love and eagerness. God will take care of us.
In this upcoming holiday season, the need to serve will be even greater. Let’s do something beautiful for God. Let’s get out and hit the streets and touch people who are too often ignored. Let’s bring them in to get warm and teach them that they matter. Let’s be a light in this community, the likes of which we cannot even imagine. God has kept us this long for a reason, and I think the reason and the season is upon us.
The last election notwithstanding, God is good. Politicians lied to get into office, and will spend their time figuring out how to stay in office and prepare for the next election, letting the very people I’m talking about languish. The people are not their concern; their own lives are. That is just the reality.
The Jewish people have a thing called “Tikkun Olam.” It calls for people to engage in the sacred repair of God’s world; it is the impetus for social action and social justice within the Jewish faith. It is, I think, doing something beautiful for God. Rabbi Judith Jacobs wrote a book, “There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice Through Jewish Law and Tradition.” If we who love God will not pursue social justice and tend to the least of these, then who will?
I say that it is our time, our season, Advent.
Let’s do something beautiful for God!

On Faith, Captivity and Breakthrough

2010-10-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

If ever there was a story about faith, we saw it this week.
After being trapped for 69 days more than 2300 feet underground in a mine, we saw 33 Chilean miners brought to safety.
When the mishap was first reported in August, stating that the miners were all alive, joy was tempered with somber reality when experts said they might not be able to be rescued until Christmas. When they were found to be alive, they had already been trapped in the mine for 17 days.
My heart sank. How in the world would these guys be able to survive?
The painstaking rescue process began, with these 33 men trapped in a space about the size of an average living room.
Reports were issued daily on the drilling efforts that would get them out. Christmas seemed so far away…
And then last week the word came that the drilling had broken through to the men. Rescue efforts were working; with God’s help, they’d be able to lift those men to safety by week’s end.
I sat in awe as I saw that capsule release the first miner, then another, then another. And what struck me most was that all of them gave all the credit for their rescue to God.
Even down in the mine, the messages they sent up was that God was, God is …good.
That would be crazy faith.
The situation made me glad I believe in God, glad that about all I have is faith. Faith works in the darkest, deepest places of our lives. This Chilean mining episode proves that.
The situation also showed that breakthrough is often slow and deliberate, and rescue slow as well. Breakthrough and rescue require faith, but also some adjustments on our part. Once there is breakthrough and rescue, we are not the same.
These miners and their families will soon be hit with that reality.
But what I keep going back to is how these guys kept God front and center, though they were literally near the center of the earth. They kept faith though they were often cold and sometimes, were in knee-deep water, some reports have said.
What a time to show God that their faith was real. It was as though they were living out Job’s statement, “Yet, though he slay me, yet will I believe in him.”
In a world and society where cynics and skeptics doubt God’s presence, and where religious fanatics and hypocrites cast God and how God works in an unfavorable light, it was good to see people standing on the promises of Jesus, the presence of Jesus, and the power of Jesus.
Now, as their breakthrough has come, I, for one, will pray that their lives increase in faith as they remember how God kept them down in that mine…so they wouldn’t let go!

People of God Can't be Silent About Bullying

2010-10-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of discussion in the media the past couple of weeks about bullying.
Bullying has always been a problem, but it has been a problem that has been largely ignored. There seemed to be an underlying sentiment that “kids will be kids” and a willingness to ignore it on the part of adults. As for kids, they have been largely quiet because to “squeal” about being picked on would almost certainly lead to more torment.
But times have changed, and the bullying, which now has the ability to be done via the internet as well as in person, has begun to push too many kids to despair to ignore. Kids used to react to the bullying by maybe feigning illness or becoming loners, or maybe becoming behavior problems for teachers and administrators.
But now, more and more bullied kids are resorting to suicide or other means of self-destruction.
By now, everyone has heard of the suicide of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who jumped off the George Washington Bridge to his death. Last year, a young girl committed suicide after the parent of a classmate bullied her via the internet. And this week, a story aired about a father, tired of his daughter being bullied on her school bus, confronted her tormentors himself. He was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor. As his daughter, who suffers from cerebral palsy, explained how she had been bullied, she burst into tears.
Enough is enough.
Pray with me, Advent family, as I seek guidance from God on what we can do as a church to address this serious problem. I am sure we have students in our own congregation who have been bullied, and I am sure they have friends who have been bullied as well. If we, the people of God, are silent and inactive in the face of a serious problem, then who can be expected to step up …in the name of this Jesus whom we hail as redeemer? Aren’t we supposed to not only imitate the Christ but represent Him – to do what Jesus would do?
I hardly think Jesus would be silent with this bullying increasing as it is, and with kids being so tormented that they not only hate themselves but are driven to suicide. How many kids are scared to death to say anything about what they are enduring on a daily basis? How many kids’ grades are suffering not because they cannot do the work or are not paying attention, but because they are being bullied and picked on?
Their misery has to be compounded if, when they tell teachers and administrators, little to nothing is done, and they know that to tell parents would mean certain increase of bullying.
It seems that 1) we need to find out in our community how deep is the problem; 2) we need to know what schools in our community are doing and 3) we need to give kids and parents guidelines on how to deal with this problem.
I ask you to pray with me as I deal with this and try to find out how we, as a force in this community, can be beacons of change, or at least beacons of information so that change can come. We need to care about the problem because it affects the children and young adults over whom we are directed by God to provide comfort, direction and guidance.
Kids are bullied because they are fat, skinny, too dark, too smart (whatever that means), because they are sick, or developmentally, physically, or emotionally challenged, because they are gay or someone thinks they are gay, because they don’t wear the latest clothes, because they refuse to “sag” their pants, because they get good grades, because they want to do something with their lives …the list goes on and on.
God asks, “Whom shall I send?” and the prophet Isaiah says, “Here I am, Lord! Send me!”
Send us, dear Lord. Send us. Please, let’s pray together.
Pastor Smith

2010-09-28T14:30:00.001-07:00

Dr. Martin Luther King once said that “power without love is reckless and abusive and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”
I have thought a lot about that quote as I have listened to and read the developing story about Bishop Eddie Long.
Surely, Bishop Long is a powerful man. His congregation numbers over 25,000 ( a number which staggers my imagination!). He has met and eaten with presidents and past presidents of this country. He has preached all over the world.
Yet, it seems that he, as so many of us do, exercised power without love – meaning that he became more impressed with the power than with the love that his office – and mine – dictate that we exercise.
Corporations, which are already wealthy enough to hoard money while this society clamors for relief, want only to make more money. Chambers of Commerce all over this country sit and think about not how to get jobs for those on the lowest levels of our society’s ladder, but instead, how to create jobs that will bring them millions more dollars. They seem to exercise power …without love…leading them to become reckless and abusive.
On the other hand, Dr. King noted that love without power is sentimental and anemic. What good is it to love God’s people, the so-called “least of these,” if you have no power to help them? I remember my mother saying that “love don’t pay the bills.” Touché. When we can see a problem but can do nothing about it, we become frustrated, and instead of hurting others, as those with power without love are apt to do, we often turn our frustration inward, hurting ourselves.
The trick is to get the balance. We have lots of love here at Advent UCC; we need some power. We need to recognize the power we do have and use it, and work to get more power so that we can do effective ministry. How do we do that? By stepping out of comfort zones of shyness and timidity and walking bolding in our relationship with the Christ so that we can see where the Christ is leading us. I do believe Jesus is leading us, and has been, but we have been way too reticent and way too laid back to see where He is pointing us.
If the arc of the universe is long but indeed does bend toward justice, then we who love ought to reach for the power that Jesus will give us to make that justice happen. God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, but of …power, of love, and of sound mind.
Who we are and what we were put here to do has not yet come to fruition. I am suggesting that in love, we seek the power that God wants to give us.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith

Dare We NOT Vote?

2010-09-21T12:00:00.001-07:00

There is a spirit of malaise and fatigue amongst Americans, too many of whom are struggling to survive in this economy, but with the upcoming mid-term elections coming up, I have to urge you: vote.
Vote if you’re tired. Vote if you’re angry. Vote if you’re skeptical. Vote. Why?
Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, as African Americans, too many of our people gave up their lives and suffered great pain and injustice to get for us the right to vote. I wish you would all read Taylor Branch’s books on the work of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The work Dr. King and the Civil Rights workers did, the obstacles they faced, the murders of innocent people which went unmentioned, unknown, or glossed over, is hard to digest. Most of us have no idea. We are like people sitting in a concert. We see an hour or two of a performance and have no idea how many days, hours, months and years it took to get to that point. We are enjoying the work of our ancestors and predecessors. They could not vote. It was illegal for them to vote. They were kept powerless while they were made to pay taxes and fight for this country …They knew that phase one of them becoming real citizens of this country was securing the right to vote. They did it for us. We owe it to them to take the gift they gave us.
The second reason to vote is because NOT voting will help usher in, perhaps, people and policies which do not help us. It is foolhardy to believe that years of reckless spending done by the previous administration could be or would be corrected in two years! There have been policies set in place that will help this country and this world get out of the hole we are in now. But to stay home, pouting, mad because “change you can believe in” didn’t come soon enough, deciding not to vote, will not bode well for the majority of people in this nation.
By this time, I am not sure if Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative, political titles that we throw around, make much difference, but I am sure that we who believe in justice have, really, only one tool to help make sure that justice flows like an everlasting stream …and that is to vote. Most of you have received absentee ballots. Use them. Fill them out and send them in. Encourage your friends and family to do the same. Help be a part of a groundswell of quiet determination that we WILL be heard, and we will NOT let anyone or any party be the boss of us.
Our predecessors and ancestors died …and suffered …and struggled …for such a time as this. I would hope that we would honor their work and their love for us by making sure we use this most precious gift they gave us, a gift this nation promised to all but kept from so many for too long.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith

Money, Mission and God

2010-09-07T15:08:00.001-07:00

Money follows mission.
Whenever a church or a group does mission, money follows. You almost don’t have to ask. People see what you’re doing and they want to help; I think it’s natural for people to want to help. That means people naturally want to give money, but they have to see the mission first.
With that in mind, a couple of things hit me: one, as much as we work on outreach, we still have not gotten or done a clear-enough mission project. There is so much we can do and need to do. We could teach English as a second language classes, or have a program where we work on improving the literacy of the children in our community. We could have regular parenting classes for young mothers, or support groups for grandmothers who find themselves raising their children’s children. We could reach out to African American youth who are on a fast track to nowhere, providing them education and exposure to all kinds of things, with the intent that such work often changes lives.
Second, it hit me that as we become more mission minded, we will not have to worry about money. If God gives the vision, God gives the provision. That’s how God works.
To that end, I am going to have a “mission meeting” on Thursday, September 30, at 7 p.m. I want you all to be in prayer, not only about mission, but about your role in making the mission come to fruition. If we have just one mission to add to, say, our sandwich makers outreach, we will be closer to doing God’s work and will than we are right now.
I am going to ask those who can to fast that week, from 6 a.m. from 6 p.m. Nothing to eat or drink for 12 hours a day that week. I am thinking of having brief prayer every day that week at 6 p.m. where we pray and break the fast together. Not only will we pray about our mission, but about where we want to be by this time next year. The praying and fasting should make the vision clear. I am going to need for those of you who will participate in this project to let me know, via the church office.
God did not put us here or keep us here to flounder. God put us here to thrive and be a witness and a light to this community, this city and this state. God put us here to let people know that God never fails, and that God sustains and supports those who trust in Him/Her.
We come to worship, but we must leave to serve.
God would have it no other way.
Have a good week!
Pastor Smith

A Dream Realized?

2010-08-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

Now that Glenn Beck’s rally is over and done with, let’s talk.
While I was bothered that the rally was held on the 47th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington, where he gave the “I Have a Dream” speech, I am more bothered by something else.
I am bothered by us, African Americans, who have not done nearly enough to make dreams come true in our own communities.
It is our children, African American children in poor neighborhoods, who are ignored, yes, by society but also by us. It is our children who enter and leave school with damaged spirits, low self-esteem and, consequently, low ability to read, write and do math. It is our children who are still the least equipped to compete in the global economy, and it is not entirely the fault of society. We must shoulder the blame as well.
So many children in our neighborhoods have no dreams, no aspirations, nothing. They know little than what they see and hear every day. They are often talked at, not talked to. Too many of them go to bed hungry, and too many suffer from undiagnosed illnesses. Those whose illnesses are known are often unable to get medical care, and though the democracy we live in should be concerned, it is not.
So, what do we do, cry in our soup? I remember once saying that we need to have a literacy program here, after school, during the summer, where we read to our children, exposing them to the wonder and power of words. I wanted us to get them interested in reading and then writing, thus opening their world.
Nobody wanted to do it.
There is a school in Detroit where two white professors from Wayne State University have created a Math Corps camp. Students in this camp attend school in a city known for its poor public education, yet under the innovative teaching of these teachers, these students, thought to be lost, are excelling in their educations. Ninety percent are graduating from high school and going on to college. When asked why they think their techniques are working, the professors say it is because yes, they are teaching math in innovative ways, but also because they are teaching courage, confidence and compassion.
Wow. We could do that.
We could make a difference by grabbing onto what we would want to teach, and deposit into kids who are so often ignored and devalued those qualities, qualities which would help them value themselves as people and have the confidence anyone needs to overcome securities and push toward their potential.
We say at the end of service that we have come to worship, but that we must leave to serve. I can think of no more exciting thing to do than to awaken in our children their potential and an ability to dream. In so doing, we counteract the bigotry and hatred that too often colors our world and theirs, and brings the dream of a fallen leader a little closer to being realized.
Have a good week!

Pastor Smith

Shirley Sherrod my Newest Hero

2010-08-25T04:47:00.000-07:00

Shirley Sherrod is my newest hero, or she-roe, I should say.
Ms. Sherrod this week turned down two jobs offered to her by the Secretary of Agriculture. After being wrongfully accused of discriminating against white people on her job by a “sound-bite” clip posted by Andrew Breitbart and being hastily fired by a worried White House, Ms. Sherrod said this week she is not going back.
“I have moved on,” she said.
Ms. Sherrod impressed me from the first with her courage and candor. She stood up to a Goliath threatening to take her down and called its bluff. She stands by everything she has said, including the claim that it was “the White House” that asked her to resign.
At the age of 62, she has done something really remarkable. Instead of going back and getting another government job, which is most secure type of job any person could want, she has chosen instead to get out of the boat, to risk getting wet, as she walks toward a new life.
Not only does she have courage and candor, she has some crazy faith!
A friend and I were talking about that story about Jesus walking on the water. “What really happened to Peter once he took his eyes off Jesus?” my friend asked.
“He got wet. That’s all. He got wet. The others stayed in the boat and never risked getting wet, but they lost out on a wonderful time with Jesus.”
Those three little words, “he got wet” have resonated with me ever since my friend said them to me. Shirley Sherrod has stepped out of the boat of comfort and security and may get wet, but I would bet that the best time of her life is before her.
That’s called “breakthrough.”
We cannot do anything if we refuse to take risks, do a new thing, with faith that the God who created us is in the house and on the job. This God knows our hearts and sees our dreams. It is not God who holds us back. God is walking toward us; we refuse to get out of our boats and walk toward God …because we are afraid to get wet.
There can be no breakthrough until we try God. It is amazing that people of faith show how little faith we have when we come to critical moments requiring faith. We have to develop a faith that says, with resolve, that God has us, and if we fall and get wet while we are walking toward Jesus, we will not drown.
We will merely…be wet.
I look forward to seeing what Ms.Sherrod’s next steps will be. She is a warrior for justice and for the voice of right. Discrimination is not of God or from God; she was going to discriminate against a white person but God tapped her on the shoulder and reminded her that all people are God’s children.
Discrimination is therefore not allowed.
I am so appreciative that Ms. Sherrod stood up and said, “Oh no! I will not go down like this!” She brought Breitbart to light, with his misleading video, put “out there” to feed his own bigotry. Ms. Sherrod must be one of God’s anointed, because God, through Shirley Sherrod, certainly did not let this ploy of Breitbart’s bring the results he wanted.
Ms. Sherrod is moving toward her breakthrough, after years of fighting for justice.
She is …my newest she-roe.
Have a good week!
Pastor Smith

Parents and "The Village"

2010-08-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

It takes a village to raise a child.
No truer words were ever spoken.
You have heard me talk about how different people are better parents at specific times of a child’s life. Some people are good with infants, no matter how cranky. Others love the curiosity of the toddler and do not mind following the toddler’s every move. Some like little kids, you know, kindergarten, and others cannot tolerate them. Still others like pre-teens.
And yes, some love to work with teens.
But it is a fact that many of us are not equipped to handle, well, all the stages of a child’s growth, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
The problem is that we don’t function as a village, and so many parents end up feeling trapped and frustrated as they deal with the challenges of raising children.
Some would say that if a person thinks he or she cannot manage having kids, he or she should not have them. I understand that; I waited until I was older before I had children. But the fact of the matter is that many to most people do not think about the challenges of raising children until after they are here. By then, it’s too late.
My daughter takes care of a young girl who, as an infant, was shaken by her mother. The little girl suffered severe brain damage. And just this week, a young mother suffocated both her little boys, ages 1 and 2, before strapping them into their car seats and allowing her car to sink into a river.
She was frustrated and unemployed and couldn’t take the pressure of not being able to do what she wanted and needed to do, and, apparently, her situation was made worse by her mother who, according to reports, criticized her mercilessly.
“The village” is a life-saver, both for mother and child. It is no poor reflection on any parent to admit that he or she is just not equipped to deal with his or her own child at a given time. I heard a mother on the radio share a story about the difficulty she is having raising her 14 year old daughter. The daughter was sitting on the sofa putting hair spray on her hair and ruining her mother’s sofa. When the mother reacted in anger, the situation exploded and got worse.
There is a lot of that going around.
If we are going to break the cycle of kids hating themselves, we are going to have to be different kinds of parents, parents who use “the village” as a God-given tool to help us. I am concerned about all children and parenting in general, but I am of course specifically concerned about African American children and parenting in our community.
We cannot afford to be bad parents, nor can we afford to have false pride. We have to be ready and willing to celebrate our strengths and admit our weaknesses and get help. It’s not for us that we need to do that, but for the children, over whom God has made us stewards. We need to use the agencies available to get help for our weaknesses so that we can be more whole, even as we use the strengths of “the village” to raise healthy, whole children.
Children are God’s gifts to us. Our gift to God is being the best parents we can be, using “the village” to help us where and when we need help.
Have a good week!
Pastor Smith

Work While it is Day

2010-08-10T08:44:00.001-07:00

One thing we all know is that life is a gift.
One thing we do not do is act like we know what we know.
With the untimely and unfortunate death of our member James Chapmyn, it hit me again that life is fragile and fleeting. We are here now, but there is no guarantee we will be here tomorrow, or even a minute from now.
What do I mean when I say we don’t act like we know life is a gift? We take it for granted. We take it for granted that we will be here, that our loved ones will be here and that we have time to get things right.
Someone said that the worst gift a person can have is the gift of time, because we take it for granted, squander it and waste it.
Too often, when a loved one dies, we are consumed with guilt. Yes, we are sad he or she is gone, but we are consumed with guilt because we know we did not love like we should have, forgiven like we should have, or even taken care of this one who has transitioned like we should have. We said things we didn’t mean, did things we should not have done and not done things we should have, never thinking that we might not have the opportunity to “fix it” before that person was taken from us.
We take our own lives for granted, too. We are always in “gonna” mode. We’re always putting stuff off that we should not, saying we will start tomorrow, or next week, or whenever. Then, the Angel of Death comes, not respecting our intentions but noting our actual lives, but by then, it’s too late.
If nothing else, James’ death ought to wake us up. We are here to love God, and to serve God. We have now, right now, to do it. James worked for God while he was here … he loved being in the spotlight and we knew that was part of who he was, but he also served with love. When we went to New Orleans, he was here at 4 in the morning, cooking and serving a full breakfast for us. When I said we needed a piano, James went out looking and the piano we have he found at a flea market. He called me and told me to hurry up, come down and see it and play it. He made pins of our Rose Window which we give out to visitors. I can still see him grinning, walking up the sidewalk, carrying these pins, glad to be in the service.
There is a song that says “I believe I’ll testify while I have a chance, ‘cause I may not have a chance anymore.” This is the day that the Lord has made, and this moment is the moment we have been given to serve. We are being called to serve more and more, to leave the comfort of these four walls and go out into the community. There are people who need to know that God is real, and that Christians are people with the heart of God in them. Not a single effort that we make for God will go unnoticed; conversely, every action or gift that we withhold from God, for whatever reason, is noticed by God, too.
The Bible says that Jesus will come like a “thief in the night.” Do not concentrate on what you do not have. Concentrate, rather, on what you do have and give your all to God. Testify, while you have a chance, ‘cause you may not have a chance anymore.
God bless you all. I love you.

Pastor Smith

Double Standards of Accountability Not Acceptable

2010-08-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

There has been a report out that an American born and educated man is considered to be the heir apparent to Osama Bin Laden. He is pushing violence, basing it on anti-American sentiments and passion, but couching it in a religious context.
This man is reportedly so dangerous that he is on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) list of people that the agency wants killed, but people who are watching him say not to kill him because doing so would make him a martyr and make his cause more popular.
The “online imam,” 39-year old Anwar al-Awlaki, is causing concern among Americans, linked to last year’s Fort Hood shootings and the attempted hijack of an American Airlines jet on Christmas Day, 2009.
His father has launched a lawsuit against the United States government to get his son’s name taken off the CIA’s “capture or kill list.”
The story in and of itself is fascinating, but it is a question that a CNN anchor asked a reporter covering the story that caught my interest. Most of us feel like religious people, particularly religious leaders, ought to be above the fray of violence and hatred and, frankly, ignorant arrogance.
That sentiment was caught as this CNN anchor asked, “Why aren’t other Muslim clerics stepping up and saying that this man is wrong?” In other words, why aren’t the religious leaders calling this particular religious leader to accountability …not to them but to God?
Well, now. Isn’t that always the case? Too man religious leaders are in the world and of the world, concerned with their own interests and “careers” as opposed to the Word of God? How many religious leaders spoke out about the Holocaust, or about racism or sexism or homophobia? How many Christian religious leaders have been silent when the world and its putrid situations have called for a cry from the righteous?
Whenever one speaks up for what appears to be the word, work and will of God, he or she risks being ostracized by the group. A classmate of mine in seminary said that his father, a pastor, hated racism but would not speak out against it because he knew he’d lose members or maybe his job. His board reined him in, telling him that they paid his salary.
At the end of the day, though, the final paycheck is given by God, who calls on all of us who call ourselves “called” to stand up for justice, no matter the cost. That is not and has not historically been the case. My thought was, as this anchor asked his question, incredulous at the apparent reluctance of other Muslim clerics to silence this young, influential man, was that he, the anchor, had forgotten that American clerics have been painfully silent through the most horrendous racism.
In fact, many American clerics have been complicit in the perpetuation of racism, discrimination, hatred and more. An American clergyperson sponsored the burning of Korans this week. The thought disgusts me, and yet, we as clergy, have been slow to call “our own” to accountability.
People who have studied American history, including its brand of democracy, have been quick to see the disconnects between ideology and praxis. Our ideology says “all men are created equal.” Our praxis says something else.
I realized that there was no point in my being angry at this anchor person, but I was.
Americans ought to stop applying a double standard to the subject of human rights, trying to dictate to others how to act when we fall so short ourselves.
Pastor Smith

How We Think Matters

2010-07-26T19:02:00.000-07:00

Slavery officially ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, but too many of us are still in shackles.
No, not iron shackles, binding our feet and hands, but mental and emotional shackles, which keep us from experiencing life to the fullest.
I thought about this last week, actually, when it became obvious to me that a whole lot of folks, black and white, are enslaved by the Conservative Right. The debacle with Shirley Sherrod made that all too clear, and, sadly, it showed that our president is included in the ranks.
The Liberal Left is enslaved because they are so worried about the upcoming elections and the 2012 presidential election. They are running scared, listening to poll numbers, and the rants of those on the Right who oppose President Obama and all he does.
The president is enslaved by that same group, and his slavery is exacerbated by a group of advisors, primarily white, who have advised him to steer clear of anything racial. Geez. President Clinton had more rapport and demonstrated more comfort talking about race than Mr. Obama.
That being as it is, however, my bigger concern is how WE are enslaved by the way we think. We think little. We think of all the reasons something cannot be done. We think of all the things we cannot do …and because of that, many of us are living stagnant, unproductive and unfulfilling lives.
There is something amazing that happens when we step out of our comfort zones, put our toes, metaphorically, in the warm sands of a new experience. It is as though the warmth beckons us and whispers to us that “we can,” and once we begin this new journey, we become transformed as we realize that the whispered message was correct.
We can do a whole lot more than we think we can.
Hard times are opportunities to find out just who we are, what we are made of, what is inside us. The Shirley Sherrod episode showed the NAACP and the White House how effectively they are enslaved by fear of the Right. President Obama, in addition, is enslaved by a fear of being “too black,” having been convinced that to talk on behalf of justice as concerns race is a sure way for him to alienate important voters in 2012.
We, on the other hand, ordinary people, are enslaved by clouds of self-doubt that serve to keep us “in our place.” We continue to be the backs upon which rich people get richer and powerful people become more powerful, mostly because we think we can do no better.
In this year of repentance and transformation, it is time for us to “turn away” from old things and “turn toward” the Christ. In that turning, it is time for us to ask Jesus to change our doubt to faith, to cleanse us of the skepticism which keeps us put, and to believe that Jesus will answer the prayer. It is time for us to stop saying what we cannot do, and jump into the possibilities of all that God has equipped us to do.
If God enpowered Gideon to beat 300,000 Midianite armed soldiers with 300 men armed with nothing but trumpets, jars and torches, then surely God stands ready to empower us to do great things as well, both individually and collectively.
Since God IS, we ARE. Physical slavery in this country was outlawed in 1863. It is time for us to outlaw our self-imposed slavery to the powers and principalities which can only survive if we decide we want to stay in our shackles

Lessons in Black History: White Opposition to Passage of Civil Rights Law

2010-07-22T14:03:00.001-07:00

Lessons in Black History:
White Opposition to Passage of Civil Rights Bill

The year was 1964, and the passage of a bill that would make it law to treat African Americans as Americans with rights outlined by the United States Constitution was nearly a reality.
White opposition to the bill, however, was broad and deep; although “segregationists” were expectedly opposed to the bill, so were many so-called liberals who felt that the balance of the United States was about to be horribly knocked askew.
People wanted “their country back,” and were incensed that President Lyndon Baines Johnson was intent on getting the bill passed.
That year, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-AZ, was running for president, and he didn’t want to make race an issue of his campaign, but did in fact shape his arguments so that people knew he was very well talking about race. About the pending passage of the civil rights bill, he “endorsed the segregationist charge that the new civil rights law was a cause rather than a cure for injustice” He said that” …the more the federal government attempted to legislate morality, the more it has actually incited hatred and violence.” The rift between those who believed in states’ rights and those who supported broader federal government involvement in some issues was highlighted as Goldwater criticized “big government” for imposing Social Security numbers, and telling you what to print on your cigarette pack.” (Pillar of Fire,p. 492)
Goldwater connected with Sen. Strom Thurmond,D-SC, and together, the Republican candidate for president and the Democratic senator criticized the element of the Democratic Party which supported passage of the bill. On September 16, Thurmond switched party affiliation, and as a new Republican, said, “The Democratic Party has abandoned the people…(it has) invaded the lives of people … has succored and assisted our Communist enemies…worships at the throne of power and materialism …has protected the Supreme Court in a reign of judicial tyranny.” (Pillar, p. 493) Thurmond and Goldwater agreed that if Democrats “prevail, freedom as we have known it in this country is doomed.” (p. 493)
Meanwhile, violence against black people in the South continued, largely ignored by law enforcement, local, state and federal. In fact, many law enforcement officers were known to participate in the violence, incidents which included bombings, murders and terrorism. As black people participating in the Civil Rights movement were being beaten and arrested, held without trial, and losing their homes, churches and their lives, many whites, from law enforcement to white newspapers, reported that the blacks were burning their own homes and murdering each other, and blaming white people.
Black people pushed for civil rights, which included, first and foremost, the right to vote, in spite of having little to no support or protection from law enforcement. Meanwhile, segregationists, some members of the KKK and some not, perceived it their godly and religious duty to stop the movement of blacks toward equity. Imperial KKK Wizard Sam Bowers “quoted the Book of Romans to ordain that any ‘fourth degree sanctions’ (the KKK designated term for “murder”) be accomplished by compartmentalized command “without malice” in the spirit of Christian soldiers.” (Pillar, p. 500)
Surely, there was a need for a bill to give African Americans the rights due to any human being.

Our Disease Keeps Flaring Up

2010-07-20T13:51:00.001-07:00

Perhaps we are living in a kairos moment, a God moment, and God Herself is parting the waters.
A brouhaha broke out last week when Ben Jealous, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), presiding over the 121st convention of that group drafted a resolution asking that the leadership of the Tea Party denounce the “racist elements” of that group. He was referring to the Tea Party members spitting on black legislators, referring to President Obama and his family in racist terms, and some of the other things we have all seen.
Jealous didn’t say the Tea Party itself was racist. He said that there were (and there are) racist elements in the Tea Party who have done and said offensive things and that the leadership should denounce them.
Mark Williams, the head of the Tea Party Express, fired back, saying that the entire NAACP was racist, and then he wrote a very offensive blog, a satire of Jealous, he said, where he had Jealous writing a letter to President Abraham Lincoln, asking what “we coloreds” would do, now that people expect us to take care of ourselves.
A member of the Tea Party later expelled Williams from the Tea Party Express, a black man, actually, who couldn’t say that what Williams had written was racist (“I am not able to say what is racist and what is not,” he said) but it was offensive, and took away from the goals of the Tea Party, which is to push for less government, less government spending, and lower taxes.
Well, folks got riled up, on both “sides,” and someone dug up a speech where Shirley Sherrod, who until this week worked for the federal government, was heard on tape saying that she was offended when a white farmer acted like he was talking down to her and didn’t do as much as she might …
But what she did do is help this same farmer save his farm, when it seemed nobody else could or would. The elderly white farmer said on television this week that she was not racist, that she saved their farm, a farm which they still have. “She’s not no racist,” the elderly Mr. Spooner, the farmer, said. “Seems to me like somebody just wanted to stir something up.” His wife agreed.
Ms. Sherrod says that as she was doing her job yesterday, “the White House,” or someone from the White House, a Cheryl Cook, Deputy Secretary for Underdevelopment, called her three times and pressured her to resign her post. She said that this Ms. Cook told her first to go on administrative leave. She was driving a government car, so she left her meeting and was on her way home. On that drive, she got three calls from Ms. Cook, pressuring her to resign. Ms. Cook said that Glenn Beck was going to run the tape that evening of what she’d said on that tape, and finally, asked pull over to the side of the road and offer her resignation.
Then, to add insult to injury, Ben Jealous, on behalf of the NAACP, denounced this woman.

My question is, why didn’t the government and Jealous look into the entire statement and speech Sherrod made before they threw her on the chopping block? Sherrod said that she promised her father, the night he was murdered by a Klansman, that she would not leave the South and that she would do all she could to end racism, in her own little way. She said she decided to turn the pain of knowing her father had been murdered for no other reason than he was hated by some whites … that she would turn this negative into a positive.
Someone should have looked into the depth of this story before they threw Sherrod under the bus.
All of us who are African American have felt the discomfort of feeling looked down upon by some white person just because of our color. We have known the difficulty of doing right when we have felt like not doing it. I think I heard her say that though on the day she met with Mr. Spooner she didn’t do all she could on that day, she eventually relented to her sense of right in the eyes of God, and helped that man save his farm.
Oh, the story needs to be opened and told. The Tea Party and Right Wingers who dug this up as a sort of trump card following the dispute between the Tea Party and NAACP got her fired. How many real cases of discrimination have gone ignored? How many white government workers have not done all they can to help black farmers.
Oh, by the way. Ms. Sherrod made the statement 24 years ago, and she wasn’t working for the government at the time.

Lessons in Black History - Teachers Take a Stand

2010-07-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

The year was 1965, and Lyndon B. Johnson had just been elected to his first full term as president of the United States. His inauguration was spectacular; an estimated 1.2 million people gathered on the Washington Mall, which was 60 times more people who had watched John F. Kennedy become president.
The war in Vietnam was a sore reality, already cutting into the legacy that LBJ would leave, even while another part of his legacy was the passage of the Civil Rights Bill into law. Although fiercely opposed, there was in America a sense of a passage traveled; people said then, as they said after Barack Obama was elected president, that the race problems of America had ended because of the bill’s passage.
People said that even as citizens and civil rights volunteers worked in the South to get black people the right to vote. The resistance to black voter registration was stubborn, unfair and violent…and persistent. People in the South objected to “outsiders” telling them what to do and how to run their states. White violence against black people trying to register was rampant and largely supported by white law enforcement officers and courts, presided over by racist judges.
In Selma, Alabama that year, African American schoolteachers decided to take a stand. Many of their young students had faced angry police officers and dogs, been burned with cattle prods, and gone to jail, fighting for the right of “grown folks” to vote. The teachers resolved that they had to support their students and the cause.
And so they arrived at Clark Elementary School, dressed in their Sunday best, according to author Taylor Branch, and marched, two by two, from the school toward the voting registrar’s office. Their action was a bold move, for not only did they face certain violence, they could have lost their jobs as well. Branch states that most of them owed their very jobs to white politicians. Nevertheless, they were moved to march, and march they did.
It was January 22 at 3:24 p.m. The teachers arrived at the registrar’s office to be told by the president of the school board that the office was closed. He also said that the teachers’ written requests to be allowed to register after classes were done had been denied. They were advised to leave.
The group’s leader, a Rev. F.D. Reese, asked if one or two teachers could be allowed to walk past the closed voting registrar’s office as a sign of their resolve to get the right to vote, but his request made the sheriff angry. Sheriff Jim Clark ordered the teachers off the premises, then proceeded to launch into them, nightstick flailing. He succeeded in shoving the teachers down the stairs, causing many to fall onto the sidewalk.
The teachers gathered themselves up and ascended the stairs two more times, only to pushed down the stairs both times. They defied authorities; 95 percent of the African American schoolteachers of Selma were represented in this march, and police knew they’d have a hard time if all were arrested. Finally, Andrew Young appeared and called the march to a halt; the teachers got back into their double line and marched back to Clark Elementary School.
The action garnered huge support for the teachers from the youth, who, up to this point, had scorned their apparent reluctance to “get involved.” And all of this happened while up north, people said the passage of the Civil Rights Bill into law had showed that America’s race problems had ended.

Tea Party Racism a Reality

2010-07-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held its 101st convention this week in Kansas City and presented a resolution asking the Tea Party to condemn its “rampant racism.”
Ben Jealous, president of this country’s oldest civil rights organization, said that the Tea Party has “dedicated racists and ultra nationalists” in its ranks, people who make no bones about not liking black people in general and President Obama in particular.
Mr. Jealous said that the aim of the Tea Party is to push the country back to pre-civil rights era conditions, but Mark Williams, speaking for the Tea Party, said it is the Obama administration that is seeking to do just that.
Huh?
Mr. Williams said that the president’s policies, including health care reform, threaten the human and civil rights of all Americans, including black people. He said that Mr. Obama has created policies that “have emasculated the black family.”
Huh?
Which black families is he talking about?
In fact, how many American families, period, is he talking about?
The facts have shown that though Americans pay more for health care than any nation in the world, we have the worst health care. We have a system based on profit for insurance companies, which has been at the expense of “the American people.”
All groups of people, from all ethnicities and economic classes, have suffered because our health care system is and has been more concerned with profit margins over the health and well being of American citizens.
When little children, black, white, and otherwise, are dying of infections garnered from a bad tooth that could not be treated because a parent didn’t have health care, something is morally wrong with the extant system. When people with cancer cannot get treatment because they do not have and cannot afford health care, something is wrong. When a family has to send a child overseas because he or she has a chronic illness, needs health insurance, isn’t working, but couldn’t get health care anyway because of his or her pre-existing condition, something is wrong.
WHO is it that’s been emasculated by Mr. Obama’s policies?
The Tea Party is not made up exclusively of racist people, but there are enough of them, people so racist that some felt it OK to spit on black legislators some months ago, and who compare Mr. Obama to Hitler …there are enough of them to taint the entire party, in my opinion. For Mr. Williams to state that the Obama’s policies “emasculate” the black family reeks of arrogance, ignorance and racism as well. What black families does he know which have been hurt by the prospect of having access to health care?
I hope that the Tea Party crashes and burns. I hope that its racism hits enough people who are at least embarrassed to be associated with a group which feels to be a euphemism for the Ku Klux Klan. These people are riled up and have lots of energy; I hope that voices of reason, stronger than the so-called “Coffee Parties,” rile up and push back, until the Tea Party is pushed into the Boston Harbor, ever to remain drowned in and because of its own racism, arrogance and ignorance.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith

I Happen to be a Christian

2010-07-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

Lessons in Black History
“I Happen to be a Christian”

The greatest strength of the Civil Rights movement was its insistence on non-violence. Using the Gospels as his guide, Dr. King and his organization spent hours teaching African Americans how to resist violent altercations with opponents of civil rights, relying on the “turn the other cheek” directive given by Jesus.
Some people thought, however, that Dr. King’s tactics were anti-Christian, and thought that non-violence incited people to attack each other. A conversation that Dr. King had on a flight with a white person went this way:
“A well dressed young passenger across the aisle recognized Dr. King. ‘I happen to be a Christian,’ he repeated several times, asking with a polite edge whether King thought he advocated ‘the same love Jesus taught’ even though King’s methods ‘incited one man against another.’ King replied that nonviolence aimed at a ‘love that is strong so that you love your fellow men enough to lead them to justice.’ He asked whether his questioner thought segregation was Christian. ‘I was anticipating that,’ the passenger warily replied, adding that he was less resolved on the large issue than on his hunch that King’s methods were ‘causing more harm than good.’ King asked what methods the passenger suggested, which eventually elicited an opinion that the new civil rights law was harmful, too, and would ‘just carry on the trend toward federal dictatorship.’ When he expressed his inclination to vote for Goldwater, they lightened the stakes by sparring over presidential election odds until the passenger moved to another seat.” (Taylor Branch, “Pillar of Fire,” p. 410)
White people upset by the thought of black people having civil and voting rights believed that such efforts would turn the United States into a socialist country. Members of the Republican Party, the “party of Lincoln,” began to leave their party and become Democrats, joining the ranks of well established Southern Democrats. To be for the rights of all people was to be “liberal,” and out of line with the principles established by the United States Constitution. Up until the civil rights movement, Republicans had been more aligned behind and in support of “Negro rights,” but it seems that their definition of “rights” was limited and the civil rights act definitely expanded the sphere beyond what most could accept. The federal government became the enemy as it pushed through the civil rights act, and the political ideology of Republicans shifted, representing white people who opposed civil and voting rights, while black people aligned themselves with Democrats, whose leader, President Lyndon Johnson, had pushed the civil rights bill through Congress.
Clearly, the idea of being a “Christian” was seen differently by whites and blacks. Many whites, opposed to rights for black people, said that Jesus himself believed in a stratified, separated, segregated society. The late Sen. Robert Byrd, arguing against passage of the Civil Rights bill, said, “If all men are created equal, how could five of the virgins have been wise and five foolish?” He further said that he had listened to the giants of theology and evangelism and wondered why they had never mentioned race, and, finally, he said that he had searched the scriptures and had found no scriptural basis upon which the Congress was obligated to pass the civil rights legislation.
People happened to be Christian, but clearly, the understanding and interpretation of the Gospels left wiggle room for those who sought Biblical justification.

Come to Worship; Leave to Serve

2010-07-06T14:23:00.000-07:00

Things are bad on the Gulf Coast; life there is altered significantly, if not forever, then for a very long time. Individuals and families have lost their livelihood, and bad economic times have just gotten worse because if one group of people are suffering we are all suffering. Stories say that crews are cleaning Gulf Coast beaches 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Efforts to get the oil cleaned up are controlled by the weather, and as hurricane season gears up, making the waters choppy and rough, it looks like a bad situation is going to get worse before it gets better.
But in spite of the Gulf Coast, I keep thinking about Haiti, you know, the poorest nation in the world. I keep thinking about the people living in tents, in shanty towns, really, with no electricity, no toilets, crammed together like sardines, in line to be hit by torrential rains and hurricanes as well.
It is so easy to forget. It is easy, too, to marginalize peoples’ suffering when we have not seen it or experienced it. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other towns on the Gulf Coast, it was absolutely eerie to see the devastation. There is a silence in destruction that is that extreme. Walking through the rubble, it was as though the very earth was crying out for help. If the earth was crying, then the people wailed…
Reports showed that the ripple effects of Katrina were great, and the ripples continue to this day, including deaths, mental disease, job loss, and, of course, loss of property. Teams of people are still going down to New Orleans to help rebuild. Some families are still living in trailers.
Instead of the need to serve getting smaller, it is getting larger. The people on the Gulf Coast need help. The people in Haiti need help, and victims of Katrina may still need help. People in Tennessee impacted by recent floods need help…
Jesus’ command to serve is great. No matter how small we may be, we are still obligated to live the Gospel and to bless others with whatever we can. Today we feed people in our community, and take leftover food to a shelter, and Tuesday we may be taking our hot lunch to a community where there is no recreation center. The deacons are collecting money so that we can build a well in West Africa so that people have clean water. We have begun to “go out” and live the Great Commission.
But with people in Haiti and Tennessee and the Gulf Coast still in need, we have more to do. The first step is praying for the people who are in need; and the second step is to pray for God to show us what we can do, and how, so that we may serve “while it is still day.”
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

Forgive as We Have Been Forgiven

2010-06-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

I was totally irritated this week when, after Chris Brown performed at the BET Awards, in a tribute to Michael Jackson, he broke down and people wondered if it was all a show.
Not only that, but an unforgiving spirit hung over all the television commentaries and blogs. Because Chris Brown treated Rihanna so poorly, it seems that many to perhaps most refuse to forgive him and doubt that his “remorse” is sincere.
I found the entire situation troubling one, because too many people automatically thought that Brown was merely being dramatic, and two, I would bet that many of those people turning their noses up at him are probably people who call themselves Christian, meaning, they are under divine command to forgive.
Brown was singing “Man in the Mirror” when he broke down, in tears. I thought, as I watched him, that many of us have looked into a mirror and finally seen who we really are, and have not been happy. Many of us have realized, seeing ourselves honestly for perhaps the first time, that we have messed up and messed up bad. Such a realization could bring anyone to tears.
If Brown had one of those kinds of moments, coupled with a profound sense of sadness that the King of Pop is really gone, yes, it might move him to tears.
I hate what happened between Brown and Rihanna. There is never a reason to hit a woman. That’s what I was taught. That’s what I thought, even, when I saw video of a cop hitting a belligerent girl in the face with his fist. My father said a real man never hits a woman, even when she pushes him. His advice, added to my own beliefs, makes me hate what happened to Rihanna at Brown’s hands, and in fact, makes me hate it whenever I hear of or see domestic violence.
But it happened, Rihanna (rightfully so) stopped seeing Brown, Brown went to court and did his community service. I hope he is in anger management classes …but even if he isn’t, the episode with Rihanna is over. If he is sorry, we who call ourselves Christian ought to receive his repentance and perhaps his disdain with himself with grace.
God receives us when we’re like that, and God does it with grace and love.
There are some things that all of us have done for which we will be deeply sorry for and maybe even embarrassed about until we breathe our last breath. The difference between us and Chris Brown is that our agony and embarrassment is private while his is virulently public.
But we certainly count on being forgiven by God, and if we’re with the right people, we hope for their forgiveness as well. It is part of the ethos of belonging to the Christ to not only accept forgiveness from God, but to give forgiveness to those we’ve wronged and receive remorse from those who offer it.
I hope Chris Brown drowns out the cynical opinions offered on his breakdown Sunday. I hope he gives his tears and his heart to God and gets the strength from God to go on and to get stronger. I hope that whatever is in him that drove him to hit Rihanna is slowly dissipating from his spirit.
And I hope that we who call ourselves Christian will let go of some of our cynicism and catch hold of more of God’s grace, so that we can give to others what has been freely given to us.
Have a good week.

We Can

2010-06-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

We can do anything we want. We merely have to really want to do it.
The driver, the force behind great things being done is not money, but it is the spirit and faith of the person or persons pushing their vision.
Too often, because there is a lack of sufficient funds (and there is always a lack of sufficient funds) people fold their arms and purse their lips and say “we cannot do it,” or “it can’t be done.”
What about God? What about the fact that we say all the time that we can do all things through Christ? Whatever all we do not have, we have God.
If we do not make God the center of all we do, then we “do religion” in vain. God desires us to try Him/Her, and to taste and see that God is good. If we never try God, we never taste God and God’s goodness.
It seems, though, that the best way to taste God’s goodness is to focus on others, not on ourselves. It seems that God wants to show us “the power of one, plus God.” One person, on fire, undeterred, unafraid, and steadfast about “doing good and using God,” can make God show up and show out.
We know that a vocal minority can persuade a silent majority that impossible-sounding things are beyond the scope of God. Really? This God, who made the world and everything in it? Can that truly be the case? Remember the story of Joshua and Caleb, and the 10 other spies sent to scope out the Promised Land? Ten spies came back with a negative report, and were able to sway the majority of the Israelites that they could not get into the land.
Only Joshua and Caleb said that because of God, “we can surely enter this land.”
The majority of Israelites believed the negative report and in fact did not see the Promised Land.
That is not the God I know. This God is a “rewarder of those who seek Him.”
This economy is bad, but God IS. God is …good, able, merciful, knowing … God IS.
As we move to raise the money for our parking lot, I hope we keep that thought in front of us and in the center of all we do. We don’t have the money (now), but we have God, always. God IS.
Let the redeemed say so…and move on it.
Pastor Smith

Rachel, Weeping for her Children

2010-06-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

Too often, we have no idea of the depth of suffering in our own country.
I read a troubling report this week that said this summer, literally thousands of school children will face hunger. These are kids who have relied on free lunches (and in some cases, breakfasts as wee) during the school year. With school out, and with free feeding programs scattered throughout cities and food pantries nearly dry, these same children will be left to eat junk food or compete for left-over food that just will not stretch far enough.
Because of this crisis, the report said, these kids will show up for school less healthy than they are now, and therefore, less able to learn.
This year, the report said a record 20.5 million school kids needed subsidized school lunches. For many, that lunch represents the only food they get on a daily basis.
If it is a fact that the kids will rely more on junk food to fill their empty stomachs, not only their ability to learn but their health will be compromised. Junk food adds empty calories and pounds, but little nutritional value, and food from fast food restaurants don’t do much better. Therefore, kids can be expected to be more obese, and suffer from diabetes and even hypertension, illnesses that are affecting more and more young children at an alarming rate.
Though the federal government provides funds for free school lunches, there are more hungry school children than there are federal dollars enough to feed them. Food sites which receive federal funds must be in areas where there are enough poor children to meet federal requirements. It is possible, therefore, for an area to be poor, but not poor enough, to qualify for free food.
The result is that the kids go hungry.
Some people in some areas have addressed and are addressing the problem and are distributing food from coolers in the backs of their vans or trucks, or from their church basements for fellowship halls, but food distributed this way does not qualify for federal funds. These lunches are paid for with private funds.
Still, the alternative is not acceptable; the thought of kids being hungry all summer is as troubling as was the thought of women re-using dirty diapers for their kids because they cannot afford Pampers. The economy may be getting better for some people, but not for the masses, not yet. If there are hungry children, then there must be food for them. Surely, we the community cannot let them languish and be miserable.
What do you think?
Pastor Smith

Walk Together Children

2010-06-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

Today we begin the next 20 years.
A new day, a new focus, a new spirit …giving back to God with everything we’ve got, trusting that as we honor God, God will honor us.
It is a fact that too many of us are afraid to step out of our boxes and onto the waters of life. We get used to doing things one way and we are just afraid to venture out.
Over the years, we have talked about “being more out in the community,” but we have not done it. Today, we get up and begin the process of really getting out.
We have been blessed deeply. In spite of so few resources we have done much, but God isn’t even close to being through with us, nor is the first part of the history of Advent United Church of Christ completed.
If we open ourselves to God, we can see what God sees, hear what God hears, and feel what God feels. If we open ourselves to God, we are indeed “new creatures,” losing our fear and increasing our faith.
I said in our Wednesday afternoon “Crazy Faith” Bible study that fear is like the oil we have seen in images from the Gulf oil spill. As oil does not mix with water, even salt water, neither does fear mix with faith. We cannot afford as individuals nor as a church to be leaden down with oil, as are the poor birds and wildlife we have seen on television.
We have been blessed and saved in order to bless and lead others to salvation. We have been freed, some of us, from bondages that kept us cooped up for a long, long time. Did we gain our freedom to stay in the cages? I think not.
And so today begins the first chapter of the last part of the first volume of the story of Advent United Church of Christ. There will be several chapters and all will be stories of how we waited on the Lord but worked as we waited, how we shed fear in favor of faith, how we soared over challenges and problems and became the place that God ordained us to be from the beginning.
For the record, I love you all. I love you because you do give, you do push (even if I have to prod you a bit), and you are growing in the Lord. This place is not the same that it was a year ago, and a year from now, the growth will be even more evident.
We have much, so much, to do in order to make the Kingdom of God alive in our community and in our city, Advent UCC style! We have many clarions to blow to let people know that God is love and because we love God, we are love, too.
Martin Luther King Jr. used to tell workers and volunteers who were working to get black folks the right to vote in the hostile South, “Walk together, children. Dontcha get weary.”
Seems like the message we need to hear and internalize right about now. Our real work is only just beginning. Walk together, Advent. Dontcha get weary.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

Warnings by God Ignored?

2010-06-01T22:24:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about the reason people sometimes can survive horrible hurricanes and tornadoes is because a warning is given that the storm is coming and people respect the warning.
Those who do not respect the warning, or cannot for some reason, too often do not make it through the storm, past the storm, or in the storm.
We get warnings in our lives about impending storms, too. God sends us warnings that someone or something is not good for us, but we ignore the warnings, so when the storm comes, we caught in it and really do not do well. We blame God but it isn’t God’s fault. God warned us; we chose to ignore Her.
As much as we do not want to, say, evacuate when the warning of a dangerous storm is given, it so often turns out that evacuating saved our lives. Why is it, then, when God gives the warning to evacuate a certain course of action and we do not do it, that we blame our shredded spirits on God?
With us all having a finite number of days to live, we ought to think twice about wasting valuable potential joy days trying to weather a storm God never intended us to weather. Much of our misery could be avoided if we would trust God. It is a fact that many, too many people go to church but do not trust God and live and eventually die captive to winds of life we chose to challenge than to avoid when God told us to run for cover.
So, in spite of having a God who is good all the time, we live on the periphery of God’s kingdom blessings of joy and peace. Our choice.
With all we have to do as individuals and as a church, I pray that more and more of us will listen to God’s persistent warnings and heed God’s directions that we take different paths. Our doing what God tells us might not set well with some people around us, but we exist to please God, the source of all we are and all we will be. In the end, all things work for good for those who love the Lord…and whose love for God is marked by trusting what God tells us to do or not do.
It must seem sometimes to God that we are storm chasers, that we consistently push the envelope and dare life and its storms to sweep us up in their mighty currents. There are people who can chase storms and be OK, but they are few and far in between. Most of us are not equipped to handle the vicissitudes of life. We would do well to take cover under God’s protection, something we can only do if we love God enough to trust him.
The storms of life will never cease, but neither will God’s love and wisdom for us, a love and wisdom that says to us, “Back up! Move away! Come to me!” When we do not heed God’s warnings, we must need expect that we will be tossed and turned. Hopefully, more and more of us are getting tired of being tossed and turned.
Have a good week!
Pastor Smith

Making Excuses a Sign of Weakness

2010-05-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

Making excuses makes one weak.
I was reading an article in which Jesse James, Sandra Bullock’s soon to be ex-husband, blamed his actions on a bad childhood in which he was treated badly.
It didn’t wash with me. I can understand making mistakes, but to blame it on “mom and ‘em” is a cop out.
We are the sum total of our life’s experiences. Those experiences are both good and bad, pleasant and not so pleasant. We are who we are because of who we were. Our mistakes, our growing up, all shaped us. We had blessings and we had lessons; lessons which we internalized and digested oftentimes led to blessings.
It is especially important for kids and youth to get this lesson. Every single adult in the world can point to a time when he or she got treated not so good, to when he or she was hurt by a parent or relative, when he or she felt unloved and unwanted.
The reason the world keeps on going, though, is because some people choose to remember the bad experiences as lessons and maybe even blessings, instead of “the reason” they are like they are, in a negative sense.
Langston Hughes wrote “life ain’t been no crystal stair.” No matter who we are, what color, sex, gender or physical condition, that statement is true. At the end of the day, though, we have to decide how we are going to use the splinters we have all gotten by walking on rugged, rough wooden steps.
When we look at the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, what stands out is everyone trying to blame someone else, in essence making excuses for an oil spill which resulted from an oil rig which exploded.
It is a sign of weakness. I would so much more have respected BP had it said, “we messed up and we are sorry and we will fix it.” Instead, fingers are pointing all over the place. Meanwhile, the environment is getting messed up, peoples’ livelihoods are threatened, and the oil continues to spew out, mercilessly.
I would hope and pray that you, young people, do not get in the habit of making excuses. We can always find a way out; our challenge is to find a way up and over all obstacles, no matter what they may be.
And I would hope that we older folks, if we have been in the habit of making excuses, that we would stop it and change course.
Making excuses makes us weak, and we have too much to do…to be weak.
Have a good week!
Pastor Smith

The Price of Being President

2010-05-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

Black farmers are increasing pressure on President Obama to get the federal government money owed them, following a settlement reached 11 years ago.
The farmers were promised $1.25 billion as the result of a suit filed charging discrimination from the federal government. Black farmers were consistently unable to get federal loans and were denied support from or of federal programs because of the color of their skin. Their allegations were ruled to be legitimate.
But to date, not a single farmer has received any money, and the black farmers are getting more and more frustrated. Their frustration is increased by their belief that the president is avoiding the problem because this is clearly a black issue, and they believe that Mr. Obama stays away from issues that might align him too closely with African Americans.
The 1997 case, Pigford vs. Glickman, was settled out of court, but, it seems, hundreds of thousands of black farmers missed a deadline to submit claims.
Mr. Obama reopened the case in 2008 when he was still a senator and in February of this year was able to broker a case for the $1.25 billion payout. But Congress missed a March 31 deadline to fund it and now another deadline to fund it is looming, May 30. The farmers are worried that the funding will not come and that Mr. Obama will not push for the funding to come.
Some might say give the president a break; there is a lot on his plate, and that is true. These farmers, however, have been waiting a long time for justice. Too often, the cry for justice from black people is put on the back burner; that it feels like an African American president is putting this issue on the back burner is grating the farmers’ emotions.
Mr. Obama is trying to position himself to win the 2012 presidential election and it has always seemed that in light of that, he has shied away from being “too black.”
But just as risky was pushing for health care reform. Mr. Obama undoubtedly lost a lot of supporters from those who thought he did too much and from those who think he did too little. That is politics. Immigration reform now looms in front of him, as does Wall Street reform. None of these issues are going to be easy to tackle, and yet he will.
It would be a grave mistake for him to even be perceived as having ignored the cries, pleas and needs of black farmers …just because he just doesn’t want to be perceived as being “too black.” Even if that perception is not true, the fact of the matter is that perception becomes truth. I sure hope the president pushes as hard for the farmers now as he did when he was a senator.
Otherwise, he runs the risk of being just another politician, a person who will do anything and say anything just to get elected. Surely, that cannot be the image or legacy he wants to leave.
Have a good week!

Let the Rocks Be Silent!!

2010-05-13T10:52:00.001-07:00

Today you will hear a couple of “crazy faith” stories from members of our congregation.
Why? Because without crazy faith, there can be no movement, no transformation, no change.
We are in a wonderful yet critical time of our life as a church, a fork in the road, so to speak. God is calling us to move, to be transformative in what we do and how we do it, and in order to do that, we will have to have …crazy faith.
I shared in Wednesday afternoon Bible study that the one thing that makes me crazy is for people to say what we cannot do. I know there are limits based on money and resources, but there is also God, a God who tells me we can do all things, no matter the obstacles.
From the very beginning of our existence, we had great limitations over which hovered a great God. There were rumors that we would fall off the map and doubts that we could survive a number of different experiences we had. Yet, God hovered and we persevered.
What have we learned? For the few who have been here from the beginning, we have learned that with God, nothing is impossible. Things have looked bleak, like they did for the woman in 1 Kings 4 who, though she had “just a little oil,” was told to collect jars and fill them with oil in order to pay her bills. Whatever doubts and concerns she had, she put them aside and did as she was told, and God blessed her. God stood Ezekiel before a field, a valley of dry bones and asked the prophet if the bones could live, and though Ezekiel most probably believed that those bones could not live, he yielded the floor to God, so to speak, prophesied to the bones as God commanded, and saw life come from death.
We are not dead, far from it, but we are being called to greater vitality. We are being called to heights that are so far beyond what any of us can imagine …and yet the call is there. And so I ask you to listen today, to internalize just a tad of crazy faith, and hold on even as you ride.
I am in Washington D.C. today but this is the last Sunday I will be out for 2010. Though I need to go out to make more money, I also need to do my work here. I have to have crazy faith, too, or, I should say, more faith than I have. God is, and God always has been …so there’s no reason for me to believe that God will not continue to be.
My prayer is that Advent UCC enter this new chapter of the book that is being written about how faith works with excitement and fervor. God did not put us here to languish. God put us here …and has kept us here…to show how good God is. If we do not do what God is calling us to do, the very rocks will cry out.
O rocks, be silent!
Pastor Smith

2010-05-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Mothers:
Today is a special day, not because someone a long time ago decided that there ought to be a day dedicated to mothers, but because you are responsible for all that has ever gone on in this world.
How you have nurtured the greatest people in this world! It was your love, your wisdom, your kindness and sternness that helped shape the people who have made an impact in life and society.
Whether you were the mother of a Moses or Rahab, the mother of Adam the first man on earth or Adam Clayton Powell, the mother of Martin Luther or Rev Dr Martin Luther King, it was you who gave the world its values and strength.
In spite of the stain of sexism which has always been a part of life, you pressed on and did what only a mother could and can do. Isn’t it strange and ironic that the men who YOU shaped had the audacity later to say that women were inferior? Yet, though you knew that to be the case and though you probably taught the little boys and girls that sexism was right, you still taught enough other things that helped some people push through the biases to make a new world.
You held your babies close to your heart when they came from the womb, and you kept that place open for them always, no matter how old they got. You worried and worry whether they were and are 3 or 93. The children were always your children, deserving of a love that has no bounds.
Some of you buried babies or children who died too young, and next to your heart, or perhaps in your heart, you carried a grief that has never gone away. You never let the grief stop you, though, and by moving through your pain, you taught your children to do the same.
You made your children mad, but your anger helped them grow and they in turn made you proud. You ached when you had to give tough love lessons, and did not let the children see the tears of pain and fear that fell from your eyes as you watched them make horrible mistakes, only to later make honorable decisions borne from the wisdom the mistakes imparted to them.
You cooked when there was little to cook; you washed and ironed and sewed and cleaned. You rocked the children when there was nobody to rock you. You learned to “make do” and in so doing, helped the children learn that as well.
Some of you couldn’t be mothers when your children were young. Life and life’s issues got to you, and you did things you wish you hadn’t. You missed valuable time with your children when they were little, and you ache about that today.
But here’s the best thing: whether you were there for your children or not, you have a mother too, in Christ Jesus, who is there for you, no matter what. Mary raised her boy well; Jesus loved us all and loves us all, no matter how much we did or did not do for our children, no matter how much or how little we were there.
You have a mother in Christ Jesus who loves you, even if your own mother didn’t, and so for that you should rejoice. The children who pout because you were not there have a mother as well in Christ Jesus. And this Jesus loves you so much that he was there for your children even when you could not be there, or would not be there.
This is the same Jesus who has been there for me, ever since my mother died when I was so young. It’s the same Jesus who was there for so many people who did not have a mother they could feel and touch. The maternal spirit of our God reached down and touched us through Jesus, and for that we can all be thankful.
This is not a day to be angry or sad if your own mother was not there for you; God sent Jesus to fill in the gap, to stand in the breach. Nor is this a day for you to put yourself down if you feel you fell short as a mother; God sent Jesus as well to let you know that there is no condemnation.
But as there is no condemnation from Jesus, let there not be condemnation from you toward your mother for her shortcomings. She can only be as she is; love her for what she was able to give you. Give that to the children in your life, whether biological or adopted, and then add the love that Jesus gave YOU as you endured the lack in your own life.
Do not mourn this day because your mother is dead, or because perhaps your mother is not what you need her to be. Lean on the arms of Jesus and absorb his unfailing love. Take off the bandages that cover old sores and let God’s maternal love touch you.
And then, give to some other child what you feel your mother didn’t give to you…and in so doing, be the mother to someone else that Jesus was to you, even when you didn’t know it.
Happy Mother’s Day!

Pastor Smith

Be Free!

2010-04-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

There is nothing in the world like being free.
Freedom from fear, worry, anxiety, anger …the emotions which weigh us down, allow us to have eyes to see God’s world and ears to hear God’s voice.
There is an exercise which I find myself doing frequently: I exhale myself, my issues, and I inhale the Holy Spirit. I do this exercise consciously, saying out loud, “I exhale myself, and I inhale you, O God.”
Why? Because it is so easy to allow ourselves to be burdened with the “troubles of the world.” I am convinced that the troubles of the world are good things, lessons put in place to teach us how to avoid doing the same things over and over.
“Troubles” are story problems given to us by God to engage our partnership with the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit in us which finally unclogs our spiritual pores and allows the lessons to seep into our beings.
If we concentrate on what is wrong in our lives, we cannot see what is good and right. We miss the tiny things which, cumulatively, are big blessings, that are all ours. We see the world with vision that is in bondage to a burdened spirit.
Let something go today. Let just one of your worries go; watch it float away into the arms of God. The problem will not go away but your resolve to not worry about it will and your readiness to receive the lesson God wants you to receive will become obvious to God.
And …you will learn.
God did not put us on this earth to worry ourselves to our graves. No …God put us here to “make a joyful noise,” in spite of what might be going on. God put us here to be co-creators in creation, adding the gifts She gave to us to enhance what God has already done.
We cannot do that if we have obstructed vision. Truth be told, we cannot connect with the gifts God gave us at all when all we can see is what is wrong with the world.
Yes, it would be nice if there were no “troubles,” but the troubles and trials strengthen us and give us wisdom. Without the trials and troubles, we would all die fools.
So, praise God, whatever is going on. Wipe your eyes; I mean, wipe away the tears or the mucous of worry that makes your vision faulty. Exercise your shoulders; roll your neck around a few times to get rid of the worry and stress that you have carried all week long. Exhale all that toxic stuff and remember that we serve an awesome God …
And then, act like it!
Pastor Smith

Stretch Toward the Goal!

2010-04-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

We are about to enter the fifth month of the “new” year.
The question we need to ask ourselves is, “What have I done for God? How am I doing in moving toward being a new person?”
This whole year of concentrating on repentance and transformation also requires a fair amount of self-reflection and self-accountability. If we believe in the ritual baptism of our church and ourselves we did on Ash Wednesday, expecting resurrection in ourselves and in our church, then we have to consistently monitor where we are as opposed to where we want to be.
December will be here before we know it.
We have agreed upon the statement that if we always do what we’ve always done, we will always be what we’ve always been. In a year of repentance and transformation, that sameness is unacceptable and if we end up this year the same, then we will not have met our goals of repentance and transformation.
As we turn away from the old, and turn toward God, there ought to be a laser-type divine light that burns through to our souls and spirits, burning out the old so that there can be newness in us. And in order for that to be the case, we have to say to God, “Here am I! Send me! Use me!” In a year of transformation and repentance, there is no room for excuses.
We spent time this week in our quarterly meeting stating what we want our church to be like at the end of this year…and so the question I ask of us all is, “How do I contribute to making that change happen?” We have to ask ourselves as individuals and as a church, “How do I make this chapter of the book we ultimately present to God a new chapter and not just a rearrangement of the same plot and storyline of the chapter we are in, and past chapters?”
If we want our income to be more, what do we do? If we want our ministries to be stronger, again, what do we do? It is almost as if we are asking, “What must we do to be saved?” We are trying to save ourselves and our church from having the same story, the same testimony, and the same issues.
There is nothing stopping us, as a church and as individuals, from radical transformation, nothing, that is, except our own self-barriers. The prayer I have is that we identify those barriers and, with God’s help, move them out of the way. If the stone could not keep Jesus in the tomb, surely the barriers in our lives cannot keep us from repentance, transformation and ultimately, resurrection.
Sing to the Lord a new song! Sing as you work and pray and move and as WE as a church work, pray and move. O happy day! That’s what we want our Watch Night service in December to be- a testament to a goal taken on and met.
Have a good week!
Pastor Smith

Blessed to Bless Others

2010-04-07T13:20:00.001-07:00

We’re blessed and don’t know it, far too often.
What we don’t see or hear about, we don’t think about, but I heard a story this week about kids who have been in foster care who finally get too old to stay in the system, and they are simply …let go.
They move from lives of instability to even more instability, with no guidance, no sense of direction, nobody, really, to help them. They are expected to fit into a society they have never fit into.
Many of the young men, not surprisingly, end up in prison, and the women end up pregnant, also not surprising.
One young man being interviewed said he was trying to make it. He had gotten an apartment – apparently the state helps these kids for a while as long as they follow some specified rules – and he had tried to cook. He had never cooked before. The meal, he said, wasn’t too good.
When I hear stories like this, I think of all the ways the church can be working to serve the kingdom. It is good and all to do mission work overseas, but we have a lot of mission work we need to do on our own shores, in our own states and in our own cities and communities. Just like we need to reach out to African American kids who are gay and who find themselves ostracized from their families and churches, so also do we need to devise programs to help these foster kids who are basically set up to fail.
No wonder the world is so messed up. These kids represent “the least of these” that are thought of even less than other kids. The BREAD initiative this year is focusing on kids, youth and young adults. Surely, these young people qualify for our help.
In order to work with kids, an adult must undergo a background check and it costs $60. The church cannot afford to pay for it for you, but I would urge those of you who want to help us build our youth programs so that we can help kids who need us who have been blessed, to see Sis. Deneen Day or Dr. Judy Alston and make arrangements to get the check done. Members who want to tutor kids through the church need to get a background check as well.
We have too much work to do. Kids are crying out for help. If there is anything we can do, we need to do it. There is such a thing as the Cradle to Prison pipeline, and the School to Prison pipeline that are realities in our country. It grieves me that some kids, too many kids, are doomed before they get a good start.
If we do something, we need to, and soon.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith

Stand and Deliver

2010-03-31T11:36:00.000-07:00

This week, I learned that Jaime Escalante, the man who inspired the movie “Stand and Deliver,” based on how he transformed a tough Los Angeles High School through his gift of teaching, died.
I also listened to a frustrated grandmother and aunt talk about how they are struggling with their charges, a grandson and a nephew, respectively, in Columbus Public Schools.
The story is the same everywhere: there are very few teachers like Escalante, who believed that all children had the potential to learn and learn well. Instead, there are teachers who do not believe in the kids they are paid to teach, and in effect push them out of schools onto the streets and, ultimately, into prison.
The Children’s Defense Fund sends out information about the so-called “Cradle to Prison” syndrome, a tragedy which affects students in lower socio-economic neighborhoods, primarily black and brown students.
It is sad to read about and sadder to see happen.
In Columbus, I recently learned of some policies practiced by CPS to expel or suspend students as punishment for being truant.
Huh? Who forgot that kids, any kid, will absolutely get into mischief if they have nothing to do? Do Columbus Public School officials care that they are creating a monster, pushing kids from classrooms to prison cells?
The initiative for BREAD this year is youth and all that affect them and therefore, the entire city. Efforts are being made to talk to school officials, teachers, administrators, visit schools, and identify the problems. The youth-at-risk research committee of BREAD shares the following information, based on work they’ve done thus far:
Youth crime, violence and gangs are on the rise in Columbus.
• There has been at least one shooting in Columbus every day in 2010. In 2008, police received 12,530 reports of shots fired in the city, an average of 34 a day. This total represented a 9 percent increase from 2007 (Columbus Dispatch website);
• In 2009, out of the 83 killings in Columbus, about a quarter of the victims were under the age of 25, and 8 of the victims were under 15. Almost half of those suspected or arrested in connection with the 83 killings were under 25. (Columbus Police Department Interview);
• Columbus Police Department officials report that 25% of the killings in Columbus in 2009 were gang-related.
Truant students and school drop-outs are prime targets for recruitment into gangs
• Chronically truant students are 16 times more likely to use illicit drugs than non-truants; 21 times more likely to commit a serious property crime; 12 times more likely to commit a felony, and about 7 times more likely to be arrested (Henry & Huizinga, 2005).
• Median Annual Income for High school graduates in Columbus is $25,420 (2007 dollars). Median annual income for high school drop-outs is $10,981. Median annual income for college graduates is $21,556 higher than those of high school drop-outs (Cities in Crisis, 2009; Education Research Center);
Too many kids are falling through the cracks at school;
• Columbus has the ninth worst graduation rate (44.7%) among the 50 largest school systems in the country (Cities in Crisis, 2009; Education Research Center):
• Columbus City Schools issued 4,262 out-of-school suspensions for truancy in the 2008-9 school year (EMIS report, Ohio Department of Education)—despite the fact that this practice is against the written policy of the School district (Guide to Positive Student Behavior, p. 24);
• Reynoldsburg City Schools had 111 out-of-school suspensions for truancy and South-Western City Schools actually expelled 31 students for truancy (EMIS reports).
• Columbus City Schools issued more than 15,000 out-of school suspensions for "disruptive behavior" (EMIS report)—despite the fact that the District's official discipline policy strongly discourages out of school suspension for disruptive behavior.
There are effective ways to improve student behavior
The BREAD Organization got the Franklin County Prosecutor to spearhead the development of a model truancy reduction program at our 2006 Nehemiah Action. The Prosecutor along with BREAD and other stakeholders developed Project KEY which is in six schools. The results:
• Reduced chronic truancy by 55% in those six schools;
• Improved student attendance for more than 200 students;

Philadelphia, which has a higher poverty rate than Columbus, improved graduation rates by 23% over a ten-year period (1995-2005) to 62% (Cities in Crisis, 2009)
What We Want:
• Enforce Current Policies;
• Expand Programs that Work; and
• Identify other "evidence-based practices" that would help Columbus to address its problems.

I need for you to read these facts and commit to working, within our walls, within our community, and with BREAD, to help fix what’s wrong. Jaime Escalante taught inner city kids math – calculus and algebra – and they excelled because someone believed in them.
We need to show our kids that we believe in them, too. The BREAD Nehemiah Action Rally is Monday, May 3rd. We should plan to be there and show by our presence that we care about our kids as much as a beloved teacher named Jaime Escalante did.
Have a good week!

Pastor Smith

History Made This Week

2010-03-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

History was made this week when President Barack Obama signed health care reform into law.
In spite of the nay-sayers, the Tea Party movement, talk show attacks, racial slurs and all the rest, this most difficult piece of legislation is now the law of the land.
Because of it, an estimated 32 million Americans who have up to now been unprotected against the cost of being sick will now have access to health care.
The plan is designed to reduce the deficit by one trillion dollars over the next 20 years.
Some of the benefits of the plan will take some years to kick in, but these things will happen immediately:

Small businesses will receive significant tax cuts, this year, to help them afford health coverage for all their employees.

Seniors will receive a rebate to reduce drug costs not yet covered under Medicare.

Young people will be allowed coverage under their parents' plan until the age of 26.

Early retirees will receive help to reduce premium costs.

Children will be protected against discrimination on the basis of medical history.

Uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions can join a special high-risk pool to get the coverage they need, starting in just 90 days.

Insured Americans will be protected from seeing their insurance revoked when they get sick, or facing restrictive annual limits on the care they receive.

All Americans will benefit from significant new investments to train primary care doctors, nurses, and public health professionals, and the creation of state-level consumer assistance programs to help all patients understand and defend our new rights.

I am grateful that the president did not give up and give in. I am grateful that he forged ahead in spite of the most despicable opposition. It may have cost him politically; time will tell. But at the end of the day, this president will be able to say that he did what he pledged to do, and in so doing, ended a journey that has been going on for nearly 100 years.
Health care is not a privilege. It is a right. I know that Republicans are up in arms and are going to work to repeal this law, but in my heart, I don’t think they will be successful.
The passage of this bill just says to me that if and when we are faithful to God, when we combine principles with passion, as Vice President Joe Biden said when describing President Obama, God shows up and shows out.
To God be the glory.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

The voices of Ramah's children, crying

2010-03-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

I read a disturbing report this week published by Amnesty International.
Entitled “Deadly Delivery,” the report said that two women in the United States die every day from pregnancy-related conditions.
It said that in spite of the fact that the United States spends more on health care than any other country in the world, that women in this country have more chance of dying from pregnancy-related complications than women in 40 other countries.
Of course, the statistics are worse for African American women, who are four times as likely to die from pregnancy related complications than white women.
In Columbus, the infant mortality rate is higher here than in several Third World countries. Nationally, the infant mortality rate for women in the United States is higher than it is in 24 industrialized countries.
Why is this the case in this, which has, up to now, been the most wealthy country in the world? A lot of it stems from the fact that too many women do not have health care. Half of the deaths that occur, both in pregnant women and their babies, are preventable, the report says, yet incidences have doubled since 1987, according to the Centers for Disease Control. (CDC)
The report says that 51 percent of all uninsured women are African American, and it says that even women who are insured are included in the deplorable statistics because their insurance does not cover pregnancy; it is classified as a pre-existing condition.
Women who are covered by insurance to have their babies, and thereby get effective prenatal care, are often handicapped after birth, as some insurance plans will cover only one post-partum visit. That means that if complications after birth occur, many women cannot get the care they need in time to correct the condition, and die.
If ever there was a cry for health care reform, this report supplies it. I would think that the Congress would be concerned about the health of the women who elect them, rather than with continuing to empower the insurance companies that are clearly out for profit at any cost, and at the expense of those who can least afford it.
The economy has made times hard for everyone, but it seems to me that with statistics like these, there need to be a lot more physicians willing to set up free clinics so that we can help our own. There ought to be a groundswell of protest from more than Tea Party advocates that something is very wrong with our health care system and something needs to change, in the name of the people.
Tea Party advocates are saying that health care reform, as being proposed by the Obama administration, is nothing more than socialism. I think not. I think it is justice. I think it is unjust that so many people in this nation cannot get the health care they need, while insurance companies continue to get wealthier and wealthier.
When Cain killed Abel, God said to Cain that his brother’s blood was in the soil that Cain wanted to plow, and said that because Cain killed Abel, the ground he tilled would be cursed and his crops would not grow. I keep thinking that the soil of America, saturated with the blood of people who have been wronged by this government, is crying out and that America will soon reap what she has sown. There is no reason why maternity and infant mortality rates ought to be as high as they are in a country which calls itself civilized.
Maybe America is not so civilized after all. Whatever America’s state, I am hoping that we, who love God and believe in justice, can get together and figure out how to help “the least of these,” because clearly, the government is not interested.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

Kids Need Our Advocacy

2010-03-09T08:31:00.001-08:00

There is a reason we, Advent United Church of Christ, are involved in justice ministry.
It is because if we do not raise our voices, know the circumstances, and do the work, our communities will continue to suffer.
In a recent meeting of BREAD clergy, a report was given about at-risk youth in Columbus. BREAD has made justice for at risk youth its focus for 2010, and that issue will be the primary focus at the May 3 Nehemiah Action Rally at Veterans Auditorium.
The report reports that there are three main topics of concern: school discipline policies, juvenile crime and gang activity, and the closing ore recreation centers. The committee reports that:
• In the 2008-2009 school year, 11 out of 15 of the middle schools in the Columbus public school system had more than one suspension or expulsion per student.
• Columbus City schools suspended 4,262 students for missing school (being truant) in the same school year
• 5,900 students dropped out of the class of 2008
• Chronic truants, defined as those who miss 10 or more days of school, are 12times as likely to report having committed a serious offense, 21 times as likely to report having committed a serious property crime and seven times as likely to have been arrested as non-skippers
• Gang members in 2008 accounted for 25 percent of the homicides in Columbus, although they only account for .17 percent of the total population. The average age of a gang member in Columbus is between 13 and 25 years old.
• In 2009 there were 83 homicides in Columbus. Of that number, 46 of the victims were African American males, 21 of the victims were under the age of 25, and eight of them were under the age of 15.
• Almost half of all people arrested or suspected in connection with the homicides were under the age of 25.
There is no time to be silent or complacent. It is our youth who are falling through the cracks, falling into the arms of waiting prisons. Our youth ministry is more important than ever, and should be an arm of outreach as well as an in house operation.
I urge all who care about our youth to work with the Board of Christian Education and the youth advisors to create a ministry that reaches out to youth. Too many young people think that churches are nothing more than clanging cymbals, disinterested and disconnected from them and their issues. If anyone wants to work along with me on the BREAD committee on these at-risk issues, please see me, but we have an obligation as well to create and develop a youth program that helps youth and pulls them from lives that will lead to their destruction.
The BREAD Nehemiah Action Rally, as mentioned above, will be May 3 at Veterans Auditorium. We in BREAD will be working with members of the Columbus Board of Education to highlight these issues and hold the Board members accountable. If Board members see that Columbus parents and citizens are tired of Board members begging for our votes but not doing the maximum to help our kids, they might be more inclined to get off the fence and work harder.
The Children’s Defense Fund talks about the Cradle to Prison phenomenon. We can clearly see our many of our kids are heading to prison by the numbers in this report. It is up to us to fight for justice for those who cannot fight for it themselves.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith

The Census and Us

2010-03-02T18:21:00.001-08:00

The Pastor’s Page

We are in the early days of March but it is time for us to talk about the upcoming census.
Census Day is April 1, 2010, and it is extremely important for everyone to fill out the forms, but especially important for people of color to participate.
By law, all United States citizens are supposed to be counted. It is required by the United States Constitution that a census be taken every 10 years.
The federal government allocates more than $400 billion to states and communities based in part on census data. These funds are used for all sorts of projects, but for African Americans and people of color, the projects for which money can be allocated are critical for the well being and growth of our communities.
Included projects include Title 1 grants to schools, Head Start programs, the Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program, public transportation, road rehabilitation and construction, programs for the elderly, emergency food and shelter and the creation of empowerment zones.
Money allocated is based on the number of people in given communities. If we do not fill out the forms, the federal government will have an inaccurate snapshot of our communities and our needs. We will not get the money we need in order to flourish. In other words, we hurt nobody but ourselves if we do not participate in the census.
Historically, people of color have been distrustful of the government and of the government’s intentions when it has come to census data. We have believed that the government’s history of not treating people of color well is something that will be a reality no matter what we do.
But that is not true. We have a responsibility to do what we can in order to protect our communities and get resources for members of our community. Here in Advent’s community, there are still streets that need sidewalks and curbs; we have a growing population of both children and the elderly. We need, therefore, resources to improve and build schools and facilities which service our elderly, including health clinics and shelters.
The census consists of 10 questions; it takes 10 minutes to complete. By law, the Census Bureau cannot share an individual’s questionnaire responses with anyone, including other federal agencies and law enforcement agencies.
In spite of doubts about the honesty of the government, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by filling out the forms. Not filling out the forms is like African Americans not voting in local, state and federal elections. In those instances, if we get elected officials who do not care about us or have our best interests at heart, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
Be clear: there are people in other congressional districts who are quite clear about what is at stake with the census. They know that if they don’t do what they can now to uplift and help their communities, it will be another 10 years before they have another opportunity.
Ten years is too long to wait for resources and services that we need now.
We will have a sample census form in Varner Hall and posted in the narthexes for you all to see so that you can ask questions. My hope, no, my claim, is that 100 percent of our congregation will fill out the form and that you will talk to people in your neighborhoods and other groups in which you are involved about the importance of their taking 10 minutes to fill out the form.
Yes, the government has been dishonest, but if we do our part, if the numbers of people in our communities fill out the census forms in numbers that show our strength, we give more power to a dishonest government. We are the masters of our fate; we are the captains of our souls.
Fill out the forms. It’s our communities that will suffer if we do not.

Pastor Smith

To Everything, A Season

2010-02-23T16:56:00.001-08:00

There was an article in last Sunday’s New York Times that broke my heart and made me wonder about what ministry ought to look like as we move through this difficult economic time.
The article said that “millions of Americans remain out of work.” It said that about 2.7 million jobless people are due to lose their unemployment benefits before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend those benefits.
The article’s author, Peter S. Goodman, wrote, “Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middleclass life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives – potentially for years to come.”
Well, if the “new poor” are going to be in dire straits for “years to come,” the prognosis for the “chronically or habitually poor” has got to be a whole lot worse.
Nationally, there are 6.3 million people out of work, and who have been unemployed for at least six months, the article said. The only time the unemployment rate was worse was in the 1980s.
How, then, do we serve? How do we do ministry?
We as a people have learned to “make do” all of our lives, but my feeling is that we are going to have to step it up a bit. When people do not have jobs, they cannot pay mortgage or rent, they cannot pay utilities or buy medicine or formula or pay their car notes.
It is at those times that people turn …not to God, necessarily, but to the church.
I think we ought to be proactive, meaning, I think we ought to be thinking and planning about how we are going to do ministry as the misery of the people in our community grows as their needs grow. I know that many in our own congregation are in need as well.
We have to pray, think and plan.
I believe that in giving, one receives. I remember listening to my mother talk about bread lines or food lines that formed during and after the Great Depression. The community had to become a community, practicing ujima, collective work and responsibility, and ujaama, cooperative economics, in order to survive.
Mama didn’t know anything about Kwanzaa or the principles of nguza sabo, but she did know that the community had to work together and share in order to survive.
We have been good about giving seasonally, at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it feels like we are going to have to bump up our outreach ministry, because the times call for it and because it is what Jesus would want us to do.
Those in our congregation in need, please speak up! This is not the time to be proud. But know that we will ask everyone to give, to help, to work in whatever way you can. Collectively, we can get through this difficult time and get the community through it as well.
Who knows but that God has kept Advent for “such a time as this?” One person told me that Advent is “the little church that can.”
We will see, beloved. We will certainly see.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

Be Strong and Do the Work!

2010-02-17T08:49:00.001-08:00

The Pastor’s Page
What I love about the Olympics is that it is evidence that if we do the work, excellence will follow.
In the Bible, God tells his prophets to “be strong and do the work.” David told that to Solomon, his son, whom God wanted to build the Temple. David had wanted to do it, but God said he could not because he had been a warrior and had shed blood.
The task, then, fell on Solomon. David knew that in order to do anything worth anything that it takes work, and faith, and perseverance, washed frequently with tears of frustration and sometimes pain. “Doing the work” is not an easy thing.
David knew it, and knew he had to prepare his son, as best he could, for the journey ahead. He charged his son, publicly, to be careful to follow God’s commands so that he, Solomon, could possess the land and pass it on as an inheritance. He told his son to acknowledge God and “serve God with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind…for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever. Consider now,” David continues, “for the Lord has chosen you to build a temple as a sanctuary. Be strong …and do the work.
David repeated his advice to his son at the end of that same chapter in 2 Chronicles 18. As if tasting the difficulty of the task ahead, he said again, “Be strong and courageous and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged for the Lord God, my God, is with you.”
When I see Olympic athletes, I absolutely know the work, the time, the pain, the disappointments, and the small glimpses of success they have seen as they have “done the work.” Ironically, it takes a lot of work to see what looks like easy success. Their feats only look easy because they have done the work.
In a week, we will be commissioning all of the new officers of the church, and my word to do is to “be strong and do the work.” Enroll in your Bible study, but do more. Do the work. Study the Word. Pray about it, so that you can be convicted by it. Be strong and do the work … whether you have 3 people or 30 people in your monthly meetings … which you must, by the way, have. You are building a room in the sanctuary of God’s temple, which is this world, generally, and our community, specifically. Be strong and do the work, when you are most discouraged, most disappointed, when you are in emotional and or spiritual pain. Be strong and do the work when people notice what you do and when people ignore what you do or try to sabotage what you do.
Be sure that building anything, be it athletic prowess, music excellence, even a strong family, is not an easy thing. It takes daily work, to strengthen what you have already done and to build upon what you have done. Once any of us give up, look back, or throw our hands up, we throw excellence to the wind. As long as we have breath in our bodies, it is paramount that we remember that we are to “be strong and do the work.”
Think about what you are signing on to do as you watch the Olympics, or any sports event. Think about it when you watch Beyonce or Mary J Blige. What you see did not come easily. It took work, and faith and patience and love …and a determination that the end product WILL be excellence.
In so doing, excellence, or creating excellence becomes a habit, a way of life. We run a marathon for God. We, then, must practice and, no matter what, promise God that we will “be strong and do the work.”
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

Forgiveness, Squared

2010-02-09T09:42:00.000-08:00

The Pastor’s Page
Forgiveness is a mighty thing, a mighty and powerful thing.
There was a story this week about a man named Dean Cage who was accused of raping 15 year old Loretta Zilinger 16 years ago.
She said her attacker was a tall black man. She had kept her eyes open during her rape and had touched her attacker’s face, trying to make sure she remembered all of his features.
A week later, Chicago police took her to meat packing plant where a tall black man, Dean Cage, was employed. They showed him to her and she said he was the one who raped her.
From the moment he was arrested, he said they had gotten the wrong man, but he was convicted and sent to prison.
He was freed, exonerated by DNA evidence in 2008.
He said he hated Zilinger, and wanted her to suffer. He had been wrongfully jailed; his life had been ruined, and though he was out of prison, it was hard for him to find work and to start his life over.
She should suffer, and suffer bad, he said.
Then, Loretta appeared on the Dr. Phil show. She was angry when she heard Cage had been released and exonerated. She was afraid and was afraid for her family, but she was also on a mission to talk to rape victims and help them recover.
When she appeared on Dr. Phil’s show, he brought it up that her accused attacker had been released. She was visibly angry …but Dr. Phil explained DNA evidence to her. Her husband, a police officer, also talked with her about it. Until this time, the couple had not really talked about her experience, nor had they talked about her feelings about DNA testing. He said to her that DNA testing was very reliable. A saliva sample left on her body by her assailant had been tested and the saliva did not belong to Cage.
Now she realized she had made a mistake. She felt guilty. Dr. Phil offered to bring her accused assailant to the show so she could meet him and apologize.
She agreed.
What is remarkable is that Cage agreed to come and meet her. She had been raped, sure, but he had been falsely accused and had spent 16 years in jail. He had not been allowed to see his mother when she fell ill. He had had to cancel his wedding. And now, out of jail, he was having trouble finding gainful employment.
It was her fault. Hers and the system which has too often been willing to throw a black man in prison.
But he agreed to see her on the show. He did. She apologized. He accepted. They hugged. He smiled. And he said that it was right to forgive her.
Could you have done that? Have you forgiven someone who really did you wrong?
Like I said, forgiveness is a powerful thing, a mighty and powerful thing.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

More on "Post Racial" America

2010-02-01T06:04:00.000-08:00

The Pastor’s Page
I wish I could say I was stunned by Chris Matthews saying that President Barack Obama is “post racial,” and that for an hour, he (Matthews) forgot he was a black man. But I am not.
I am, though, fairly irritated that someone who is supposed to be intelligent would say something so stupid, and yes, I do mean stupid. And I am irritated that white people in general seem to want to claim that this is a post racial society. Are you kidding me?
I remember the day after Obama won the White House. All the major media were saying that his election signaled the beginning of post racial America. Richard Cohen, of the Washington Post, might have been the first journalist on record to call Obama “post racial,” saying the day after the election, “we have overcome.”
An article in the Wall Street Journal said that the president’s election said that his win made it possible to “put to rest the myth of racism as a barrier to achievement in this splendid country.” And Rudolph Giuliani said that his election moved us beyond the idea of race and racial separation and unfairness.
None of those statements are true, though I know the writers wish they were. White people seem to want racism to die instantly, without viable work being done, and then dance in the streets singing “racism is dead” like the munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz” danced in glee after a house fell on the wicked witch of the north.
It is not going to happen.
America was built on racism, and was a product of a Constitution and Declaration of Independence that wrote racism into our very fabric. Black people were only ¾ of a person, according to our highest legal document. Indians were totally ignored. The United States was founded on the principle that all white men are created equal. It was called democracy, but it was a very peculiar and specific type of democracy where capitalism would make sure that white people with money maintained power.
And though the Constitution was written at a time when the church and therefore the Gospel, exerted big influence on America’s people, that influence, unfortunately, supported racism and even participated in it.
We therefore live in a culture of racism, a culture which has been bred, honed and fine-tuned over the years. Egalitarianism is not an issue; all people were not SUPPOSED to be treated equally. Capitalism, combined with racism, helped form our country, and those two “isms” are still alive today. They will not die easily, if at all.
What is post-racial anyway? How can a person be post racial? I have no answer for that, but a post racial society is so far from what we are that it is laughable that anyone would say anything different. A post racial society might be defined as a society where race does not matter. That is not the United States. Nor are we a society where power and wealth are not tied to race, or a society which is color blind. All of those are possible definitions of a post racial society, and none of them are applicable to the United States.
Why do I say that? Because it is still easier for white people than black to get jobs, black people still receive less comprehensive health care than do whites. Schools in black neighborhoods are still understaffed and lacking in adequate resources. Young black boys in school with behavior problems are still treated differently than white boys with the same behavior issues. Police are still guilty of racial profiling and are still quick to shoot first and ask questions later. Black people who use crack cocaine still get greater prison sentences than do white people who use cocaine… The list goes on. We are not post racial, and cannot be, as long as those situations, and more, are our reality.
Why are white people so anxious to say that the race problem is gone? I think it is because they are unable to own their culture’s history. It is not pretty. It is, as a matter of fact, downright disturbing. There has been economic, judicial, and physical domestic terrorism practiced in this country. It is easier to deny it than to own it. The problem of racism in America is made bigger because white people deny its existence and black people, rightfully so, hold anger because of that denial.
White people seem to want the problem to just go away, but no problem dissipates without acknowledging its existence and then working to fix what’s wrong … and what is fundamentally wrong is that the cries of African Americans has never been acknowledged as justified … PLUS, the white culture has continually, over the years, added more racist behavior on top of an already sad and sordid past.
The situation then is one of a trust broken, a trust by African Americans that they would be treated as equal human beings with dignity but finding that not to be the case. America’s whites have continually used their privileged status to get what they want, at any cost, to any people. Its treatment of American Indians, wiping out whole Indian cultures and relegating survivors to reservations is appalling. America’s whites have continually violated what should be a given: the belief that all peoples have worth.
They have heaped insult upon injury, leading to despair on the part of some African Americans, and anger with many to most. They have not been their brothers’ keeper, but instead have been their brothers’ brutalizers. Egalitarianism was never a goal of white people. And so, African Americans have worked for acceptance yet never found it. African Americans have been good enough to fight in America’s wars but not good enough to receive decent treatment when they got home. African Americans have been used, their gifts violated and exploited, and then kicked to the curb. And white Americans have never acknowledged they have done that.
The result to this white denial, as I said, has been black anger. We have skirted around the issue, but not dealt with it. In a relationship (and this is about relationship) where trust has been violated, it takes a long time once the problem has been owned to fix things; if the problem is never acknowledged, the relationship invariably fails. There has never been healing between the races because the problem has never been owned by white America. Black people have succeeded not because of white people, but in spite of black people, but the hurt has never gone away.
There is yet another issue to all of this: not all people who are saying we are “post racial” are white. Many, too many, African Americans are using the phrase as well, and believing it. Many African Americans have been so interested in being a part of the white culture that they, too, just want racism to go away so that they can assimilate in peace. They are consumed with self hatred and suffer from a denial syndrome as well: that of denying that they are African American.
The term “post racial” implies that there was a “pre racial.” We have never been a pre racial society. “Post” means that something has come after an event. A woman can be pre menopausal, menopausal .. and only then, post menopausal. The pre menopausal part of her life is generally OK; being menopausal is traumatic for some, uncomfortable for most … but once it is done and a woman is “post menopausal,” she has suffered and endured the process of changing and generally has relief and high quality of life.
America has never endure the process of changing from a racial society, a society where racism has been at the helm for far too long.
Surely Chris Matthews and others realize that.

Not Post Racial Yet!

2010-01-27T09:37:00.000-08:00

For those who think the election of Barack Obama means we’ve entered a post racial society, please think again.
If post-racial means that we are a society in which race doesn’t matter, that’s not true. Or if one defines a post racial society as one in which people are color blind, that isn’t true, either, and if a post racial society is one in which money and power is not tied to one’s race, that certainly isn’t true.
And if post-racial means we have finally moved to a time where white police officers do not react out of fear or bigotry when they see black men, we certainly are not there.
All of us remember the Professor Skip Gates case which ended up with Gates, the president and the white officer having beer together, in a kind of “can’t we just all get along?” type of gathering. And, some remember the story of the young African American man who was shot in the driveway of his own home in Houston, Texas by white police officers who thought he might have been a thief because he drove a nice car.
But this week, I read a story about a young high school honor student, 18 years old, who was assaulted and beaten by white police officers in Pittsburgh, Pa., who thought he was a drug dealer. This young man was walking from his mother’s house to his grandmother’s house.
Plainclothes police officers saw him walking, followed him for a bit, and then rushed their car up to him, jumped out, told him to give them his gun and his drugs.
He had neither.
In fact, according to the young man, these would-be assailants did not identify themselves as police officers and so frightened him that he began to run.
He said he thought he was about to be kidnapped.
And so he turned to run from them, and according to reports, fell after running only three steps. As he lay on the ground, they allegedly beat him pummeling his face and pulling out a chunk his dread locks out by the roots.
Wow.
He was arrested and taken into custody where police found that the “bulky object” they thought he had under his jacket was a bottle of Mountain Dew.
The report didn’t say that the bottle was broken, which it would have been since there was such a scuffle …but the young man said he didn’t have said bottle.
He doesn’t drink Mountain Dew.
So, the charges have been dropped, the mayor of Pittsburgh has made a statement, and the incident will be investigated.
Usual procedure.
The young man, whose face was terribly swollen from blows delivered during the assault, is recovering now. He has cut his dread locks. His right eye still looks pretty bad. He had to spend some time in the hospital.
I expect that the police officers will be found not to have been at fault.
Again, usual procedure.
Police brutality is still a major problem, with white officers wailing on black youth. Too often, it’s because some aberrant behavior is suspected. Ironically, the aberrant behavior in these cases are on the part of police officers who act and react out of fear of and maybe intense dislike for, young black men.
This young man had never been in trouble. He plays the viola and attends a prestigious high school for the arts.
Doesn’t matter, though, when power, fueled by fear and racial hatred, is unleashed on the streets from those who are supposed to protect all citizens.
No, we’ve got a ways to go before we can say we are post-racial, President Barack Obama notwithstanding.
Food for thought …

Pastor Smith

Power Misused

2010-01-19T12:23:00.000-08:00

Today I am in Omaha, Nebraska, preaching at Countryside UCC, and then giving a lecture in the evening on the subject, “The Myth of the Post-Racial Society.”
I ask your prayers.
But I ask bigger prayers for the people of Haiti who have been so poorly treated in the aftermath of the earthquake. I finally broke down in tears early in the week as I watched news reports keep talking about the importance of security instead of how the people of Haiti could best be helped.
I wept when I saw the report of how the Belgian doctors left critically ill, post-surgical patients, ordered to do so by their superior, who was worried about security.
Report after report lifted up the word “looting,” as if that was THE thing everyone had to be cautious of. Meanwhile, days were passing by with dead bodies piling up, the injured left stranded with no medical care, and out-and-out survivors with nothing to eat or drink.
Perhaps we would all “loot” were we in that situation.
The scene made me think about how far the world is from being “post racial.” Race matters, no matter what people say. The good people who have traveled to Haiti have good intentions, and will do good things, but their efforts are seriously hampered by their fear of people of color. The lessons of these United States have penetrated foreign borders, and augmented preconceived notions even foreigners have and had of black people.
You have heard me say that perhaps the good that comes out of this is that Haiti stops being the invisible country, that the world has been forced to look at this tiny nation of resilient yet suffering people and be moved to act. Perhaps now there will be help for Haiti to get an infrastructure, and all the things a 21st century so close to the United States must have in order to thrive.
The wrestling for power and control will erupt soon, if it has not already. The great powers will barter for who gets the most control. I am hoping that the people of Haiti will not, again, become objects, things to be manipulated in order to have control.
I am hoping, but I do not know that I am optimistic. The native people of Haiti have been so ignored, and are so in need, that they, in desperation, may cling to whatever assistance comes their way, so they can stop living such miserable lives.
Meanwhile, I will be writing CNN and even NPR, asking them why they kept on lifting up the “looting and danger” that would surely come. I wonder if they are even aware of how much they lifted up their concern.
Maybe you could write, too, I mean if you noticed it and it bothered you.
One thing I know is that there is power in the people. We the people are charged with speaking truth to power. The media is the power; we hold and are the truth.
If we can make them aware of how their reporting is affecting people, impacting them, then maybe we can make them care enough to at least become aware of it and do something to change.
We are the voice for the voiceless. In this case, the voiceless of those Haitians who have lost literally everything. It is an insult to be talking about the possibility of looting when people do not have even a place, a shelter to lay their heads, and when they have no food or water.
I’ve wept enough. Now I write. I hope you will, too.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

Racist or Reckless?

2010-01-11T14:06:00.000-08:00

The Pastor’s Page

Well, there certainly has been a lot of hoopla around Sen. Harry Reid’s remarks that he made during the Obama presidential campaign.
He said that Mr. Obama would probably win because he was a “light skinned African American who didn’t have a Negro dialect unless he wanted to.”
The media and the politicians went ballistic. Mr. Reid was called racist; Michael Steele, chair of the Republican National Committee, called for his resignation. All day Monday, Reid’s words were reported, and pundits weighed in. Was it racist or not? Should he resign, as Trent Lott resigned after his remarks about how the nation might not have had the problems it had had if Strom Thurmond, a professed segregationist, had been elected president?
It was apples and oranges, folks. Not the same situation at all.
Mr. Reid’s comments were unfortunate, but the words and his sentiment were honest, and I think the words were more a function of when he was raised than him being racist.
When most of us were growing up, the common word for black people was “Negro.” It wasn’t until the 60s that other monikers were offered, including “black,” “Afro-American,” and later, “African American.”
Prior to that, we had been called “colored.”
As long as my grandparents lived, they called black people “colored,” because that’s what they’d grown used to. Older black and white people used “colored,” in spite of the naming game for us being in a state of flux.
It feels like that’s what happened with Mr. Reid. He grew up saying black people were “Negro.” Heck, for that matter, whomever put the new census forms together must be stuck “back then,” because the word “Negro” appears on those forms as well.
He was also saying what most people were thinking. Mr. Obama had a good chance of being elected because he was light skinned and didn’t “sound” like a black person. Reid called that “Negro dialect.”
This nation would never have elected Mr. Obama had he been dark, had he “sounded too ethnic,” and had he sounded too angry. Black people are not allowed to be angry. It is an American commandment.
Mr. Reid must have forgotten for a moment that because he is a politician, he is always under scrutiny. Any laying down of the guard has to be saved for when one is with trusted loved ones. No, he forgot, and said what he said in public, and now, the political world is spinning.
But make no mistake: What Mr. Reid said was not as racist as it was careless. He called himself giving kudos to America on its willingness to elect a black man who wasn’t too threatening. Trent Lott, on the other hand, who was the Majority Whip during the Bush administration, did something far different.
He uplifted and praised Strom Thurmond, unabashedly so, and said that if the elderly senator had been elected president, the country would not have had the problem it had had.
Excuse me? Are you kidding? Thurmond, who, by the way had a daughter by a black woman, was brazen in his segregationist views. Thurmond more than once offered violence as a way to thwart efforts of integration.
Reading columnist Richard Prince, I was also reminded of what racist is, as opposed to ignorant or reckless. Former President Bill Clinton reportedly deeply offended the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, when, during the 2008 presidential race, he called Kennedy seeking an endorsement for his wife. In the book “Game Change,” the same book in which Reid’s statement is found, Clinton is reported to have said to Kennedy, “Come on. A few years ago, a this guy would have been getting us coffee.”
That’s racist.
When I think of Mr. Reid, I think of people even today saying “stewardess” instead of flight attendant, and “record” or “album” instead of “CD.” Sometimes, it’s hard to change with the times when it comes to common language. And, Reid was on the money when he said alluded that if Obama had been dark skinned, there is no way he would have gotten the Democratic nomination, much less the presidency.
I am not surprised that the media doesn’t understand all of this, but I sure wish it did.
All this hullabaloo over Reid was a waste of a good news day.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

Missionary Work Needed in America

2009-12-30T11:08:00.000-08:00

My soul is disturbed after having seen the movie, “Precious.”
It is disturbed for a couple of reasons. One, because it was real. I sobbed after seeing the movie because I know so many people, so many children, live like that. Mothers have babies and then in essence destroy their lives; they do so because they are destroyed themselves. Those who have not known love cannot give love, and it is a fact that too many children in our community do not receive love. They are told they are worthless; they are blamed for everything wrong, and then society wonders why they act out. Too many young girls in OUR community are being sexually molested by fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and mothers’ boyfriends, and having their babies. The cycle of despair just keeps spinning … That thought, that reality, hit me squarely between the eyes. The blessing for movie character Precious was that she had a teacher who cared. Someone cared. One person taking the time to care can change a person’s life. That is not an opinion; it is a fact. Precious, in that regard, was lucky in spite of all she endured.
The other reason my soul is disturbed is because “Precious” will probably win a slew of awards, which is good, but it seems that movies with African Americans win critical acclaim only when they depict African American life the way most white people think most African Americans live. Denzel Washington, an amazing actor who has done amazing work, won critical acclaim for “Training Day.” While I was proud, I wondered why he hadn’t won that kind of recognition for his depiction of Malcolm X? It seems that America is still caught in the need to nestle in the bosom of stereotypes or fantasy about African Americans.
I am bothered still by another fact. There is so much mission work to do on these shores. People go gallivanting off to Africa and India and Honduras, where there is despair, for sure, but there is plenty of despair in these United States. Somehow, Americans have glamorized, or made more acceptable, the suffering “over there,” while ignoring the suffering, pain and despair that runs rampant within our own boundaries. There are people here who need Christian love. Jesus’ compassion works as well here as it does in a forlorn village in Africa. We somehow demonize those who suffer here; we blame them for their situations, if not openly then certainly surreptitiously. The myth is that anyone who wants to do well here can, and while it might be easier here to “succeed” than it is in other countries, it is not a given. There are scores of horribly poor people here who cannot get out of their poverty, aided by a capitalistic system which specializes in keeping poor people poor, but using those same poor people to maximize their profits. There are scores of working poor who are working their fingers to the bone without any possibility of climbing out of their holes of financial despair. Prosperity gospel notwithstanding, the playing field is not even in this country, and poor people are suffering big time here. There are lots of children who, like Precious, are caught in a culture of despair aided and abetted by our economic system.
My mind goes to what we as a church do to address and alleviate the suffering, to provide help to children who, like Precious, need to know that someone cares. What ministries can we do to help? Remember, it was education that helped Precious. It was a teacher who took time to talk to her, and listen to her, and help her to know that she had abilities, that she was special, and that she was worthy to be loved.
That seems to me to be the most basic “missionary” work a Christian can do. And it seems that the more we address and alleviate suffering on our shores, the more foot soldiers we will have to send to other parts of the world. We really cannot sufficiently help the world until we help ourselves. If our children are suffering, we are not equipped to help the children in other parts of the world. We have to put our own oxygen masks on before we try to get the oxygen masks on others.
I doubt that I will read the book “Sapphire,” on which the movie “Precious” is based. Too hard to become a co-partner in that kind of suffering on that level. But I am praying for us as a church to have “mission” work flourish in 2010, working with the children in our community in ways that will help give them hope.
It has to be that we recognize what we can do to help “the least of these” who live amongst us.
Happy New Year! Let’s get this party started!

Finally, Hope for Health Care Reform

2009-12-22T10:14:00.000-08:00

I don’t know what the final health care reform bill will look like but I am glad that it feels like we’re on the road to something being different, so that “the least of these” will have access to health care.
When President Obama began his drive to get a health care reform bill passed, I had no idea that health care reform had been an issue since the days of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I had no idea that President Richard Nixon had worked on the issue as well. I have learned so much.
When I have listened to Republican senators say that we need to slow down, to wait, I have been flabbergasted. Wait? How much longer ? Why? What about the people, the poor, the working poor, and others, who are suffering? Could they have been serious?
They were and they are …but there comes a time when there’s been enough waiting. Martin Luther King Jr. said as much in his book, “Why We Can’t Wait,” responding to Christian ministers said to him that he and African Americans must wait for justice and for civil rights. Huh? Are you kidding? It had been hundreds of years already when the Civil Rights movement got into its rhythm, pushing steadily toward its goal of justice. Wait??? Only those who have all they need can admonish others to wait. They have no vantage point, no place of personal knowledge, to fuel their arguments. It is easy to be an ideologue.
But people are suffering, and in this nation, when it comes to health care, that kind of suffering makes no sense. The government is not controlling people; big business is, in the form of insurance companies. Insurance companies do not care a hoot if patients live, die or suffer. Their concern is their bottom line: their profits. If people suffer, tough. So be it. That’s life. Or…at least that’s the way the capitalist mind thinks.
President Obama is to be commended for taking on health care reform and for sticking with it. It may cost him, politically. The bill that may pass the Senate (I am writing this four days before Christmas, when it is expected to pass) is not perfect. It does not contain the public option. It doesn’t extend Medicare benefits …there is a lot it doesn’t do, and Liberals are angry …
But Conservatives are angry, too, because some of the way improved health care will be financed is by increasing taxes on people who make more than $250,000 annually. Some things, like getting botox treatments, will be taxed … and there are other things that will be taxed that will make people angry …but at the end of the day, what is important to me is that more people who do not have health insurance will be able to get it. At the end of the day, the insurance companies will not be able to refuse coverage to people who have “pre-existing” conditions.
Thank God.
I think that having access to health care is a right, not a privilege, especially in this country. I am glad that the President, the House and the Senate have pushed this. It’s been mean and unkind, the war of words…but I am glad that the momentum was never stopped.
It’s a wonderful first step toward giving “liberty and justice to all.”
Have a good week as we end 2009 and enter 2010! See you at Watch Night Service!

Pastor Smith

The Advent Conspiracy ...and Other Thoughts

2009-12-15T12:26:00.001-08:00

The Pastor’s Page
There were two moments this week, no, maybe three, where I inhaled what this season is all about.
One was when I read online about something called “The Advent Conspiracy.” A group of religious leaders have banded together and taken a stand: do not spend yourselves into debt, but rather, “conspire” to serve others.” If there is something to be given, they say, let it be yourselves, and your willingness to serve God.
Hooray.
Then, I was getting my nails done, and my technician said that the shop had voted, instead of exchanging gifts, to adopt a needy family, and give to that family. “We have enough already,” she said.
She said that the family chosen was a lesson to all of them, helping them to keep things in perspective. The mother has died, and so the 31 year old father is raising his four children alone. He recently lost his job and his home, so the family has moved back in with his mother. They have no healthcare.
Their situation was hard to listen to, but what they asked for warmed my heart. The grandmother wants a cross to wear around her neck. One of the children wants a mattress for his bed. One of the daughters wants new socks; all of hers have holes.
As my technician was talking, my eyes filled with tears. That’s what the gift-giving should be about: giving to those who do not have, not even the things many of us take for granted. Christmas isn’t the time to go into debt buying things just to buy things. If the truth be told, if someone is close to you, he or she ought to be worthy of receiving gifts all year long, not for a specific holiday, but just for being in your life.
This is not “bah, humbug,” this is “yes, Lord!” theology.
Whoever told us that we don’t love someone unless we go into debt buying them “things?” How did Christmas get to be that? When I was little, Christmas wasn’t so much about getting a lot of things; we children usually got one book and one toy…but we were happy. Why? Because there was the Christmas tree, and there was the smell of all those cookies and pies and cakes that my mother baked. There was the fudge that my father made once a year. There were Christmas lights in the house, and in the stores. One of our traditions was to go down to the J.L. Hudson Department store to see all the animated figures in the windows. I loved them. It was enough. It was simply enough.
I like that Advent Conspiracy thing. I like what my nail shop is doing. And I am hoping that nobody in this congregation, or reading this piece, feels bad if he or she cannot buy lots of “stuff” that supposedly says “I love you.” Love isn’t stuff. Love is giving self. That’s it, plain and simple. A pair of expensive sneakers does not say “I love you” if you cannot spend time with the one whom you say you love. More clothes, when one’s closet is already filled, doesn’t do it. Actually, one little gift that says, “I know you and I appreciate who you are,”something that will be around when you are dead and gone … something that the receiver can always pick up and remember you …that’s love.
I think that’s what Jesus would do.
Well, I think that’s what Jesus DID do. He left us … himself.
Have a good week.

Pastor Smith

Advocate for the Children!

2009-12-08T07:24:00.001-08:00

The Pastor’s Page

Even as the Senate begins debate on health care reform, and the House celebrated the passage of its version of a health reform bill, one very vulnerable segment of our population remains in danger of not having adequate health care benefits.
Children.
A report on National Public Radio said that if the Senate bill passes, childrens’ hospitals will suffer because they will get less funding. That will compromise their ability to treat a large segment of their patients – children who are on Medicaid.
And the Children’s Defense Fund points out that both the House and Senate bills threaten the vitality and survival of CHIP – the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
CDF says that the House bill will keep CHIP only until 2013 and then require as many as 10 million children to enroll in a new and untested health insurance plan that will be more expensive with fewer benefits.
The Senate bill keeps CHIP until 2019 but fails to fully fund it or make it easier for uninsured to become enrolled in the program.
The Children’s Defense Fund, under the guidance and direction of Marian Wright Edelman, has been working tirelessly to get all children health care. Statistics show that it is poor children who too often have no health care benefits, and in addition to that being a travesty in the so-called wealthiest nation in the world, it is also a death knell to many children who end up seriously ill or even dying from what have come to be known as preventable diseases and illnesses.
Not much talked about is the reality that many children in urban areas who are labeled “behavior problems” are very often more likely to be sick and untreated. Youngsters with everything from abscessed teeth to psychiatric disorders to chronic disease are being sent to school ill and are in effect being blamed for being sick because their illnesses affect their behavior.
Not only do these children suffer physically, but their ability to be educated goes lacking, which in turn affects their self-esteem. What ends up happening is that sick, untreated children grow into sick, untreated adults, often with behavior problems related to their illnesses, and then become labeled as criminals. They end up, too many of them, in prisons, still untreated, regarded as monsters or bad people, when if they had been able to receive adequate health care, many of their problems, and the problems they end up causing society, their paths in life might have been dramatically altered.
It is chilling the way all these things – inadequate health care, untreated illness, compromised ability to learn, “acting out” behavior, antisocial behavior and finally, prison – are related. There is a thread of “injustice” which ties them all together. Because the poor are so often and too often seen as objects and not as people, these children fall through the cracks, with nobody to advocate for them.
I am including in this week’s bulletin a flyer of information about an amendment to the current Senate health care reform bill being sponsored by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). I urge you to read this information, and then call Ohio’s senators to urge them to vote FOR his amendment. Our senators are Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican George Voinovich. Senator Brown’s phone number is (202) 224-2315, and Sen. Voinovich’s phone number is (202) 224-3353. I am going to also give our Social Justice Ministry the job of getting the word out to the Columbus community about what is at stake for children, and I urge you all to ask people to read this pastor’s page on our website, www.adventucc.org
If we don’t advocate for our children, nobody will. When a person is seen as an object, it is very easy to either step on or step over him or her. It is our job as people who say we love the Lord to make sure that we advocate for the children, who are surely amongst “the least of these.”
Have a good week!

Pastor Smith

A Special Day

2009-11-30T13:46:00.000-08:00

The Pastor’s Page
Today is a special day.
Not only is it the first Sunday of the last month of 2009, the year we dedicated to understanding and keeping covenant, but it is the day when one of our own, Dr. Cynthia Tyson, completes the covenant she made with God about a year ago when God called and she answered, “Here I am, Lord.”
She completes that covenant in the sense that today, she is ordained. She has completed a year of study and mentoring, and now goes through the ceremony which marks the end of that process, but her work as a deacon has just begun.
Being a deacon is no small thing. The first deacons were appointed by apostles who noticed that there was bickering among the church people. The Grecian Jews were complaining about the Hebraic Jews, saying that the widows of the Greeks were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.
It was church mess, and was growing in intensity, as church mess does.
These first deacons – there were seven of them – were appointed by “The Twelve,” who said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”
Deacons are called to help the undershepherd of any church. They are called to be full of the Spirit, to be serious about their relationship with God. They are called to be servants in the deepest sense of the word, attending to the needs of the people, whenever there are needs to be met. They are the right hand of the pastor, and they are the smiled upon of God.
I watched Dr. Tyson struggle through her call to be a deacon. I heard her first whisper, her suspicion that God was calling her, her timidity in wondering if she would be shunned because she is a lesbian, but her conviction that she would have to risk that because first and foremost, she would have to be faithful and obedient to the God who called her. I watched her break down in tears when she finally walked the aisle at one service, a service where I called forth people who had been “called.” She sobbed in my arms as she said she’d been called to be a deacon. She whispered, she sobbed, but she came forward.
Throughout her walk, her fierce love for God has shown through. When I could not “be there,” she was. When I said I needed a huge tree for the front of the church, to tell the message that “Jesus is the light of the world and that we are the light of the community,” she went looking for a tree, and found one. When I announced that we were going to study covenant this year and that I wanted a rock in the sanctuary to remind the people of the Biblical story of how a rock was to be the testimony of the people that they had made a covenant with God, she and Dr. Judy Alston went and found that rock.
She comes to Bible study. She teaches others. She studies like no student I have ever had. Her seriousness about her call is evident and obvious.
I think God must be smiling, for here is one who has said, “Here am I Lord, send me!” and means it. The Deacon Board is blessed to have her. Advent United Church of Christ is blessed to have her …but mostly, God has to be glad that she came forward and said “yes” to the call to serve.
We embrace you, Dr. Cynthia Tyson. We embrace you and your ministry. We celebrate the work you have done and support the work you have yet to do. The work has really just begun, but this far on the journey, God must surely be smiling.

Thanks in a Different Way

2009-11-24T14:18:00.001-08:00

The Pastor’s Page
Thank you, God, for another year.
This year, it hit me that I no longer take being alive each Thanksgiving and Christmas season like I used to. When I realized that it really was Thanksgiving, and that I was/am alive and in good health, I said a different kind of thanksgiving prayer.
So many people do not make it to “the next Thanksgiving,” and my prayer is that every day, I am in alignment with God’s will for my life so that whenever God calls, I am as ready as I can be.
Not only did we all make it to this Thanksgiving, but I am presuming that we all ate. How about the Associated Press reported that in the United States there are about 17 million families who do not have enough to eat. I doubt they had big Thanksgiving feasts.
There is so much to be thankful for.
I know that some of you are sad because you do not have much money, and that even with “Black Friday,” you will not be able to swarm through department stores and spend a lot of money. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe not having the diversion of shopping like we would like, spending money we do not have, we can pause and thank God for what really matters.
There are two young teens, one black and one white, who were set on fire by “friends.” I pray for them both and for their families, and thank God that my children are OK.
There is a little girl, Shaniya Davis, who was raped and murdered after her mother allegedly hired her out as a prostitute. She was five years old. Her family is devastated. I thank God that I have never had to experience that kind of pain.
We as a church were able to give out 100 baskets for Thanksgiving, in spite of many of us being unemployed or underemployed. You went out and bought food for others, when I am not sure all of you have enough food for yourselves. I thank God that I have that kind of church.
There are families of 13 victims who were killed at Ft. Hood, whose holy day season will be really hard this year…
All these things made me pause and think and thank God in a new a different way this year. I hope that I never waver from this place of new awareness and I pray that more of us will embrace this kind of awareness…because at the end of the day, it’s not about turkey and dressing, Christmas decorations and gifts.
It’s about acknowledging that God is good all the time …and is worthy to be praised, no matter what.

We Count

2009-11-18T10:08:00.001-08:00

The Pastor’s Page

I keep thinking about the double standard of the way news is reported.
In Cleveland, Ohio, at least 13 women have turned up dead. They were African American women …some with serious problems, but they were human beings, and they had been missing for a while. It turns out that they’d been murdered by one Mr. Anthony Sowell, a convicted sex offender.
Thirteen women gone. Missing for a while, and yet, I do not remember hearing any stories about the women being missing.
I think of Heather Ellis, the college student who was arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer after she was accused of cutting into a line at Walmart …and who faces 15 years in prison for this minor offense…and yet, the coverage has been minimal.
I think of the young African American boy, Walter Currie, who lives in Poplar Bluffs, Missouri, who was set on fire by another teen. The coverage, again, has been minimal.
Yet, Sarah Palin is all over the place!
There are countless sad and discouraging stories about what is happening to people of color all over this country, and yet, we hear little about them. If a young white girl is missing, we hear about it; it is a sure thing that if 13 white women were missing, be they of ill repute or not, the entire nation would know about it.
And yet, our people have horrible things that happen to them, and scarcely a word is said.
There is a need for us to be vigilant and to tell the stories ourselves. I firmly believe that we should not whine about what is “not,” but work to make a difference ourselves. In this age of the internet, and the “I reporter” phenomenon, there is no reason why our stories should not be getting out.
If the police will not look for our missing, and if the media will not cover stories about our missing, or, as in the case of Walter Currie, our injured and misused, then we ought to make sure the news gets out.
Of course, when there is something untoward that someone in the African American community has done, it’s front page news. The horrible story about the young African American mother who apparently sold her 5 year old daughter out as a prostitute, and who consequently ended up murdered, deservedly made the news.
And so did the story about John Allen Muhammad, who was executed last week for the people he randomly killed as the “DC Sniper,” make the news. I have no problem with that.
But so should reports of our missing women and children make the news. We count. Our children count.
The fact that the officials in Cleveland ignored the stench of death in a primarily African American neighborhood should be big news; there ought to be a big time investigation going on, and the results ought to be made public.
Like I said, we count.
The tendency of the media to focus only on the misfortunes of our community, while ignoring the tragedies that occur in our communities, is a travesty and professionally unforgivable.
I write this, again, to say that we need to care about our community enough, care enough about our women and our children to make sure the world knows about what is going on. If we don’t tell the stories, they will not be told.
That is obvious.
Rather than waste valuable energy, though, complaining, I say we look at our problems and issues and work to make a difference.
That is what we, I believe, as empowered Christians, are called to do.

Not Sad About Muhammad's Execution

2009-11-11T03:33:00.000-08:00

The Pastor’s Page
I had a horrible spiritual struggle this week.
John Allen Muhammad, one of the so-called “DC Snipers,” was executed on Tuesday, and I found, to my horror, that I was not sad and I was not sorry.
I am opposed to the death penalty. I do not think it deters anyone from crime, nor do I believe it brings “closure” to the families of victims. Murdering one person, even if it is done legally, does not assuage the grief of another.
I also think that it is horribly criminal for a legal system to kill another human being. Murder is murder…which is why normally, I am sad, even to the point of being sickened, when someone is executed.
But this time I was not sad and I was not sorry. I would not have voted for Muhammad to be executed, but I was not sorry he had been.
I tried to explain my feelings to myself. I was angry at Muhammad, not only for indiscriminately killing 13 people over three weeks, but also for pulling in Lee Malvaux to help him, and also for thinking that killing people like he did would make it easier for him to kill his wife, and thus, get custody of his children.
The gall!
I did think about the fact that he leaves behind those very children who are probably very sad. They are sad that their father did what he did, and, even if he had not been the father they needed, that he has been killed. After all, he was their father.
And I did think of my normal response to the fact that people do heinous things: that they must be mentally ill and were never treated. In my mind, I just do not want to believe that people can do things like kill lots of people and not be sick. Normally, I argue that these people have probably been mentally ill since childhood and were never diagnosed, never treated.
I still believe that, and I think something was wrong with Muhammad. I think that in addition to maybe having been sick from the beginning, that illness was probably exacerbated by the time he spent in military combat.
But still, I was not sorry.
I heard one of the former police chiefs of Washington, D.C. say that what Muhammad did was calculating and planned, which it was. That being the case, he deserved to die, he said.
I found myself thinking that sick people can be manipulative and calculating. They can know the difference between right and wrong and not have the capacity to make right choices. I found myself arguing, internally, with this chief, saying he was being too hard. Nobody deserves to be murdered.
Then I stopped myself. How hypocritical. Here I was, not sorry and not sad that Muhammad was gone. I had no box to stand on, no legitimate perch from which to sing my song of self-righteous indignation.
I feel so bad about not being sad or sorry that Muhammad is gone that I have had to resort to deep prayer, asking God for forgiveness. It is up to God whether or not he wants to forgive me for this one. Theology has it that he will…
But God’s forgiveness notwithstanding, this week of wrestling with my feelings has humbled me, and has shown me a page of my soul that I had not before come across.
And no matter how hard I try, I still cannot say I am sorry or sad that Muhammad is gone.

Right and Wright

2009-11-03T05:30:00.001-08:00

There is a difference between liberating truth and oppressive lies and vitriol.
This week, I listened to an interview of President Barack Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe. He has written a new book called, “The Audacity to Win.”
Every time someone uses that word, I bristle, especially when those people are part of the group that helped vilify Jeremiah Wright.
In his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” the president cited a sermon by that same title preached by his then-pastor, Jeremiah Wright. I remember that sermon. It was a masterpiece. It shared how African American people had the audacity to hope in spite of a nation, a culture and a religion that so actively worked against them.
The sermon was liberating truth. If the goal was to lift some of the burden of oppression off the shoulders of his listeners, Jeremiah Wright achieved that.
Pastor Wright’s sermons were typically like that. They were a fine blend of history, sociology and theology, an amazing mix that was able to penetrate minds, hearts and spirits of people who wanted and needed to know that God cared for them.
Never was there hatred preached against a people. The history of Africans in this country was told, but hearing that truth was liberating. It made oppression make sense, in a weird way. Being oppressed just because one was black didn’t work. Being taught the history helped us understand how oppression could thrive.
We could begin to move past that which we were beginning to understand.
Wright always taught us how the government was not for “the least of these.” The government was about money and power. That is true, always has been. We needed to be aware of the government’s role in our oppression if we were to know how to navigate through the mine-filled waters. Because at the end of the day, he would teach, oppression could not be the excuse for us not doing what God had equipped us to do.
Our ancestors died so that we would have the right to read. So, he taught, you’d better get your education.
Our ancestors died so that we could apply for jobs that had previously been closed to us because we were black. So, he told us, you had better go through the doors that had been opened to us.
Yes, it was audacious to think that we could overcome oppression, but, he taught us, our ancestors had done it, and their ancestors before them. Now, it was time for us to pick up the baton and look up. We were to look back only for what lessons we were supposed to use as we moved forward, but we were never to forget what the past had taught us.
It was liberating. In true prophetic form, Pastor Wright criticized the government, not only for being racist, but for its classism, its homophobia and its sexism. He taught us that we were not to be racist, homophobic, or stuck in classism. He was as hard on black folks as he was on white folks when it came to not living up to the life God demands of us.
He would not allow us to forget that the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence – were all documents that professed to be “for the people.” This was a government that was supposed to be “of the people, by the people and for the people.”
We were not to forget that we were part of the “people” that the government was supposed to protect. We were to remember that God made no mistakes, and that we were as precious to God as were all of the other people God created.
In the end, his messages were about this God who did not condone bigotry or racism or sexism or homophobia or militarism or classism. This God, Wright taught, had an agenda for humankind that people on earth just did not understand, or if they did, just would not follow.
The people surrounding President Obama’s campaign did not understand any of this. They reacted to that 10 second sound bite. The talk show hosts were only interested in fanning the flames of dissent and hatred so that possibly, Mr. Obama would not be elected.
Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly, Hannity, Coulter … pride themselves on their Conservatism. What they say, though, has little to do with God, as opposed to Wright’s messages. In the Bible, God did say he would damn countries that did not follow God’s words and keep God’s covenant.
The word used over and over was “cursed.” Cursed be those who do not listen to God and do what God commands.
Why it is that intelligent people, news people, cannot take the time to separate the truth from the lies, why intelligent news people will not call out the hatred from the sources from which it is really coming, I do not know.
I do know, though, that Jeremiah Wright did not preach hatred. Someone needs to have the courage to say it.
I just did.

A Convenient Definition of "Blight"

2009-11-02T15:45:00.001-08:00

The Pastor’s Page

Every time I drive downtown and see the fences around City Center, I get mad.
It’s going to be demolished. It’s called “urban blight.” Something else, a park, I think, is going to be put in its place.
Meanwhile, blighted houses in poor neighborhoods are allowed to remain. They become havens for drug traffic, eyesores for the neighborhood, a danger to children, bringing down property values.
The city cannot just up and tear them down. There are laws, you know. And it seems that the absentee landowners know those laws, and do just enough to keep their property from being torn down, but they do nothing to improve that property and thus improve the quality of life for the people who live in the neighborhood.
But the City Center … ah, there’s blight that cannot be allowed to remain!
We don’t have enough money to take care of our neighborhoods, put more parks in our neighborhoods for our children, so they will have something to do other than run the streets. Budgetary concerns make it impossible for more recreation centers to be built. In fact, many of them are being shut down.
But the City Center … there’s enough money to make a park downtown. Or something.
This week there was also a report that several central Ohio hospitals are going to be building new facilities. There’s going to be a new heart hospital somewhere, and another cancer hospital.
The current structures just will not do.
Of course, there are no plans to build a new hospital on the city’s South Side. The people there are too poor. Someone said in a radio interview that the only patients a hospital on the South Side would have would be those on Medicaid, Medicare, or “no pays.”
“A hospital just cannot be sustained like that,” he said.
So, the new hospitals will be built, driving up health care costs, even while the debate about health care reform is going on. Oh yes, we the taxpayers will be paying for all this new construction – going on in the north side of the city.
What about the people on the South Side?
The poor people are always the ones least served. Profit-seeking ventures do not care a hoot about the “least of these,” nor do they treat their needs as “holy,” as Obery Hendricks says in his book, “The Politics of Jesus.” Poor people are taxed; you bet they had better pay their taxes “like everyone else.” But they are not cared for “like everyone else.”
I would not object to the City Center being torn down if I felt a passion on the part of city lawmakers to really deal with the real neighborhood blight in our city. I would not object to a lovely park in downtown Columbus if I saw the city trying to build more parks and recreation centers where there are kids standing around with little or nothing to do. It would seem …right … then. There would be some equity, and some real concern for the masses of people who help keep this city moving.
As it is, though, there is no equity. In the Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew scriptures, it says in Chapter 8 beginning at verse 20: “The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and are not saved. Since my people are crushed, I am crushed. I mourn and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?”
There is no healing because we the people are far from God with our hearts. Otherwise, with the “blighted” City Center being torn down, some of these horrible properties would be coming down, too. With a passion.
Have a good week.

2009-10-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

Martin Luther King Jr. , in a speech given about the Vietnam War in a speech at Riverside Church in 1967, said there is a time when silence is betrayal. When you know something is wrong but you say nothing, that is betrayal, betrayal to the person wronged, betrayal to God and betrayal to all that is right.

Christians have a way of being silent, in the name of “not hurting anyone’s feelings,” or wanting to be “in” with a person in power or perceived power. I have done it: been silent when I’ve known I should have said something because I didn’t want to offend anyone. Everyone has done it, but the fact of the matter is, there is a time to speak and a time to be silent. The Bible says that.

The Beatitudes say “blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” We spent a lot of time differentiating between “peace lovers,” those who want peace at all cost and who therefore will not say anything, even when they know something is wrong, and peace-makers, who sometimes bring about peace for drawing to attention something that is wrong and therefore inspire a different action.

I am not talking about mess-makers. Mess-makers do just that: make mess. They see something they do not like, and instead of doing what they can to improve it, they talk about that situation, that person and do nothing but rile up the emotions of people.

No, I am talking about people who have a heart for God, want to work for God, and in that desire, see much that is not in keeping with what God would want.
We are in a nation which, in spite of great wealth, has become poor. Our descent into poverty came early on, as we watched our government destroy Native Americans, sanction racism, and in general, sacrificed godly work with demonic vision which included racism, materialism and militarism. We, the United States of America, have been ruthless in our quest for power and for things, and in the process, scores of people have suffered.

In this nation, there has been created a class of beggars. As this economic situation worsens, I imagine that class will widen. We have grown comfortable to having things; it is inconceivable to us that we not be able to have a car or enough money to feed our pets, yet more and more people are descending into economic despair, while a tiny number of people fight to stay in power, hoard the money and resources, and in effect echo the caustic reply said long ago by a heartless French monarch when told that the people of France had nothing to eat.

To keep silent when people are suffering is a betrayal of the purpose of resurrection. Too many people are still on a cross of suffering, when, as we all know and say ad nauseum, “Jesus died for my sins.” Part of “our sin” is being silent and doing nothing, sitting in saucers of comfort and self-righteousness while so much of the world is begging for a touch of God’s grace.

They will only be touched when we touch them. They will be shown the love of God through our actions, not by boasting about the denomination to which we belong, or the church. They will be convicted that the Christ died for them, too, when the smug stop being smug about the resurrection, and realize that there are still too many people on a cross.

We who have been blessed know better. The word is that we do better when we know better. We really DO know better. Now, in the name of resurrection it is time TO DO better – so that all may be one, as the Christ prayed it would be.
Happy Resurrection Sunday!

Pastor Smith