Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sermon on the Sane Man

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This sermon was recorded Sunday, Feb. 17. It was delivered to the congregation of Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska where we had concluded regretfully that a second scheduled community program on gun violence in America would not serve the purposes of constructive dialogue.

Two texts interact in this sermon. The first is the traditional First Sunday of Lent account of the temptations of Christ in the wilderness. While two later Gospels, Matthew and Luke, tell the story of three temptations in the wilderness, the earlier Gospel of Mark describes the entire wilderness temptation with one curious phrase: “he was with the wild beasts.” The second text (Mark 5:1-20) is the encounter of “Jesus, the Son of the Most High God” with the insane man living alone among the tombs, “possessed” by the “Legion” (a Latin word in a Greek text, the word for a unit of the Roman occupation forces). The story ends with the man who had been possessed/occupied by the Legion “sitting there, clothed and in his right mind” to everyone astonishment.

A Parliament of the World’s Religions

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This is the first of several “Views from the Edge” postings on the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions. Dirk Ficca represents the commitment of his alma mater, McCormick Theological Seminary, and his church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), to work in harmony for a more peaceful and sustainable world.

Leave a comment to let others know what you think.

Gun companies playing hardball

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“Six gun companies have announced plans to stop selling any of their products to any government agency in states that severely limit the rights of private gun ownership. Click HERE to read the story.

Breaking the fast

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Another versified look into the private life of Steve Shoemaker:

“What I Carry from the Kitchen Each Morning”

–2 boxes of cereal under my left arm
–1 large glass glass between 2 fingers & thumb of left hand
–1 gallon of 2% milk by the handle with remaining 2 fingers of that hand
–With my right hand, 1 bowl containing a spoon & 4 pills
on a plate with a table-knife balanced precariously on the edge
–1 piece of buttered toast atop the bowl
–a jar of red raspberry preserves clutched between right forearm & where my waist used to be
–An eagerness to break my fast

Steve: Sounds like you’re pretty well-waisted even before you break the fast. Maybe a sequel verse for full-disclosure…about the rest of the meal – the stack of pancakes or the waffles, the half-pound of bacon, the maple syrup, the butter, and the three-cheese omelet.

Lightning Strikes…

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Lightning strikes Vatican

Lightning strikes Vatican

“An apparent photo of a lightning bolt striking St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican Monday night — the same day that Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, stunning the world — has gone viral.” Click HERE for one of the accounts and the source of the photo.

Here is Steve Shoemaker’s Verse:
“Lightning Strikes…”

There are no short Anglo-Saxon words
that will describe a coincidence.
Long Latin-based circumlocutions
are required. To state the facts, yes:
Pope resigns. Lightning strikes Vatican.
Then whispers begin superstitions.
…
The first gay marriage that I blessed as
a Pastor was barely over when
a bolt of lightning struck the stone cross
atop the church. The limestone chunks fell
on the steps below where the happy
couple had just walked. Not an evil
omen, I believed…not even an
exclamation point! Purely random.
…
Love wins. Ignore all speculations.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL Feb. 15, 2013

A Critique of the State of the Union

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The climax of last night’s State of the Union Address was the President’s call for an up or down vote on proposals to curb gun violence in America. The applause was uproarious and continuous.

This violence must stop.

But what of the underground stream of violence that erupts in gun violence in the nation that prides itself on the greatest military the world has ever known and the greatest economy the world has ever known?

Is it a coincidence that the geysers of unprecedented school, mall, and street massacres in the homeland have come at the same as America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Is the world’s greatest military something to celebrate?

How does one measure a military’s greatness? By its superior capacity for violence over other militaries, or its ability to subject foreign nations to the American will for freedom and democracy? By the number of dead it leaves behind in other military ventures?

Is an economy’s greatness measured by the size of a nation’s Gross National Product?

The measure of an economy- from the Greek word oikonomia, the management of a household- is how well it serves the inhabitants who live in the house.

How well is the American economy serving its members?

An economy is not measured by the amount of stuff it produces. It’s also measured by the fairness of the distribution of those goods within the one household, the oikonomia.

By that measure, can we really declare that the American economy is the greatest in the history of the world?

During last nights State of the Union Address the loudest shouts came in response to a call to end to gun violence in America. But it doesn’t mean we want to stop the violence. The applause through the rest of the night took for granted the essential goodness of the underlying systemic violence of the American military-industrial-corporate-complex and the military whose superior capacity protects those interests abroad while creating Rambos on our own streets at home.

The home of the brave and the land of the free is neither so brave nor so free. We will only be brave and free when we connect the insanity that shoots innocent school children here at home with the carnage the world’s greatest military has left overseas.

The American republic was born in the violent occupation by Western Europeans who believed they were God’s special people. That belief has morphed over time. But it continues to be the case that violence is as American as apple pie. While we applaud the attempt to end gun violence in our schools, malls and streets, the underground stream of violence rolls on undetected beneath the the nation’s delusions of grandeur about the exceptional greatness of our economy and our military. Violence is enthroned as the god of the not-so-free and the no-so-brave.

An Ash Wednesday Question

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What do we do? How do we stop this?

“Motorists and walkers scattered in terror Monday night as a gunman fired two bursts of bullets at passing vehicles near an Oakdale grocery store, killing a 10-year-old boy and wounding two other people. Click HERE for the Start Tribune story.

We can‘t stop it. America is an arsenal with an open door. And any attempt to close the door is “unconstitutional”. Liberty, one of three basic rights outlined by The Declaration of Independence, is killing the other two. “Liberty” trumps not only “the pursuit of happiness” but “life” itself.

“At least two vehicles struck by bullets sped into the parking lot of the nearby Rainbow Foods at 7053 10th St. N. seeking help.”

Responsible gun owners did not do this. An irresponsible gun owner did this. But it would have made not one ounce of difference if the passersby had been armed. They were sitting ducks, like the ducks in a carnival booth. There is no protection against irresponsible use of a firearm.

Is the concern about violence in America – about life and the pursuit of happiness – equal to the concern for the constitutional right to bear arms? Can we talk about what is happening on the streets and in the schools across America without shouting that guns are not the problem – that people are the problem?

People are the problem. So are the lethal weapons like the one that made its way into the hand of the man who stands on a corner and fires at passers-by. These are not water pistols. These are not cap-guns. These are not bows and arrows. Can we talk about the problem of people using guns to kill their neighbors? Can we even have a discussion without the NRA holding us hostage?

Today is Ash Wednesday when Christians ponder the mystery of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ on the way to the cross.

“And while [Jesus] was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. …And they came and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. And behold one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.’ “ (Gospel of Matthew 26:47-52)

In Luke’s version of the arrest, Jesus tells the disciple ‘No more of this!’ And he touched his ear and healed him.” (Gospel of Luke. 22:51)

“The 33-year-old gunman, who was in police custody Monday night, began firing a handgun about 6:10 p.m. while standing in the street near Hadley Avenue N. and 7th Street N….” – Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Feb. 12, 2013.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are the three core rights of the Declaration of Independence. Faith, hope, and love are the great spiritual values of the Christian tradition. Our freedom is not found in a weapon. It is found in Jesus of Nazareth for who was executed after the angry crowd yelled for the release of the other criminal, Jesus Barabbas, the armed insurrectionist.

It’s Ash Wednesday. At his arrest, the Jesus who is arrested by an armed militia tells his uncomprehending disciple to put his sword away: “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”

“No more of this!” Please, for the sake of God, stop this!

The State of the Nation

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Tonight President Obama delivers the State of Nation address.

What is the state of the Nation?

In a word it’s fear. We live in a seething caldron of fear. Anger is everywhere. The sense that life is out of control. We are clamoring for safety. Arguing about guns, drones, the Patriot Act provisions that suspend due process, and so much more. The right fears the left. The left fears the right. The middle fears both. The fears are not without some justification. The America the President will address tonight is in a chronic state of mass hysteria.

This is not new. G.A. Studdert Kennedy, affectionately known as “Woobine Willie” because of the cheap Woodbine cigarettes he gave the stressed troops as a British Army Chaplain in World War I, addressed it during a time of hysteria in England in 1926:

“There is, and there must be, a plane upon which we can think and reason together upon questions arising out of our wider human relations, social questions, that is, apart from and above party prejudice and sectional interest. If it is not so, and there is no such plane, and we cannot think of these big questions outside the prejudices and passions that arise in party strife, then it is safe to assert that there will never be any solution of the problems whatsoever. The idea that politics in the true sense – that is, the art of managing our human relationships on a large scale – must remain a separate department of life, distinct from morals and religion, is ultimately irrational and absurd, and is an idea with which no responsible teacher ought to have anything to do. – Sermon, “The Church in Politics: a Defense.”

The issue way back then was capitalism and socialism. Studdert Kennedy dared to ask the question of what these words mean – he called for a more reasonable discussion apart from the stereotypes and name-calling.

As I listen to the voices these days and watch the videos of public hearings here in Minnesota and elsewhere, I wish Woodbine Willie were here to take the microphone with the questions instead of the answers. I realize that some things never change.

I scratch my head and wonder whether we will ever learn. Then the music and words come up from memory:

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways;
Re-clothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence praise.
…
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
…
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!”

My prayers are with you, Mr. President.

Verse – 1505 Anno Domini

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The Pope asked Michelangelo to make
his tomb. A grand statue of Moses soon
emerged from stone–each whisker clear, each vein
distinct, emotions boiling free–quite like
a man who had encountered God, who had
been changed, whose head had horns. “Whose head had horns?”
…
The Latin Bible for a thousand years
had said it. Yes, it’s true the Hebrew word
was later learned to mean that Moses’ face
“shone,” “glowed”…was illumined by holy light.
But either way, folks seeing such a sight
cried, “Cover up your head!” We all want grace,
forgiveness, mercy–not ten laws that show
our flaws–that, we don’t really want to know.

– Steve Shoemaker, Feb. 12, 2013

Click HERE for more on Moses statue.

Yearning

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A prayer for our time by George Matheson, the blind preacher from Glasgow, Scotland (March 27, 1842-August 28, 1906):

I am wary of my island life, O Spirit; it is absence from Thee. I am weary of the pleasures spent upon myself, weary of that dividing sea which makes me alone.

I look out upon the monotonous waves that roll between me and my brother, and I begin to be in want; I long for the time when there shall be no more sea.

Lift me up to the mainland, Thou Spirit of humanity, unite my heart to the brotherhood of human souls. Set my feet “in a large room” – in a space where many congregate. Place me on the continent of human sympathy where I can find my brother by night and by day – where storms divide not, where waves intervene not, where depths of downward distance drown not love.

Then shall the food of the far country be swine husks; then shall the riot and the revel be eclipsed by a new joy – the music and dancing of the city of God. Amen.

Click HERE for more on George Matheson.