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Reflections from your Pastors
March 5, 2024
“Thou shalt not kill”
There couldn’t be more at stake -- literally the lives of individual human beings without recourse! How many times have we said to ourselves, ‘there but for the grace of God go I’? I say, ‘There but for the grace of God go I’! Where has our morality gone?
Where is it that I am glad it’s not me going? There is a movement on in Arizona and Georgia that, if passed in the state legislatures, will subtly allow for the killing (in the case of Arizona) and the incarceration on suspicion of non-documentation (in the case of Georgia). We have seen how this type of thinking catches on like wild fire. What is our heart telling us when we hear this? What is our Christian obligation? What is ours to do? To what are we called? Where is our nation’s morality? Maybe some of us (me) have been hoping in a dream that the Spark is real, that we are siblings in Christ.
Our souls are in danger as we even try to legalize the wanton killing of ‘others.’ What an illusion. Physics’ uncovering of quantum entanglement means that there is no ‘other.’ And that we do ‘go there.’ We are involved and we are affected. In what? In that which is almost unthinkable behavior for ‘normal’ human beings, like state legislatures, police and sheriff departments, property owners.
Last year, Pope Francis said “There was a time, even in our Churches, when people spoke of a holy war or a just war. Today we cannot speak in this manner. A Christian awareness of the importance of peace has developed. Wars are always unjust, since it is the people of God who pay. Our hearts cannot but weep before the children and women killed, along with all the victims of war. War is never the way. The Spirit that unites us asks us as shepherds [we are priestly people] to help the peoples who suffer from war.” We may consider that the situation in South America, and other countries, that drives people from their home countries into unknown situations to save their lives is dire, a war of its own kind. Ask any immigrating family who was allowed in the U.S. legally how challenging that is to be admitted to the U.S. This is beyond politics: it is about morality.
This past Sunday’s first reading tells us about Jesus raging in the Temple turning over tables and blocking the way to the sacrificial area. This isn’t a peaceful demonstration. This is a person whose adrenaline is pumping, shouting and turning over tables. This is a person who uses his body to block the way to a sacrifice that poor people had to pay for. He is protesting the injustice of it and the perversion of the law of God. Pastor Steve of Unfolding Light on 2.29.2024 wrote:
“This is no mere angry outburst. It’s way bigger:
prophetic, pointed street theater.
Theology thrown on you like ice water.
You start with shock,
and not just consternation, but outrage.
Blasphemy. Assault. Murder!
So it is when God upends your tables,
shouting, “Not this! Not this!”
--When it’s God you’re talking about.
You thought you understood God.
Had the right theology, right sacrifices.
But it’s overturned.
Let that feeling sit with you.
of having been robbed,
having been wronged.
This is how hard it is
to let go of graven images
And let God be God.”
What outrage do we feel at the world’s woe’s that some deny or consider the solution to be death to the stranger, the other? Truly, there is no ‘other.’ What is God asking?
Since Cane and Able we humans have had to hold in tension the anger and fight drive so as to find our peace within and the way of God: the way of the Beatitudes, of risk and vulnerability, of service with compassion, for both the oppressor and the oppressed. Commandment #5 of the Ten Commandments is ‘Thou shalt not kill.” It is so hard to consider the weight of our cultural transgressions. Is it too hard for us to sit with this reality?
Do we have an antidote? Would Jesus say, “Yes. The antidote is Love.” Love your neighbor as yourself. We may finally realize that loving ourselves comes first. But again, what does this really mean? It can mean that in gratitude for each day, we can begin again to love ourselves so we can love others. It is a time for radical resilience: a time to get up, to try to love those of us who are marginalized and made to be the evil object, to put our Christian self-love into action for those of us on the margins. So we pray, and ask ourselves, ‘What more can I do?’ Please make your voices known.
Thou shalt not kill,
Pastor Jane
*For more up-to-date information, check out Arizona Bill 2843 and Georgia Bill 1105.
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