If Slavery Had Found A Different Scriptural Emphasis

          When the Civil War divided the nation, most church denominations  divided north and south.  To support the slave economy of the south, two very different theological interpretations of the Bible were undertaken. 

         What I believe is that the use of the Bible to justify slavery in this country may be the worst misinterpretation of the Bible in our nation’s history.  The consequences of that theological framework, that way of thinking about God, still haunts us as a nation over the question of race.

         But imagine if the North had grasped Deuteronomy 23: 15-16, and made it their call and response to slavery?  “If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand him over to his master.  Let him live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him.”  Imagine if ‘refuge’ had been the watchword of the nation as it divided?  How much more of Jesus do we see in that?

         The great fear of the South in regards to their slaves was that of an uprising.  There were many places where, locally, the slaves far outnumbered the free and a rebellion would have caused much death and desolation.  Imagine if the great fear was, in fact, flight?  What if Harriet Tubman and those who followed her lead were the great heroes of the time, carrying out this mission from Deuteronomy 23?

         I am very aware of how deeply racism runs in this country and how much deeper it was in the time of the Civil War.  But prooftexts, verses taken on their own, can take on a life of their own, for good or for ill.  How powerful would it have been if this one had taken hold?

Pastor Peter

Imagine a Sacred Shelf in the Library of Congress…

             Imagine if you would a sacred shelf in the Library of Congress.  On this shelf would be displayed a unique treasure of hand-crafted work from the highest office in the land.  Imagine if there were, on this shelf, a collection of carefully bound and preserved copies of the United States Constitution.  Well, the Constitution and notes and personal commentary, each one well worn and thoroughly used.

            Imagine if the practice of this nation was that every succeeding President, between the time of their election and inauguration, had the task of copying over the Constitution in their own hand and the responsibility of daily reading, studying, and elaborating their own thoughts about it throughout their Presidencies?  Call it a time of ‘civic devotions’. 

            Perhaps there would be a standard type of workbook to facilitate this copying.  Maybe a fresh workbook would be left by the sitting President for their successor.  With all the other practices and rituals and symbols of the office that were established by President George Washington, perhaps there, this time of ‘civic devotion’ could have been established.

            At the conclusion of their Presidency, their hand crafted Constitution would become part of the archived materials of their time in office.  The President could be given the option of having the contents of their Constitutional missive publicly shared at that moment or shared after their death.  But shared it would be, tying together the framing document of the United States and the person most powerfully charged to defend it.

    Perhaps we would have a massive political blowup within Government to decide where these missives should be stored and displayed. I like the idea of the Library of Congress because I consider it to be the nation's library.

            What would each successive Presidential Constitutional Missive pass along to the next?  Continuity?  Challenges?  Grace under pressure?  Disasters when things went astray? 

            Okay, um, Pastor…this is not your typical blog post.  Where is this coming from?  It is a reimaging, for our present times, something that I read in the book of Deuteronomy.  Deuteronomy 17: 18-19 to be precise.  These are verses dealing with the eventuality of the People of Israel being ruled by a king.

            “When he (the King) has taken the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law (the book of Deuteronomy), taken from that of the priests, who are Levites.  It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the worlds of this law and these decrees.”

            The NRSV translates this as the king having a copy of the law written out for him, but I like this idea even more, the king writing it out in his own hand.  With all the stuff going on in politics in our own nation, what if we translated that command into our own context?  We make fun of politicians so we may not claim they left behind ‘wisdom’, but what experiences would they have left us?

Pastor Peter

More Binds Us To One Another Than Divides Us

             There is a universal statement in the Christian faith, that we are all ‘children of God’.  That God created us, cares for us, sustains us (even as we sinfully work so hard to undermine that creation).  Then we get particular, in Jesus Christ, in our belief in Him as our Lord and Savior.  This, with the indwelling Holy Spirit is how the Christian faith distinguishes a Triune presence of God as a foundation of our faith.

            Among the resources of the ministry that I have recently gone through, I found interfaith resources obtained at the time when I was doing interfaith chaplaincy with our local police department and interfaith spiritual care in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.  And while the names change and the sources of religious inspiration differ, the root needs and aspirations of the people do not.

            In other words, the need for the love, caring, rescue, healing, and grace from a Source more powerful than ourselves is a constant in its expression across different faiths.  I do not say this because I am a ‘universalist’, that all religious expression somehow leads to the same God.  I say this because it underpins the universality of the human experience, the universality that we are all children of God. 

            All humans can suffer.  All humans need love.  All humans are worthy beings.  All humans are God’s children.  As a Christian, I believe that is where I need to begin.  We live in a time where we more quickly begin in what divides us, for how ‘those’ people are different from us.  Too often, those divisions are meant to designate who is ‘wrong’ in opposition to who is ‘right’ (which is usually us).

            But in a time where there are more than ten thousand presumed dead in Libya, where a war continues to rage in Ukraine, where we continue to watch Lee plowing north, Margot out beyond it, and another gearing up to take up the mantle of a named storm, where there is so much need in the world, the need to come together is more powerful now than ever.

            We are all God’s children.  If we embrace that truth in love and compassion, across our faiths and beliefs, we will do so much better.

Pastor Pete