The hope of now and of next year

Lessons from Hanukkah TEXT VERSION

Lessons we can learn from celebration of Hanukkah

I’m spiritually indebted to Jewish traditions, such as Hanukkah. This year, Hanukkah begins at sunset next Sunday, Dec. 22, and runs until Dec. 30.

The word “Hanukkah” comes from the Hebrew verb meaning “to dedicate” and generally is translated as an eight-day festival of lights. Specifically, it refers to the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem at the end of the Maccabean Revolt, which was a war between Jews and forces from the Seleucid Empire.

There seem to be different versions of what Hanukkah is all about, and all of them have to do with miracles. I will only mention one. The Talmud teaches that there was a small jar with enough oil to light one candle in the Temple’s menorah for one night. Instead, the oil lasted eight nights — and this was the miracle.

These days, the menorah is lit at sunset each night of Hanukkah. Candles are added from right to left, just as Hebrew is read, but they are lit from left to right. Doing so celebrates the new miracle of continued light on each successive night. The blessings that are recited include praise for the One who provides the light and continues to perform miracles.

Giving and receiving gifts is an integral part of celebrating Hanukkah. I was told the gifts do not need to be big or bought — in fact, there is some preference to the gifts being homemade — but they are to be shared with all loved ones. Oftentimes, children and adults play dreidel together. The game uses a four-sided spinning top, which has a Hebrew letter imprinted on each side; together, the four letters are an acronym for the Hebrew words referring to the miracle of the oil.

There are several songs associated with Hanukkah, such as “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel” and “Chanukah, Oh Chanukah.”

And, of course, there are certain foods connected with Hanukkah. I’m a fan of latkes (but preferably with very little minced

onion). And some good doughnuts, be they jam-filled or not, are always high on my personal list.

All of us, Jewish or not, could learn much from the celebration of Hanukkah.

Here are some examples. We could all review that to which we are dedicated. Who or what gets my attention, my allegiance, my affection? Am I dedicating all I should to what I should? Or, do I need to realign my commitments with my values?

Here’s another one: How do I define what a miracle is, and what miracles have occurred around me? Maybe they were really big; maybe they were pretty small and certainly not supernatural, but still quite significant. With whom should I share the miracles I’ve witnessed?

Just one more for now: Maybe life works somewhat like the oil in the temple jar. The more we share with others, the more we all benefit.

Wilson is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Follow him on Twitter: @nathandaywilson

Lessons from Hanukkah

It’s time to find room at the inn for everyone TEXT VERSION

It’s time to find room at the inn for everyone

William Sloane Coffin said the best sermon he never preached was at a Christmas Eve service when he pastored New York City’s Riverside Church.

The poinsettias were beautiful. The people were joyful. The place was packed. It was time in the Christmas pageant for the innkeeper to deny Mary and Joseph with the resounding line, “There’s no room at the inn!”

The innkeeper role was perfect for Tim, a young man who had Down syndrome. That’s what the pageant organizers thought. That’s what Tim’s parents thought.

Tim had, in fact, rehearsed the one line – “There’s no room at the inn!” – many times with parents, pageant organizers and participants alike. He had it mastered. He was ready.

So there stood Tim at the altar of that church’s majestic sanctuary, bathrobe costume firmly belted, as Mary and Joseph made their way down the center aisle. They approached him, said their lines as rehearsed, and waited for his reply. Everyone in the sanctuary and a host of angels waited with bated breath, leaning forward as if willing Tim to remember and resound his line.

“There’s no room at the inn!” Tim boomed, just as rehearsed. But then, as Mary and Joseph turned on cue to travel further, Tim suddenly yelled “Wait!” They turned back, startled and surprised by this off-script move. “But you can stay at my house!” he called.

Bill Coffin strode to the pulpit, looked out at the congregation, and said “Amen.” He sat down. The best sermon he never preached.

Remembering this story made me, again, wonder when we individually and collectively will have the courage to stop saying so often, “There’s no room at the inn” and instead, like Tim, start saying, “But you can stay at my house.”

To the hungry and homeless, imagine the impact if we were to say collectively, “Wait! We’ll make a place for you at America’s table of plenty!”

Or to the sick and uninsured, “Wait! We won’t turn you away from the doctor.”

Or to those working hard every day trying to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, “Wait! We will help you escape poverty and we’ll authentically analyze and act on the systems and situations that exacerbate poverty.”

Or to children who are home alone or on the streets after school, “Wait! We’ll make a safe place for you with caring adults in after-school programs.”

I’m one who believes that God came to live among us as a child – a child who cried and laughed, loved and learned, born as a vulnerable baby needing care and dying surrounded, at least partly, by a supportive community. And, between his birth and death, he challenged the cultural and political priorities of his time and stood up for the poor, the weak and the vulnerable.

It seems to me this is a good time of year for all of us, and especially those who believe in the incarnation I named above, to repent and reaffirm our commitment to building communities, a nation and a world where all can find room in our inn.

Nathan Day Wilson is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Read his blog at www.nathandaywilson.com and follow him on Twitter: @nathandaywilson.

It's time to find room at the inn for everyone -- Faith & Values, 8 Dec 2019

Ways to deal with what we don't want to see TEXT VERSION

How do we deal with what we do not want to see?

 Garfield is one of those comic strips that sometimes evokes more than a polite smile.

In the first panel of one such strip, Garfield is sitting at the table with a feast in front of him: Turkey, dressing, biscuits, vegetables, pies and more. He is obviously enjoying it. In the corner of that panel is the subtle image of Odie the dog outside the window.

The second panel is a closer view of Odie; he’s covered with snow and has empty water and food dishes.

What will Garfield do? Will he open the window and hand food to Odie? Will he invite Odie in to share the feast? How will Garfield handle his abundance alongside Odie’s scarcity?

In the third panel Garfield shuts the drapes and says, “That’s better.”

How do we deal with what we do not want to see?

I thought about that Garfield strip – one that I have in a large, disorderly folder of comic strips and poems and other things labeled “This Will Preach” – the other day when I came across Langston Hughes’ gripping poem, “God to Hungry Child”:

Hungry child,

I didn’t make this world for you.

You didn’t buy any stock in my railroad.

You didn’t invest in my corporation.

Where are your shares of Standard Oil?

I made the world for the rich

And the will-be-rich

And the have-always-been-rich.

Not for you,

Hungry child.

That poem took my breath. If it does not cause you to think or feel something, you might want to check for metabolism.

The powerful dissonance of attributing those words to God is exactly the point.

We could end hunger. Since we have not, are the hungry to conclude that God somehow wants it this way? Why else would decision makers fail to end the scandal of hunger?

How do we deal with what we don’t want to see?

One way we could deal with what we don’t want to see is to close our drapes, our minds, our checkbooks. We could reveal our inner Garfields and pretend like what we don’t want to see doesn’t exist. (News flash: It still does.)

Another option is to blame the things we want to avoid on something outside of our control. God, perhaps. Hughes is not doing this but is pointing to the absurdity of doing so.

Or we could go all anti-Garfield. Rather than close off or close out what we don’t want to see, we could intentionally and courageously open ourselves to it.

Open our hearts to feel the plight of others. Open our minds to consider creative solutions. Open our mouths to engage in authentic discussions. Open our hands to work alongside others. Open our checkbooks to support those who are creatively working alongside others. 

How do you deal with what you don’t want to see?

Nathan Day Wilson is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Follow him on Twitter: @nathandaywilson

Ways to deal with what we don't want to see

God's will be done. How are you helping?

Imagine the following scene. In a hurry, as usual, familiar words rush from your mouth: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on Earth as it is heaven.”

Suddenly, abruptly, almost curtly, a voice responds: “Are you sure?”

Shocked, you reply, “Sure of what?"

The voice continues: “Sure that you want my will to be done, my desires to be made actual.”

You: “Well, yeah, we could always use a little more heaven on Earth!”

The voice: “My will: No more children dying of hunger. No more extreme poverty. No more allowing the greed of a few to trump the need of many. No more drawing lines between people based on worldly standards. Peace among nations, even religions. People truly loving me and each other. These are my desires. This is my will. Is this what you want?”

You: “Yes, sure. Absolutely. All that sounds exactly right. It sounds very good, in fact.”

The voice: “Then what are you doing to make these things happen?”

If that dialogue happened, what would you think and feel; what would you do? Would you ever dare to pray those words again?

After all, the voice — which we assume to be God’s voice — has called you out. You claimed to want God’s will on earth. And the voice met your claim and raised you one: What are you doing to make that claim, those words, become reality?

That’s a tough one. In fact, it is so tough that I think we ought to back up and blame it on Jesus. After all, he’s the one who used this phrase in his model prayer.

It’s true. Jesus was big on realm of God, or kingdom of God, talk. Line up 100 New Testament scholars and ask what is most central to the message of Jesus, and I bet a bunch and then some will say it is this idea that God’s realm can transform earthly realms.

Just open the Bible. Kingdom of God talk is all over the place, especially in the first three Gospels. In Mark, which is the oldest, Jesus uses the phrase in his inaugural address: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe” (Mark 1:15). Matthew and Luke both include kingdom talk in their beatitudes and many parables.

So, what did this phrase mean for Jesus? For Jesus, God’s kingdom had a present and a future meaning at the same time.

In the present, right now, you can claim the presence of God within you and among you within community. The future aspect for the kingdom of God envisions a transformed world where relationships are deeper, and the Earth and its fullness are rightly recognized as belonging to God (Psalm 24).

One of my favorite people to quote – that being me – is fond of saying that the future can be better than the present and those of us with opportunities to make it so have responsibilities to make it so. It’s one of my core beliefs and it is rooted in texts such as this one.

God’s will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. It’s a big claim. What are we doing to make it real?

Wilson is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Follow him on Twitter: @nathandaywilson

We won’t fix climate crisis until we treasure the globe

We won’t fix climate crisis until we treasure the globe

Nathan Day Wilson

“The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.” (Psalm 19) I was pleased and disheartened, when I was reminded of that verse this week.

I was pleased for the reminder that, according to the Bible, nature and nature’s God are inseparable; they are one. In the words of another psalm, “When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place...” (Psalm 8).

For the Bible and those who read it seriously, there is a core, inescapable relationship between God and nature or creation or the environment. It’s that relationship that leads church people to sing hymns such as “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” and “The Spacious Firmament on High.”

And, yet, I was disheartened, too. For while they tell of God’s glory and proclaim God’s handiwork, these days the heavens and earth must surely also declare reprehensible the effects of human activities: overconsumption, overexploitation, pollution and deforestation.

Take pollution as one example. The dangers of pollution start at the beginning of life. Toxic pollutants cross the placenta, increasing the risk of preterm birth and low birth weight, which can cause lifelong damage to multiple organ systems. Children breathe more rapidly, so they absorb more pollutants at a time when their developing organs are more vulnerable. As a result, air pollution causes an estimated 600,000 deaths each year in children younger than 5, mostly from pneumonia.

In adults, pollution contributes to a wide range of respiratory and circulatory diseases and may accelerate cognitive decline in seniors.

Pollution is only one part of our climate crisis. Many people are struggling with anger and depression in the face of an overwhelming climate crisis. Climate

change has been known of and talked about for decades, while attempts to preserve the environment and reduce climate change have been blocked by corrupt politicians and corporations overtaken by greed.

How should people of faith respond?

We begin by reasserting with vigor the connection between God and God’s nature. I’m convinced that until we do, we won’t be moved to consistent actions.

In addition our relationship to nature must change from “owner” to “steward.”

Stewards are caretakers, not consumers. Stewards practice social justice. Stewards know that equity is not optional if we are to live together.

“We have forgotten that we belong to each other,” Mother Teresa said.

Perhaps remembering that is key to our survival.

Wilson is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Follow him on Twitter: @nathandaywilson

faith and climate crisis jpeg

God's unbounded and unboundable love -- text only, no images, easier to read

I don’t know who, but someone quipped, “I used to be an incurable optimist, but now I’m cured.” More and more, I resemble that remark; do you?

But a loss of optimism does not have to mean a loss of hope. Optimism, after all, is rooted in me and my abilities; it’s the expectation of a better future based on the reading of present circumstances. Hope, on the other hand, is the trustful anticipation of genuine newness, perhaps beyond our imagining, based on something much bigger than ourselves — for people of faith, it’s based on the divine.

One of my favorite verses is 1 John 4:16, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” It is, for me, not only a hopeful verse, but also a verse of hope.

After all, God’s love is given to all. Not all of a certain nation or race or religion. All. And not only all people. Surely we can tell that God’s love abides in other animals and the plants, the fauna and the flora.

An interesting note about God’s love and its connection to our hope is that God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates it. We are loved not because we have value, but we have value because we are loved. Our value, like God’s love, is a gift and not an achievement.

Maybe that’s the first reason that Jesus commands us to love our enemies: God loves them too. Notice that the very same sentence in which Jesus commands us to love our enemies goes on to say “for God makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.”

If you have stepped foot in a church very often you likely have sung about “a wideness in God mercy” and “one great fellowship divine throughout the whole wide earth.” If so, you have affirmed God’s impartial love for all people, with no special privileges only for some.

In other words, you have affirmed as have I that “God Bless America” means “God Bless North Korea” and Russia and Mexico and so on. The biblical truth is that there is no special providence for any nation at the expense of any others. Territorial discrimination is as evil as racial.

It's important to remember in this affirmation of God’s unboundable love, that God’s love does not mean God’s approval. I don’t know that God hates, but if God did I suspect the object of that hate would be hateful things. Carnage. Racism. Xenophobia. I suspect they turn God’s stomach, even make God mad. Certainly they must make God sad. 

That’s what makes freedom so tricky, it seems to me. If God’s love is real, then our freedom is real. We are not slaves or puppets but children of God, free to do good and free to sin. Unloving choices are sometimes made.

When in anguish over human violence we turn to God and ask, “How could you let that happen?”, I sometimes wonder if God asks us the same question.

Follow Wilson on Twitter: @nathandaywilson

God's unbounded and unboundable love

God's unbounded and unboundable love

Make Love Your Aim -- text, no images

‘Make love your aim’: Paul’s words matter

Nathan Day Wilson

I can remember the exact place and time when I realized that “cogito, ergo sum” — that is, “I think, therefore I am” — was less important than “amo, ergo sum” — that is, “I love, therefore I am.”

I was a student at the Ecumenical Graduate Institute at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. I was nominated by my 51 classmates from 32 different countries to preach at a worship we were to lead at the Ecumenical Centre.

The student selected to be the worship leader, with whom I was to plan all the non-musical components of the worship service, was a woman from Rwanda named Mary. Mary is a physician who was educated and trained by the Red Cross. Mary and I developed an important and close friendship working together on this worship, the focus of which was reconciliation.

I put considerable thought and study into the issue of reconciliation. I interrogated the Bible. I investigated the historic examples of times that restitution necessarily accompanied reconciliation. I inspected the nuances that led some to seek retribution and reject reconciliation.

In short, I gave this topic and this worship a lot of thought.

When Mary and I met one afternoon, I told Mary what I learned and she listened very politely. We engaged in conversation, found points of agreement and points of difference, and then Mary asked, quietly, if she could share something with me. I said, “sure.”

During the civil war in Rwanda, Mary was serving as a new physician with

the Red Cross. During the war, two of Mary’s children, her husband, both of her parents, and two siblings were killed by the opposing tribe. But since Mary was a physician sanctioned by the Red Cross, she had to provide care for any injured person, even when she knew that this person was from the tribe that murdered her family.

She said to me, “Nathan, I had to trust in God’s reconciling power. I had to give God’s love all the room in my heart, and save nothing for hate. I had to. Otherwise, I could not live with myself.”

That’s when I realized that it’s not thinking that gives us meaning, it is loving.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for sound thinking. In fact, I would argue that love allows for better thinking.

But as Paul suggests in 1 Corinthians, “If I can fathom all mysteries and have all knowledge but do not have love, it profits me nothing.”

For those of us who profess to follow Christ, Paul suggests that our incorporation into the risen Christ is not merely a union of our person with his. Rather, it includes something much bigger: Union with Christ is necessarily becoming a participant in a newly created order where the old has gone and the new has come.

To be “in Christ” means that the new creation God effected in Christ is reenacted within us. He writes, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. “

Clearly being part of this new creation includes personal transformation. All our beings — our thoughts, our attitudes, our outlook, our priorities, our concerns, our actions — begin to be made over. Accustomed as we are tothinking that personal transformation resultsfrom our own capacity to improve ourselves,Paul issues the stern reminder that the newcreation is not our own doing! God is the primary mover.

And finally, this transformation allows us no longer to be alienated from one another — split by a wall of hostility — but thanks to God’s actions, to be reconciled to each other. We begin to experience ourselves as free and forgiven and then know others to be the same.

In a time like now, so divided by allegiance to false gods such as money and power, by acts of lovelessness and hatred, and by lines drawn between people according to worldly standards, the Christian witness to God’s intended wholeness is needed now more than ever!

“Make love your aim,” writes Paul. Indeed.

Wilson is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Follow him on Twitter: @nathandaywilson

Make Love Your Aim

Ubuntu is needed now

"When life is tough ... are we going to live based on problem or priorities"

Writing the spiritual memoir -- a conversation with Thomas Larson

Conversation with Tom Larson, author of 4 books including Spirituality and the Writer, about writing spiritual memoirs at Indy Reads in Indianapolis on 28 June 2019

What advocacy is

To get to advocacy, let's start with politics -- 

Politics is not primarily about campaigns or candidates or even elections. Politics is about the water you drink and the air you breathe and making sure both are clean. Politics is about children not going to bed hungry. Politics is about all of us having access to the health care we need. Politics is about people being at war or at peace.

Politics is about distributing economic goods and defining what property rights are. Politics is about determining what a crime is and how it will be punished. Politics affects the degree to which we can speak or write or even worship. Politics defines who will be accepted as members of a community and who will be placed in the margins. Politics even seriously influences how you raise your children by determining the circumstances of family life and, don't forget, establishing much of the subject matter of their education.

So, then, the question "should religion have a role in politics" is the wrong question. It does. Religion matters. A better question is how should religion and politics interact or relate? Religion has long been important to people who are concerned about politics, and politics have been important to the people who are most concerned about religion.

Let me say it another way. Those who are serious about politics must also take religion seriously and those who are the most deeply religious must pay attention to politics.

Throughout history, and perhaps never more so in this country than in the last 25 years, many different avenues have emerged for religious people to become active in politics. For example, some have portrayed their struggle for political power as the very essence of religious life.

At the other extreme, some religious folk have conceived politics as a summary of all the evil against which the righteousness of God stands. Both of these perspectives, while they differ sharply in the details, take politics seriously. So then, how should religion and politics interact?

If religious values are to influence the public sphere, they ought to make our political discourse more honest, more civil, and more spiritually sensitive especially to those without the voice and power to be fairly represented.

Recently, the increased visibility of partisan religion in politics has often made our political discourse even more polarized and even less sensitive to the poor and the dispossessed. You see, what is at stake here is not just politics; it's deeper than that.

In a way, it's deeper even than faith itself. At stake here is the very meaning of our life together.

I challenge, even reject, any political litmus test that distorts the independent moral conscience that faith can bring to politics.

I challenge those who want to undermine the integrity of any religious conviction that does not conform to some narrow ideological agenda. I am deeply concerned about the distortion of prophetic religious faith when wealth and power are extolled rather than held accountable and when more comfort is brought to those on top of society than to those at the bottom.

At the West Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, we are seeking to bring all of this and more to the table. It is the table where some families, at least, still gather together for a meal. It is the table that cements social and spiritual connections. It is the table of gathered loved ones that sometimes marks a reunion or a holiday celebration. It is the table where we have conversations sometimes light and lively and sometimes difficult, even uncomfortable.

When we come to this table, we see each other's faces, and we remind ourselves of the ties that bind us together regardless of our race, our religion, and our economic or social status. At this table, we rededicate ourselves to who and what we are meant to be. At this table, we have an opportunity to be thankful. At this table, new political visions can be born. At this table, we can see the possibilities for poor as well as rich that can bring us together.

Anyone can come to this table and if there are not enough chairs we will get some more. If there is not enough room, we will make the table larger. Even the shape of this table will change as we discover who we are and who we are becoming.

All of us, you and I, can find a place at this table. At this table, we will have some honest discussions and maybe even debates. At this table, we will share our resources - resources of time, energy, finances and connections.

Who knows, at this table, we may even laugh together or shed a tear. We will write letters, we will organize visits, and we'll study issues and do credible research. We will educate others and try, oh we'll try, to mobilize. We will advocate with and on behalf of those underrepresented. Some of us may support forums, town meetings. Some of us may march or do a demonstration.

You see, at this table we will remind each other and apply the lessons of David and Isaiah, of Jeremiah and Nehemiah, of the councils and teachers, of Jesus and his followers. The lessons of Gandhi and George Fox, of Rosa Parks and Saul Alinsky, of Martin Luther King Jr. and Oscar Romero, of Hussein Nasar and Martin Buber.

These are lessons that will teach us that new politics depend on all of us and on each of us. Each of us is like an individual trickle of water, which, when they come together, turn into streams and then merge and become rivers. And with enough energy and force these rivers can become mighty rivers, so mighty that they could have the power to shape or reshape the very landscape around them.

Today, our public landscape could use some new shaping. So let's create a new table. All of us, a whole bunch of little trickles, let's form together into streams that become a mighty river.

Let us join our voices with the prophet Amos and say let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Nathan Day Wilson

Palm Sunday for a dose of courage & conviction

Ball handling clinic!

Print, complete, and return to address on the form

Envy v Generosity

Beliefs & Behaviors

What's the deal with water and wine?