EASTER, 2016

    Easter stunned and amazed Jesus' first followers.  It took a while for them to realize what had happened.  Then they saw.  Jesus was the living Christ!  And they set out to proclaim this Good News and change the world.

   They began by taking Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection to themselves.  In Christ we can overcome our own crucifixions and rise to a new level of life.  While living here within our everyday world, we can be citizens of the People of God living in the Kingdom of God on Earth, that Jesus prayed for.  We could live in a world of Christ's Grace, which is given in loving abundance.  We could live in justice, peace, joy, hope and love, in a world that is the pregnant beginning of our life in eternity.  The Easter proclamation still stuns the world and will do so until the world ends. 

   This year, the Good News of Easter once again brings forth the majesty and glory of ever dawning new life in Christ.  Sadly not everyone sees it.  Blindness still abounds.  I am not referring to our brothers and sisters of other faith traditions.  While we of course prefer our own faith tradition, we see them as participating in God's life and grace in their own way.  

   First of all, I am referring to many members of the scientific community.  There are many historic reasons for their blindness, including the stubbornness of our church leaders to catch up to the times.

   More particularly I believe that the over-specialization of our educational system is very much to blame.  Very many of today's scientists are formed and work in a world in which God is automatically excluded from the very beginning of all research.  They are taught to think in a dark world in which science explains itself.  "God does not exist.  Science is science. We do our scientific work discovering how the universe works.  Therefore, God does not exist."

   Now, we all suffer from one kind of blindness or another.  We all carry our Cross.  But the self-inflicted blindness of today's science is not a crucifixion leading to new life.  It is a version of Hell from which there is no way out.

   This Easter we mourn that politics is more than ever operating in its own blind world.  Here at home we are watching demagogues lead their followers down the life-sapping path of ignorance, anger and hatred.  The policies of maximized profits and economic injustice, racism, sexism, and the isolation of some of our fellow Americans are being preached and shown daily on TV--all being cheered on by Americans who themselves are victims of this political form of Hell and are looking for the wrong savior.

   In Europe we mourn the Hell inflicted on innocent people by deluded young men in the name of their self-constructed false god.

   This Easter, in too many ways walls are being built where bridges of justice, peace and love should exist.  In too many ways, Hell is replacing the Crucifixion.  No Easter is in sight.

   Am I too pessimistic?  I have lived through very many Easters.  I have rarely seen one where we Americans were so badly and even hatefully divided.  And I wonder.  This year, perhaps we Christians are not stunned enough by Easter.  Are we not stunned enough to stir ourselves into deeper discernment and more prophetic action to bring more Easter life--to bring a lively, effective sense of oneness, joy, hope and love--to our fractured society?

   Christ is risen!  Alleluia!  Can we all rise up?















  

LORD, PLEASE LET ME SEE (Lk. 18:41)

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth, as in heaven.  (Mt. 6:10)

There are those that look at things the way they are and ask, Why?

I dream of things that never were, and ask, Why not?

                                                                            (President John F. Kennedy, paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw) 

  

  No doubt, our political world is broken.  That's natural.  Nothing here in space/time is or will ever be perfect.  But does it have to be as broken as it is?  No.  We have Christ's Spirit within us and the world, empowering and guiding us to move forward toward an ever more perfect politics, which leads us toward an ever more perfect humanity.

   Here is my description of a political world that more closely resembles the Kingdom of God on earth.  Even though we will never attain the Kingdom perfectly, we can imagine it and legitimately ask, Why not?  Then, in Christ's Spirit, we can and should strive toward it.  To ignore the Spirit and not strive forward and evolve is to become stagnant and begin to die.

   A perfect politics exists in a perfect political landscape or structure, i.e., a perfect state of mind and heart.  I take my paradigm of a perfect politics first from God and then from the universe, God's image.  

   God is One Triune (Trinity) Community of Infinite, Eternal, Living Love, that overflows into creation.  God's presence throughout creation shines as a luminosity in all the worlds activities, including politics.  This luminosity of God's all-permeating presence in everything and everyone is seen with the eyes of faith.   

   The universe, being God's created image, is a wondrous, inter-connected, inter-related web of luminous unity.  Every atom, molecule, cell, element, ocean, land, plant, animal, and human is woven together in a glorious dance of inter-connected and inter-related oneness.  While every part celebrates its own individuality and dignity, every part is fulfilled only in its relationship to every other part, to the whole, so that the whole is more perfect than the parts.  Like God, the universe is a wondrously luminous unity of love.

   Perfect politics, then, is comprised of a living unity of all its parts, a unity of love.  If any "part" (person, country, party, program) ceases to love, it separates itself from the whole, loses its meaning and dies.  In the process of dying, it corrupts the political system and the world. (Cf. ISIS today.)

   A perfect American politics is one in which we the people gather together in love to form a more perfect union, with a government that is of the people, by the people and for the people, in a healthy natural environment.

   Perfect politics respects all religions that stand for peace and love.  Perfect politics never becomes a religion itself or acts as if it is God.

   Perfect politics goes together with perfect economics.  Both come together for the common good, with a special option for the poor, sick, vulnerable and outcast, the care of whom is the legitimate yardstick for measuring a country's greatness..

   In our striving toward the perfect, the private sector should provide such things as good products and services, care for the environment, full employment and living wages, a good, affordable education for all, housing, and affordable health care for all.  The government should provide such things as freedom, safety, infrastructure, international trade policies, and minting of money.  But when the private sector cannot provide what it is responsible for, the government has the responsibility to provide, e.g., education, environmental protection, public health, etc.  And it should regulate the private sector to guarantee that is does not fall into environmental pollution, self-service and greed.

   Plato said that the ideal political leaders should be the philosophers, i.e., persons of wisdom who want to understand all that is.  Leaders in the Kingdom of God on earth should also be persons of wisdom, but also of faith, intelligence, mature judgment and humility.  Their wisdom should also include everyday, seat-of-the-pants ability to get things done effective, peacefully and justly.  And most deeply, leaders should be persons of compassion, of true love and caring for all the people and for the environment.

   The founders of our country did not anticipate political parties.  They preferred that the person with the most votes would become President, and the second person, Vice-President.  But that was not to be.  From the very first, animosity between the two parties became the standard procedure for our politics.  Given the system we have, ideal parties should propose ideas and programs that actually will work for all the citizens.  And they should disagree without animosity. 

   Political leaders must be deeply endowed with the dignity of service, and have deep respect for their office and for all the people they serve.  In their own way, they must ask themselves the question Senator Robert Kennedy asked himself, "At times I have to ask myself, am I a New York senator or an American senator?"  This question is at the heart of spiritually/humanly perfect politics; it calls our leaders' attention to justly serving the general good of all the people, even at times to the detriment of some of the people, and even of the political leaders themselves.  

   Also, the people themselves must at times serve the general good over their individual good, e.g., paying just taxes, being drafted to fight a just war.   Perfect politics requires that all qualified citizens should vote.  

  Corporations should respect and reward their workers' investment of their labor and lives, as much as the investment of their investors' money.  Reasonably profitable corporations should not outsource their jobs for the sake of maximizing their profit.  Laid off workers should be provided with free job training and help for placement in new jobs.

  In a perfect political world, America will take its rightful place in the family of nations, and will be respected not for its fearsome military but for its ideals of freedom and unity among peoples of all ethnic backgrounds, races and religions.  Illegal immigrants will be given full human respect and care.  They should never be abused as cheap labor.

  In a perfect political world, war should never be declared.  America will do all it can not to create any cause for war.  All differences would be settled by diplomacy.  In our present world, when war befalls us, it must always be a defensive war, for which we gave no valid provocation, and fought as a last resort.  We should never declare an aggressive war.  Torture should not exist.  No reference to Glory should ever be attached to war, but in the words of General Dwight D. Einsenhower at the end of World War II, war should be lamented as "man's most stupid folly."

  As is evident, the imperfection of our political (and economic) world rises from our very human imperfection.  So the need is always present for all Americans to commit ourselves to making ourselves more luminously human in the Spirit of Christ, e.g, through education, loving family and community life, a strong and mature spiritual life, and all kinds of common sense and good will.  Even though we will never arrive at the perfect Kingdom of God on earth, but only enjoy it in Eternity, we should all dedicate our lives to being on our way toward it as completely as possible.  Why?  Well, Why not?