THE LAST RIVER MILE

Thoughts near the take-out.

recent posts

GEOFF POSEGATE

Retired United Methodist pastor and leadership coach.

  • “A WARNING TO RELIGION FROM THE GARDEN OF EDEN”

    “The sin warned against at the very beginning of the Bible is ‘to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ (Genesis 2:17). It does not sound like that should be a sin at all, does it? But the moment I sit on my throne, where I know with certitude who the good guys and the bad guys are, then I’m capable of great evil – while not thinking of it as evil! I have eaten of a dangerous tree, according to the Bible. Don’t judge, don’t label, don’t rush to judgment. You don’t really know other people’s real motives or intentions. You hardly know your own.

    The author of the classic book THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING says that first you have to enter into ‘the cloud of forgetting.’ Forget all your certitudes, all your labels, all your explanations, whereby you’ve put this person in this box, determined this group is going to heaven, decided this race is superior to that race. Just forget it. It’s largely a waste of time. It’s usually your ego projecting itself, announcing itself, and protecting itself. It has little to do with objective reality or real love of the truth.” – Richard Rohr.

    Important words as we approach a new year. I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.

  • “MAKE A WOMB OF THIS WOUNDED WORLD”

    A daily devotional resource I use (Lectio 365) recently included this piece by Malcomb Guile, in anticipation of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth:

    “Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name,

    Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame,

    O quickened little wick so tightly curled,

    Be folded with us into time and place,

    Unfold for us the mystery of grace

    And make of womb of this wounded world.”

    Make a womb of this wounded world…what a perplexing and alluring concept. The Christ Child comes to bring healing to a wounded world, to be sure. But Jesus doesn’t just come to afford us escape from the wounded world. And he doesn’t come only the judge a wounded world. Guile suggests that God made known in Jesus has the power to make even a wounded, divided, unjust, sin-ridden, suffering world the birthing place of the Savior of the world. Jesus doesn’t come to us apart from a wounded world. He comes from the very midst of it.

    What if in the very mess of this uncertain, unequal, untethered, depressed, fearful, hateful, and divided era, the One whose birth we celebrate is birthing something totally and blindingly new?

    A blessed, peace-filled, comforting, and purposeful Christmas to all. I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.

  • THE ‘RIGHT’ SIDE OF HISTORY

    I’m binge-watching a now dated Netflix series – “Designated Survivor.” In the story, an accidental U.S. president (played by Keifer Sutherland) urges government leaders to “choose to be on the right side of history” during a time of crisis. That’s an interesting and compelling concept…the “right” side of history.

    It occurs to me that all history is recorded post-game. Historians look back on events and eras which have already taken place. As the adage goes, it is normally the victors who write history. For example, as a child growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, I learned a particular slant on the history of “winning the west” in America. It was about the fore-ordained advance of “civilization” against the resistance of “savages.” It really wasn’t until I read Dee Brown’s BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE, that I began to experience a whole different, genocidal slant on the same events. I had to unlearn the history of the victors. So, sometimes the underdogs prevail in how history is remembered. That can take time. It took centuries of fighting against histories which presented slavery as normal, natural, and even God-approved to get on the “right side” of that painful, dehumanizing story.

    Whoever eventually records history, while it is happening it’s something of a gamble to determine the correct side of it. We seem to be in pivotal days right now. People are banking on vastly different outcomes, assuming that those outcomes will be vindicated by future historical recordings. I don’t have a huge amount of time ahead of me with my own little and very limited footprint in human history. So, this is how I’m rolling the dice for the last mile of my float trip:

    -I choose liberty and justice for ALL, not just for the privileged, favored few.

    -I choose welcoming the stranger over protectionism.

    -I choose defending the marginalized and powerless over protecting the “rights” of the already powerful.

    -I choose to believe that no one group, ethnicity, political view, or nation is favored by God over any other. (As as child in Sunday School I learned a little song that said, “Jesus loves the little children; all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.” I still believe that.)

    -I choose to believe that the good news of Jesus the crucified and risen Christ is more about embracing and liberating than it is about judging and separating.

    -I choose to believe that Jesus alone is Lord; no one and nothing else.

    -I choose to believe that love wins in the end; not might, not wealth, not privilege and power. Only love.

    Sure, I may end up on the wrong side of history with all this. I’ll take that chance.

    I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.

  • HOPE ISN’T HOPE IF I SCRIPT IT

    For Jesus-followers, especially in the four Sunday run-up to Christmas Day (Advent), hope is a major theme. We like messages such as Hebrews 11:1 – “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” We tend to assume that hope is the thing we need when that which we expect or long for is delayed. I have a clear, specific vision of what is coming, what is promised, or what I seek, but it’s not here yet. So I live in hope. There’s some truth to this.

    But it may not be the full depth and breadth of hope in Jesus the Christ.

    Hope isn’t limited to how I know or believe things will turn out. Hope isn’t confined by a script I have developed or received. I believe when we say, “things unseen” or “what we do not see” it means that we do not have any imagined picture of what is coming. We have no way to think about or envision what is ahead. Descriptors may aim its direction, like signposts. But that which is unseen will shatter our rigid categories of what can and cannot take place.

    Twenty-one centuries ago faithful Jewish people believed the Messiah (the chosen, anointed one of God) would of necessity arrive as royalty. They hoped in this. Their hope in fact was realized in a poor child born to an unwed couple. No one saw that coming. Faithful people assumed the arrival of Emmanuel (God with us) would be announced to high priests and rulers. Instead, the news first came to common shepherds; the lowest of the low. No one envisioned hope that way. Folks hoped the Messiah would vindicate the rightness and superiority of Hebrew faith. But ritually unclean pagans would be among the first to pay homage to Mary’s child. That wasn’t a hope on anyone’s radar.

    I admit that I struggle to have hope in these days. Politically, I have shaped a very specific hope for things like the preserving of the balances of power, the protection of due process, and the safety and well-being of powerless and marginalized. Others have shaped their political hopes much differently than mine. In practice of faith, I have hope that grace and radical welcoming will overtake judgmentalism and exclusion. Again, others have very different hopes in their practice of faith. There’s nothing wrong with human beings developing their own very specific hopes for the future.

    However, all such hopes are seen on the screens of our thoughts. God is in no way limited by them, as evidenced by how God chose to enter the human stage. Hope in things unseen isn’t just a hope in desired outcomes. It is a radical hope in the One who is Lord of the outcomes, come what may.

    I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.

  • WHAT “CULTURE WAR”?!?

    Apparently we’re involved in culture wars. I guess I’m not as up to speed on this as I should be. Evidently the concept of “culture war” dates back to the 1990’s, and has something to do with the tension between the moral values of progressive thinking verses traditional thinking, however those are defined. As a current example, I heard somewhere that aggressive efforts at deportations and limitations on immigration are seen by some as an effort to protect “American culture.” (That seems to mean protecting white, conservative, upper-income culture, but I’d probably get push-back on that.) Anyway, I have to admit my ignorance in not keeping in step with all this.

    While the movement of following Jesus isn’t at “war” with anybody, being a Jesus follower is counter-cultural by definition. The good news of Jesus the crucified and risen has challenged the values of human cultures from its inception. That’s what got Jesus nailed to a cross and what has made martyrs of many who have followed Jesus for the last two millennia. If I choose to proclaim that Jesus is Lord and not Caesar (or whoever currently represents the power of empire), I’m already swimming against cultural flows.

    In cultures in which power and control are highest values, Jesus-followers live knowing that love is the only real power and hope. (Romans 12:21.)

    In cultures in which a hierarchy of human beings is presumed as a given, Jesus-followers dare to live believing that everyone is equal in the eyes of Christ. (Galatians 3:28.)

    In cultures in which human worth and value are acquired, bestowed, or inherited, followers of Jesus insist that basic worth is a gift given to all, in spite of our very worst. (Genesis 1:27, Psalm 138:14.)

    In cultures that must have an enemy, that have to see everything as “us/them” (thus justifying unspeakable cruelty under the guise of protecting “us”), followers of Jesus have to obey the challenging command to love enemies and even to see them as brothers and sisters. (Luke 6:27-28.)

    In cultures which see humility and empathy as weaknesses, followers of Jesus see them as strengths. (I Peter 5:5.)

    In cultures promoting the idea that God has favorites, with variations of the motto – “Our group first!”, Jesus-followers esteem others as better than themselves. (Philippians 2:3.)

    So, though we’re not at war (because those outside of us and unlike us are the reason for which we exist), the Body of Christ is most definitely counter-cultural. No culture at any point in history captures, contains, and controls the God made known in Jesus the Christ.

    I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.

  • JESUS DOESN’T COME IN ONE COLOR

    The Church of Jesus the Christ doesn’t exist for itself. It exists for those who have yet to really hear, experience, and know the depth of God’s sacrificial love for them. Our mission is summed up in what I know as The Great Commandment (Mark 12:31-31) and The Great Commission (Matthew 28:19.) I am deeply concerned by how poorly Jesus and the mission are represented to unreached people currently, particularly in North America. To be sure, there are bright spot churches where loving God, loving others, and making disciples of Jesus drive a passionate outreach. But far too many congregations are indifferent to or even hostile to new people. Compounding this in our present political environment is a refashioned “Jesus” defined frequently by exclusion, judgment, division, and negativity. Few things could be worse for the disciple-making cause.

    Yesterday the choir of church we attend presented their usual excellent Christmas Cantata. One of the pieces included was “Some Children See Him” by Wihla Hutson. While written from a mid-20th century admittedly white perspective, with all its limitations, the message is still simple and powerful:

    “Some children see Him lily white, the baby Jesus born this night. Some children see Him lily white, with tresses soft and fair.

    Some children see Him bronzed and brown; the Lord of Heaven to earth come down. Some children see Him bronzed and brown, with dark and heavy hair.

    Some children see Him almond-eyed, this Savior whom we kneel beside. Some children see Him almond-eyed, with skin of golden hue.

    Some children see Him dark as they, sweet Mary’s Son to whom we pray. Some children see Him dark as they. And, oh, they love Him, too!

    The children in each different place will see the baby Jesus’ face like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace, and filled with holy light.

    O lay aside each earthly thing, and with thy heart as offering, come worship now the infant King. ‘Tis love that’s born tonight!”

    Jesus isn’t a prize to be won to the denial of others. No group who claims, “We have Jesus and you don’t,” really has him. No nation, ethnic group, political viewpoint, or era ever “captures” Jesus the right way, once and for all. Jesus doesn’t come in one color. He is uncontainable, and that is the point. He is for ALL.

    Help me, Lord, to lay aside each earthly thing so that Jesus might be known to others, unrestricted by me.

    I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.

  • NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO REFER TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING AS “GARBAGE”

    At no point do I have permission to call another person “garbage” or to regard any person as such.

    And nothing gives me a “pass” to do so. Not the amount of wealth I command. Not the official or unofficial position of power I hold. Not any amount of “success” I can claim. Not the imagined “rightness” of my viewpoint. Not the unchecked adulation I may receive from the crowds. Not the fact that I am a plain-speaking or candid person. Not enveloping myself with the rhetoric of righteousness. Not the real or imagined wrongs of those I am labeling.

    Clearly this is hard for many of us in the human tribe. Nevertheless, for followers of Jesus it is blindingly clear and at command level. ALL human beings are made in the image of God. (Genesis 1:26ff.) God loves ALL of the human family. (John 3:16.) The goal is for God’s love in Christ to reach ALL. (Matthew 28:19.) Therefore, to call any person “garbage” is to turn from the very heart of God.

    Period.

    I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.

  • “THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL”

    “Traditional Catholic moral teaching said there were three sources of evil – the world, the flesh, and the devil. Dom Helder Camara (1909-1999), the holy and wise archbishop of Recife, Brazil, taught this in terms of a spiral of violence rising from the bottom up. The world (systemic evil) is the lie about power, prestige, and possessions at the root of most cultures; in the middle is the flesh (personal evil and bad choices made by individuals); at the top is the devil (evil disguised as good power that enforces the first two), which usually takes the form of unquestionable institutions like war, the laws of the market economy, most penal systems and many police forces, unjust legal and tax systems, etc. They are rightly called diabolical because, starting with the snake in Genesis, high-level evil always disguises itself as good, charming, on your side, and even virtuous. Satan must present himself as too big or too necessary to ever be wrong.

    “Up to now in human history, most people’s moral thinking has been overwhelmingly oriented around the personal evils of the flesh. There as not too much knowledge of the foundations of evil in cultural assumptions themselves, nor hardly any critique of major social institutions on a broad level until the 1960s! This is really quite amazing. The individual person got all the blame and punishment for evil while the supportive worldviews and violent institutions were never called to account or punishment, as Jesus did when he critiqued the Temple system itself.

    “The biblical prophets of Judaism were the unique and inspired group who exposed all three sources of evil. It’s why they have been largely ignored – as was Jesus, the greatest of the Jewish prophets. They didn’t concentrate on the flesh, but largely on the world and what I just described as the devil, which very often passes as good and necessary evil. You see what we are up against and why evil continues to control so much of the human situation.”

    -Richard Rohr, YES, AND…DAILY MEDITATIONS (2013), p. 199.

  • JESUS WAS KILLED NOT BY THE OUTSIDERS, BUT BY THE INSIDERS

    We define so much of life by being on the inside or striving to be on the inside. Those on the inside belong; those on the outside do not. Insiders are wealthy and powerful; outsiders are not. Insiders are beautiful, favored, and popular; outsiders are not. In some ways we see this as blueprint for all of reality. The challenge of existence is to get and to stay on the inside, and to keep a distance from the unfortunate (less-than) people on the outside. We can have compassion for and even pity on outsiders, but we want to keep then at arm’s length. Their very existence reminds us of the vital importance of fighting to stay on the inside.

    This unchecked insider/outsider presumption impacts even those who claim to follow Jesus. We assume that Jesus’ primary job was/is to give us a ticket to the inside. Even if we start with the truth at all of us have made ourselves outsiders (Romans 3:23), we jump quickly to inside/outside thinking. There are those who are saved and those who aren’t. There are those who are going to heaven and those who aren’t. There are those whose doctrines and theologies are right, and those who aren’t. While there is a grain of truth to all of this, it’s dangerous as an operating principle. As long as we’re thinking insider/outsider, we even reshape the core of the gospel: the execution and the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was killed by sinners, we believe; by those clearly on the outside. (As an extreme, this thought process has led to the suffering and death of millions of Jewish people through the centuries.)

    The testimony of Jesus himself sends shockwaves through the insider/outsider thinking we fail to challenge. First, it was not the insiders who killed Jesus, not the outsiders. The approved leaders of the faith engineered it. Those obedient to religious laws and practice did it. Those sincerely believing that they were protecting faith in God did it. Government officials defending both Roman and Jewish law and order did it. Those on the inside by any and all accepted definitions defined Jesus as a dangerous outsider who needed to be eliminated.

    Second, Jesus himself rocked the very foundations of insider/outsider presumptions. His entire inner circle was made up of outsiders. He made outsiders the heroes of his teaching parables. (See Luke 10:25-37, Luke 15:11-32, Luke 18:9-14 as just a few examples.) He warned that we would be surprised by those outsiders who would end up in the Kingdom. (Matthew 21:31.) Jesus regularly challenged insider/outsider categories. And it tended to be those in the outside categories who were drawn to him.

    Finally, the first century movement of following Jesus created scandal by openly breaking down insider/outsider barriers. Slaves gathered with owners. Women were welcomed to worship alongside men. Jewish people stood hand-in-hand with non-Jews whom they were taught to avoid all their lives. Those officially regarded as “sinners” joined with those recognized as “saints.” In Christ there was no inside and outside. (Galatians 3:28.)

    Jesus said the truth would set us free. He also said that he is the truth. Sometimes the truth pulls the rug out from under that which we assume can’t be challenged. Just something to think about…

    I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.

  • NAME-CALLING IS NOT A MARK OF GOOD LEADERSHIP

    This post may sound as if it is aimed at one person in particular. It is not. My concern is with all of us, and with an alarming cultural comfort we seem to have with verbal bullying. Name-calling is not an indicator or strong leadership. Negative labeling, put-downs, and demeaning words of all kinds happen at all levels of leadership now: nationally, regionally, locally, and personally. It happens in our nation’s capital, in our state governments, in our civic groups, in our school boards, and everywhere we expect people to exercise effective and responsible leadership. I have certainly been guilty of it myself. Behavior is being modeled which we would not tolerate in our elementary aged children.

    I can have the “correct” political viewpoint. I can have the “right” theology or philosophy. I can be someone who accomplishes great things by whatever form of measurement. I can be someone who has recognized authority and power, by whatever means. But if I cannot treat my fellow human beings, including my opponents, with decency and respect, then none of those things matter. And those presumptions of “success” or power don’t give me the green light to stoop to name-calling. For me to reduce or dismiss my opponents by degrading them, insulting them, or dehumanizing them does nothing more than erode my own credibility, strength of character, and effectiveness. Insults are the last resort of a person who is insecure in their own position and/or identity.

    For followers of Jesus, we need to remember that EVERY human being is made in the image of God. Ultimately, to insult another person is to insult God, however else we might try to spin it to help us sleep at night.

    I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.