Notes for the Mass. Council of Churches Annual Meeting - Bryon Rushing 1/24/09
What is the most important issue that you believe that we as Christians need to address in this historic moment?
St. Theresa of Avila preached, “Christ has no body now, but yours. No hands, no feet on earth, but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ looks compassion into the world. Yours are the feet with which Christ walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which Christ blesses the world.”
4. [Matthew 25: 31-46, “The Sheep and the Goats”. Eugene Patterson translates this as] “When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.
“Then the king will say to those on his right, “enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:
I was hungry and you fed me
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink
I was homeless and you gave me a room
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.
We know what happens to the “goats” in [41-45]. May I point out two things: They were all tangible acts that affect the lives of Jesus and the “sheep” did these acts even though they did not know they were doing them for Jesus. And note: you and I will probably be asked - but it probably will not be from this list. (This is not a cheat list.) Be prepared for another set of questions.
5. Karl Barth has been credited with two anecdotes and one liners that are probably apocryphal but are too good not to be “true”. One goes like this: Someone once asked Barth whether he could sum up his whole theology in just a few words. Barth paused for a moment, and then replied, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." And in the other, Barth is to have said, one should "read the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other" or preach with “the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other"
The Center for Barth Studies has no comment on Barth answering the question with Anna B. Warner’s words: Jesus loves me! This I know, For the Bible tells me so. The Center at Princeton does say that Barth did occasionally make similar remarks to the second quote. In an interview from 1966, for example, he stated, "The Pastor and the Faithful should not deceive themselves into thinking that they are a religious society, which has to do with certain themes; they live in the world. We still need - according to my old formulation - the Bible and the Newspaper.” And in a Time Magazine piece on Barth published on Friday, May 31, 1963: "[Barth] recalls that 40 years ago he advised young theologians 'to take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.'”
6. For me the discipline is to “'to take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both.” The challenge is to “interpret newspapers from your Bible.”I should begin with Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4
‘Pray
then in this way:
Our Father in
heaven,
hallowed
be your name.
Your
kingdom come.
Your will
be done,
on earth
as it is in heaven.
Give us
this day our daily bread.
And forgive
us our debts,
as we
also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not
bring us to the time of trial
but
rescue us from the evil one.
[And in Luke—
He said to
them, ‘When you pray, say:
Father,
hallowed be your name.
Your
kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we
ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not
bring us to the time of trial.’]
In the Matthew text, the politics of
heaven can be the politics of earth: Your kingdom come.
Your will be done, on earth as it
is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.
[In Luke: Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.]
7. I am in the legislature because I am called to follow Jesus.
When I follow Jesus I do not know where the path will take me. I may find myself in an ordinary place or a brand new place or a shocking place. When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, on November 18, 2003, that same sex couples have the right to civil marriage in Massachusetts, it seemed so right and yet so new, and I also knew it would be shocking to many.
I reflected on John 16: 12-14: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
I tried to follow Jesus. I believed that my constituents were wise. Legal
civil marriages between a man and man or a woman and woman – same sex couples –
began May 17th, 2004.
I reflected on the words of Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872):
“[People] are mostly right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny.”
I called to mind that verse from Frederick William Faber’s original poem, “There’s wideness in God’s Mercy,” that didn’t make it into the hymn:
“We make his love too narrow
By false limits of our own
And we magnify his strictness
With zeal he will not own.”
Marriage is not a civil right; it is a civil institution. The civil right is the right to choose your partner—in marriage. It is always appropriate for the government to set the rules for civil institutions. In a democracy all civil institutions should be open and available to all who qualify. Civil marriage should be available to all who qualify. I am convinced that sexual orientation should not disqualify a person from choosing whom to marry and that same-sex should not disqualify a couple from civil marriage.
I was lucky to be an Episcopalian; in our denomination the formal discussion of the place of homosexuals began in 1976, when we resolved that they were “children of God”! (That was the same year we canonically admitted women to ordination.)
Most important issue for us Christians, the body of Christ, is to believe—
That one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed – we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men were created equal’
That … “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood”
That one day ‘ every valley shall be exalted , every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places made plain and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the L. shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together’ [Isaiah 40:3; 63:36]
[that] “my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”[Paradigm shift]
We are the Body of Christ. Concentrate on this: St.
Augustine wrote,
“All other food is transformed by our bodies into ourselves; but this food, the
Eucharistic bread and wine, transforms us into the very thing we receive”
And St. Augustine wrote,
“When you hear [the words] ‘the body of Christ’…you are saying Amen to what you
are…be a member of Christ’s body, then, so that your Amen may ring true.”
Believe this--
-- [I was hungry and you fed me] Organize so that everyone in the world can have
adequate nutrition every day
[I was thirsty and you gave me a drink] Organize so that everyone in the world can have clean water everyday
[I was homeless and you gave me a room] End homelessness in the world
[I was shivering and you gave me clothes] End poverty in the world
[I was sick and you stopped to visit] Organize so that everyone in the world can have access to health care
[I was in prison and you came to me]. Organize so that everyone in the world can have access to rehabilitation and amendment of life
We are the Body of Christ.
Believe.
--Byron Rushing