It's Father's Day.
And it's Sunday.
So let's talk meals.
But not religiously ritual Last Supper type meals...or even orgiastic indulgence at the local Texas Roadhouse in honor of dad and his day.
I'm thinking more buffet.
And just so you don't waste any more of your time if you're starting to smack lips or intestinally growl, we're talking metaphors here, k?
Keith Giles is part of a house church in Orange, California where no one takes a salary and all offerings are given to help the poor in the community. Giles has also been a published writer since 1989 and is the author of five books.
This is a portion of an essay he published online this past week.
Just in case you’re not paying attention, American Christianity is a Christless Christianity.
We demand the Ten Commandments to be displayed in our courthouses, but we never give a thought to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.
We justify our cruelty to immigrants by quoting random passages from Paul’s letter to the Romans, but skip over dozens of commands from Jesus about showing mercy, caring for the weak and vulnerable, and totally ignore his warning that “whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done it to me.”
We cry out for “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” to be our standard for justice, but ignore the fact that Jesus specifically corrected this teaching by saying:
“You have heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, but I say to you, do not resist an evil person with violence, but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”
In other words: Endure the injustice and take the opportunity to put the extravagant love of Christ’s Kingdom into practice; bring the audacious and everlasting love of God into the daylight and dazzle those whose eyes have never seen or imagined such overwhelming and sincere love. This is how we change the world. This is how we transform our enemies into friends. This is how we end the violence. This is how we push back the darkness – not with more darkness – but with true, undeniable light; the light that only comes from God.
If the best we can do is take an eye for an eye, we will never escape this world of blindness.
If the best we can do is to continue to behave exactly the way we would had Christ never come and spoken these words of life to us, we will never experience freedom.
Giles wraps up the piece with a glass half full style call to all Christians to reconsider their commitment to faith and to a lifestyle more in keeping with Christ's teachings.
I respect that he chooses to try and re-light the high road for those who seem to have lost sight of it, but, the cynic's dark side of my force has me revisiting an observation I made a long time ago in a somewhat different context.
Someone on my conversational radar was overtly, and irrefutably, rude to someone. I employed one my own gifts from God and pretty much sliced and diced the guy, verbally speaking, in front of everyone, leaving them all both startled and a little satisfied, with one exception. A friend took me aside for a moment and asked if I thought I might have spared the transgressor the public humiliation and simply taken them aside and tactfully, but firmly, let them know that they had been insensitive in their rudeness.
My response was, to my mind, involved a simple combination of etiquette, logic and common sense.
"If," I offered, "they were capable of being sensitive to the idea that they had been rude and insensitive....they wouldn't have been rude and insensitive in the first place."
Religion in general, but Christianity in particular, re-rings that bell for me a lot lately. And I recognized it as an inadvertent sub-text to what Keith Giles says in his piece. I'm not (watch I how I do this) insensitive to the notion that we all make mistakes and we all sin and, if we acknowledge those sins and mistakes, we deserve the chance to have some slack cut our way or, ideally, make it right, either in the instance or from that point forward, or perhaps even both.
But, then, there's that tricky business of acknowledgement, regret, even apology.
The give me that old time religion term for it is repentance.
Turns out, these days, at least three things we're not seein' a whole lot.
Quality customer service from Comcast.
Job well done bouquets delivered frequently by FTD from Donald to Jeff Sessions.
Repentance.
Hold that thought.
Let's talk immigration for a minute or two.
And turn our Bibles to Leviticus 19:33-34.
"When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. you shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God."
Couple of clarity notes for the vocabulary challenged (and larger portion of the MAGA cap owners club). Tomato. Tamahto.
"Sojourn" means temporary stay, sojourner, stay with me, means one who stays temporarily. In other words, not a citizen or permanent resident. A visitor, a tourist, a...wait for it....immigrant.
Oh. And that I am the LORD your God thing that put the period and exclamation point on the Scripture verse there?
That would be the Old Testament version of what you would probably hear today as "I'm God, the creator of all things and the father of all mankind and I approved this message."
Which brings us to that Father's Day Sunday meal I promised you a few minutes ago.
Actually, as I mentioned, more of a buffet.
I call it the morality buffet.
It's very popular all across America these days. And word has it that it's a particular favorite of many of America's more vocal and passionate Christian groups, organizations and congregations.
Works pretty much like your traditional buffet.
You simply pick what you like. And pay no attention to any of the rest of it.
Keith Giles inadvertently alluded to the idea in his essay.
I hear the buzz around the buffet sounding a lot like this.
"...Let's have a big ol' helpin' of them Ten Commandments....but, nah, I'm not in the mood for any Sermon on the Mount...."
"...Oh, yeah, double spoonfuls of getting them damn immigrants out of here.....Jesus' mercy, caring for the weak and vulnerable?......tastes kinda flat to me.....gonna pass..."
"...yum....look here...it's Trump tweets.....delicious....can't swallow fast enough.....huh? what's this? Deuteronomy 12:32, 'everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do...you shall not add to it or take from it'.....yeah, whatever, I just don't have room, you know? all full up on the scrumptious...wait, make that Trumpious......"
"....Psalm 72:4...may he vindicate the afflicted of the people...save the children of the needy and crush the oppressor"..?...nope, just ain't got no more room on my plate...all filled up with Trump's lockin' them kids up and oppressin' all them illegals from invading our sovereign land......"
Interesting thing about law.
It gets progressively easier to live with the effects of law when you can pick and choose the laws you're in a mood to obey.
Just like that buffet.
It's a much more enjoyable meal when you can eat what you're in the mood to eat and pretend the rest of it ain't even there.
A much more enjoyable meal.
Maybe even the kind of meal that let's ya sleep like a baby.
Enjoyable.
But not very nutritious.
In fact, in the end, not very good for you at all.
Bon appetite.
And God forgive you.
When it's time to pay the check.
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