Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Sunday Sermon

 Happy Sunday! Let me tell y’all what’s hypocritical AF... Folk who go to church on Sunday and worship the King of the Jews. Support Donald Trump, the self proclaimed King of the Jew. Vote for and support national welfare to Israel (yes, we give them billions of dollars each year) while whining and complaining that universal healthcare or free tuition for college is excessive and exorbitant. Yet, Israel, with our government handout bankrolling their small country, offers both universal healthcare AND free college to their citizens. While small business owners in our country can’t afford healthcare or to maintain their businesses in the face of dire illness. Either we’re woefully uninformed as a people or intentionally turning a blind eye.  And yes, I feel some kind of way about it. 


Cis white conservative patriarchy is not the only mirror for Divine Love. I know we’ve all been colonized to believe assimilation is the only way to God. But who are we to say someone does not bear the Image because it’s not our idea of the Image? Yea, I’m speaking to those promoting conversion therapy. The shame these tactics create alliances with evil that keep us separated, hiding from ourselves and others instead of speaking to the good of our connection and interdependence. Free people to be who they feel called to be. No one has the right to police the personhood of another. 


Red tape on our mouths to save the babies and laugh lines, firm brows and a nod of the head when prisoners are executed on death row because we so high and mighty, we get to determine who deserves an opportunity to live and who doesn’t. In the words of your own King, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces....You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.... Woe to you, blind guides! You blind fools! .... You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”


May the scales fall from our eyes and our hearts be enlarged with compassion. May the other become us and may our scarcity mindset and fear of loss of power give way to generosity and equality. 


Yes, let’s do help Israel AND Palestine. There’s more than enough. Yes, let’s champion the unborn AND the incarcerated on death row. There’s more than enough for both. Let’s stop talking from our heads while sitting on our watoosies. Let’s stop swinging from the poles lost in tension of opposites and find balance in humility, understanding and listening - even when we’re uncomfortable with someone else’s lifestyle. Can we choose quiet instead of condemnation?


Take a day and experience the injustice of the oppressed. Ivory castle ideas that haven’t been forged in the fire break under pressure of sustained heat. 


Justice is love lived in our actions and acknowledgment of humanity, no matter how alike or different that human is. Justice is right alignment. Every person on the planet has the right to exist in their own skin and to walk out their journey with the Divine in their way without my policing their path based on my agreement with their decisions or my own personal beliefs. 


How uncomfortable does my ideas make you? Can you challenge the worldview of your own “yeah but...”? Trace it back to its origin. Who told you that? Where did those ideas come from? Are they rooted in Love or passed down from someone else’s discomfort? 

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