What does God require of us?
From Ezekiel 34 — a good lesson on what we should be doing as priests of the Lord Most High:
Thus says the Lord God:
“Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.”
May we be faithful to do all that God desires of us. Amen.
News items I want to see more of
Hmm, didn’t Jesus have a parable about this kind of situation?
Judge blasts bad bank, erases 525G debt - NYPOST.com.
Suffolk Judge Jeffrey Spinner wiped out $525,000 in mortgage payments demanded by a California bank, blasting its “harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive” acts.
The bombshell decision leaves Diane Yano-Horoski and her husband, Greg Horoski, owing absolutely no money on their ranch house in East Patchogue.
Spinner pulled no punches as he smacked down the bankers at OneWest — who took an $814.2 million federal bailout but have a record of coldbloodedly foreclosing on any homeowner owing money.
and then I remembered why….
…I found Christ and left the GOP: because they lack charity.
And if we have not charity….
Nehemiah on Oppressing the People
From today’s reading:
Passage: nehemiah 5 ESV Bible Online.
When I read this passage, I thought of the way so many of us today are trapped and abused by our employers, our bankers, our credit card and insurance brokers:
I took counsel with myself, and I brought charges against the nobles and the officials. I said to them, “You are exacting interest, each from his brother.”
And I held a great assembly against them and said to them, “We, as far as we are able, have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us!”
They were silent and could not find a word to say. So I said, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies? Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest. Return to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, and their houses, and the percentage of money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them.”
It is not good that we should profit at the expense of others. May God show us how to prosper by treating one another fairly, with compassion and generosity, and may God use us to testify to the world of the ways of God. Amen.
Cheers for the Foreclosure-fighting Priest!
I love reading stories like this one:
LA priest’s mission: Saving flock from foreclosure
CHRISTINA HOAG, AP
A priest’s typical mission is saving souls, but the Rev. John Lasseigne has a more down-to-earth goal — saving homes.
That’s like trying to work a miracle in Lasseigne’s Roman Catholic parish of Pacoima, a blue-collar corner of the San Fernando Valley where bank sale signs sprout faster than weeds. One in nine homes is in default, making it one of the nation’s hardest hit towns in the foreclosure crisis.
“We’re talking thousands of foreclosures,” said the 44-year-old priest at Mary Immaculate Church. “I was stunned.”
Lasseigne has gone from praying for parishioners to lobbying politicians and negotiating with lenders on their behalf. His daily discourse is as likely to include talk of balloon payments and negative amortization as Hail Marys and The Lord’s Prayer. Meetings with banks rather than bishops fill his agenda.
It’s great to see clergy members taking their ministries from the sanctuary out into the world:
“Works of justice are an integral part of the priesthood,” the lanky priest said. “We have to take stands in aiding the needy and denouncing the injustices of society. The financial entrapment that was part of this was unbelievable.”
It reminds me of one of my pastor’s favorite sayings: We have been raised for such a time as this–Rev. Lasseigne certainly seems to have been:
Still, delving into the fine print of mortgage finance may seem highly unusual for someone who will probably never have to worry about buying his own house. Lasseigne, however, is well qualified. Before entering the seminary, he graduated from law school and knew how to read contracts.
That knowledge, a passion for social justice and a priest’s role — in a parish so devout that two Masses are said daily and nine on Sunday, all but one in Spanish — have made him the foreclosure-fighting father.
May God bless his work and make him fruitful. And may God raise up more clergy to fight for the rights of their parishioners against the practices of companies that would take advantage of the weak. Amen!
The GOP, Empathy and Christian Values
I ran across this article from The Daily Kos, which reflects many of my own complaints against my former political party: a seemingly complete lack of compassion for other peoples, especially for peoples who have been prevented from having equal access to opportunity and/or denied their status as full human beings, and who are in many ways still aren’t given a level playing field.
To go one step further than Kos, I believe that empathy is a Christian value, and it’s one of the reasons I get so annoyed by hearing people on the Right spout off about Christianity this and God that. I left the Republican Party because I realized that the Bible seems more supportive of the values found today amongst the left: charity, compassion, humility, respect for differences, etc. In leaving behind the GOP, I broke out of the restraints that kept me from truly loving others.
The post also contains another thing that REALLY grates on my Christian nerves: American exceptionalism, as seen in the passage quoted from Liz Cheney. I first noticed the ugliness of this belief years ago in a copy of The Limbaugh Letter, and I still can’t see how you can justify it as Christian. My Bible is quite clear that nationalism is a rebellion against God, a sure way to bring judgment upon the nation. (Just in time for July 4th–huzzah!)
May God have mercy on us and not deal with us as we deserve. Instead, may God instill within our hearts that compassion, humility and generosity of Christ Jesus. Amen.
Rejecting Charity as a Nation, Postscript
And then today I had this verse in my devotional reading:
Proverbs 17.5a:
Whoever mocks the poor insults his Maker
May God grant that we be a people of compassion, of true charity, of Christlike humility, that we may live out God’s reign here in the midst of the nations.
In Christ,
Amen.
Rejecting Charity as a Nation
This weekend we watched all four episodes of the documentary The Century of the Self, which discusses the way Freudian ideas were imported into British and American culture through Freud’s daughter and nephew. The final volume looks at the impact on politics, especially on the Reagan/Thatcher revolutions and the later Clinton/Blair victories.
One thing in particular chilled me: In discussing Reagan’s rise to power, he says that Reagan found favor with the American middle-class by giving them permission to reject calls to charity (e.g., the welfare system) and instead to blame lower-classes for their own situations.
Is this really what a “Christian nation” is supposed to do? How can we continue to associate Reagan conservatism with Christianity?
