A Prayer for Health Care Reform

Last week, I was very proud to participate in an interfaith prayer time for health care reform. My thanks to Sally Schwab, head of Spiritual Health Services at Heartland Hospital, for putting it together for our community. (If you missed the article in the News-Press about it, take a look-another good article by Erin Wisdom.) It was held in conjunction with a national interfaith effort including a time of prayer in Washington, D.C. held on the same day and time.

Here's the prayer I offered:

Loving God, we know that you hear the cries of people in need of medical care but who often do not get it due to lack of education, unsympathetic bureaucracy, corporate greed or financial distress. We know that if your eye is on the sparrow then it is also on those who suffer from treatable illnesses and maladies because they do not have access to quality health care. We also know that solutions to these problems facing our country defy easy fixes, partisanship and empty slogans.

We confess the part each of us plays in a system that gives advantages to the wealthy and well-connected and disadvantages the less wealthy and those lacking in clout. We confess our unwillingness to sacrifice our own convenience for the sake of the greater good. We long for medical care for all.

We long for leaders with the courage to make difficult decisions based on the needs of their people rather than the demands of their ideology. We long for a system that allows doctors, hospitals, service providers, insurance companies and others to be paid justly for their work, while at the same time values people above financial bottom lines. We ask you to hear our longings and to raise up people who will work for solutions that bring the greatest good rather than ones that enrich the few or serve the political interests of one party or another.

We recognize that your call to justice as spoken of by the prophets and the command to love our neighbor as ourselves finds their origins in the assertion that each human being is created in your image, has inherent worth and possesses a body deserving of care. Help each of us in our own community, in our own way to work from these foundational understandings of our common humanity.

Amen.

Royal Family Kids Camp Article in News-Press

I wish to thank Erin Wisdom for another good article in Saturday's St. Joseph News-Press. I'm very grateful to her for not only just for writing in the first place about our church's ministry to abused and neglected children--Royal Family Kids Camp--but also for writing such a terrific article.

The only thing I would add to the article is giving Sandy and Ken Hamlin credit for putting together this awesome camp each year for 17 years running. It really is a year-round effort.

If you didn't see the article, I encourage you to take a look.

Nouwen Quote from Yesterday's Sermon

Several people remarked on the quotation I used in yesterday's sermon by Henri Nouwen. It comes from his great book Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life.

Nouwen describes visiting the University of Notre Dame where he had previously taught and walking with a colleague who had taught there his whole life. The other man remarks as they walked across campus:

"My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work."

I didn't include Nouwen's further reflections on life's interruptions, but here's a taste:

But what if our interruptions are in fact our opportunities, if they are challenges to an inner response by which growth takes place and through which we come to the fullness of being. What if the events of our history are molding us as a sculptor molds his clay, and if it is only in a careful obedience to these molding hands that we can discover our real vocation and become mature people. . . What if our history does not prove to be a blind impersonal sequence of events over which we have no control, but rather reveals to us a guiding hand point to a personal encounter in which all our hopes and aspirations will reach their fulfillment?

Grace and Peace,

Chase

Justice for Reggie Clemons

I was glad to see the news today that Missouri executions are on hold in the near future because of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of death by lethal injection. The lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Reggie Clemons, a death-row inmate here in MO. I'm glad Clemons wasn't executed as scheduled last week, but what Clemons really needs--and deserves--is a new trial.

Last Tuesday, June 16, I was privileged to be asked by the Human Rights Office of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City and St. Joseph and Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty to lead a prayer service on behalf of Clemons. The date of the service was supposed to be the date Clemons was executed, but this lawsuit prevented--for now--the execution going forward.

The MADP has a page listing what people can do and providing facts about Clemons' case--and it's practically a textbook example of reasons our state's system of capital punishment is deeply flawed. Reasonable doubt is an understatement in Clemons' case. Clemons' family also has a site advocating for a new trial.

Grace and Peace,

Chase

Politicians and Adultery

Another week--another politician holding a press conference to admit an affair. I'm not surprised these men in power are having affairs; I'm just surprised they're getting caught and having to admit them.

Let me be clear: every time a man or woman cheats on his/her spouse it's a tragedy. Lives are damaged and will never be the same. Trust is broken. Everyone around that affair is hurt by it; it's even more sad when children and families are torn apart by infidelity. The same is true when the the affair is committed by a politician who holds himself (aren't they usually male?) up as an example of good judgment and good morality. An affair is a tragedy even when it is a politician whose politics I disagree with. Whether it's JFK, Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Newt Gingrich, Jim McGreevey, Eliot Spitzer, Larry Craig, John Ensign or today's latest adulterer South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Adultery shows no partiality to one political party or the other. (See this slide show of male politicians and their mistresses.)

The thing about an affair is that it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens when a person fails to face the problems in his/her life and in their marriage. Even when a marriage goes bad--really bad--the marriage vows should lead a person to at least end that marriage and then move on romantically. Of course, how things should be often do not match with how things are. When a person begins an affair, he or she has begun a path of deception that can lead to some really bad judgment and a false sense of reality--witness Mark Sanford's mysterious trip over Father's Day weekend! If he thought such an action was somehow normal or okay, his actions only point to the troubled and warped state of mind he has been in.

The thing that bothers me especially about Sanford, Ensign, Craig, etc. is that these same men have taken political stands against others in the so-called "defense of marriage." As a congressman, Sanford voted repeatedly to deny rights to LGBT individuals on the grounds that their "lifestyle" is immoral, meanwhile we have Sanford ending up with his own marriage in need of defense.

Just as Sanford and his family need sympathy rather than judgment, so also do LGBT people. The difference with LGBT folks is that they just want the same right to succeed or fail in their own marriages that heterosexual politicians have.

Grace and Peace,

Chase

New Sermon on the Church Site

After a really long time, I've finally put a new sermon on the church web site. I've always intended to get them in printable form and distribute them in text and electronic form, but I haven't figured out a way to get this done amidst of the other demands of my schedule. People specifically asked for copies of this sermon, so I made an effort to get it out there. I'll keep trying to do so as time permits.

This particular one is titled "A Church Full of Rejects" and as much as any sermon it lays out my own thoughts of what a community of Christians should be and do.

A Few Books Mentioned in Sermons

I just updated my "Books Mentioned in My Sermons" list (see the right side of the blog). I've had several books sitting on my desk for some time reminding me to do this, so I'm not even sure when I used two of them.

First, I do recall that I referenced Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point in my sermon on June 14 about Jesus' parable of the mustard seed. For me, his stories of cultural phenomena gathring steam until a major cultural change occurs seem like a nifty metaphor for the way the way God works in the world--slowly and in seemingly insignificant ways until before you know it something like grace occurs.





Second, some time earlier this year I shared Anne Lamott's story of being ministered to by a member of the ski patrol which can be found in her last spiritual memoir Grace Eventually. Here's a good interview with Lamott about the book at Salon.








Third, at some other time this year, I'm sure when I was preaching on a passage from Mark where Jesus strangely asks people to keep his miracles quiet, I mentioned Brian McLaren's book The Secret Message of Jesus. McLaren expresses theologically and accessibly an explanation for Jesus' strange behavior in a way that surpasses more scholastic and academic treatments of the matter, furthermore, he does so in a way that is prophetic and challenges contemporary Christianity.

I've got plenty more to add to the list. I'll stick them up here some time or another.