<html><body><div>Part 2 of Sunday's draft.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><font face="Arial" size="2"> You know the old argument when someone tries to turn aside an invitation to come to church: “Oh, I’m too messed up. My life is a shambles. No one would want someone like me, especially considering all that I’ve done.”</font><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The flip answer is that those who are the church are just like that too. But that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>IS</u></b> the truth. And that’s what Paul was getting at. It doesn’t matter what you and I have done. Just because you and I have a past, and, quite likely, a present that isn’t necessarily squeaky clean, doesn’t mean that you and I don’t belong and aren’t loved by Jesus. In fact, as we all know, from the Gospels particularly, Jesus goes out of His way to ensure that we understand that we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>DO </u></b>belong.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>One of the things that surfaces in our society from time to time is the way that Disneyland and Disney World are run. It is said that one has to be completely squeaky clean in order to start being considered for employment there. Even those who wish to get in to the theme parks as visitors are scrutinised carefully.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Now, I know that there have to be ways to keep such places as safe as possible, especially when there are so many children there. But, really? What does this say about life? That some people just don’t deserve a break? That second chances are really rare? And third chances? Forget it!!</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Well, I’ve got good news and bad news, take it however you like. The Church, the Body of Christ in the world, is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>NOT</u></b> Disneyland. There’s nothing here’s that’s artificial, nothing here that is filled with saccharine to the point of occasional nausea. It’s not that we don’t care. It‘s because Jesus, and we, by extension, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>DO</u></b> care about every single individual that chances are taken all the time. Jesus stopped to talk to everyone, whoever she or he was. People talked to Jesus all the time about sin. Curiously, though, it was usually someone else’s sin which was discussed, and not her or his own. </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Do you think, really, that Peter, Andrew, James and John didn’t try to slip a slightly spoiled fish into someone’s grocery bag at the market? Seriously, do you think that Matthew gave IRS refunds all the time, and pointed out where someone could take another deduction? And Paul, when he was being tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail, do you suppose he didn’t have some scathing grammatical turns of phrase for those who were hounding him?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>No! No! No! to each of these questions! The joy of the Gospel is that Jesus never drew the line at whom He included, and whom He assured had their tickets to heaven guaranteed. The joy of what Paul taught was that just because we seem to be caught in a bind, time after time; just because we seem to have the knack of being deliberately obtuse, “thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” we are being rescued from our willfulness, our selfishness, our carelessness, our meanness, all the time, even when we don’t seem to recognise it when we do it.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I’m not saying that there isn’t evil in the world. There is, and there are those who’ve chosen to be ruled by evil. Neither Jesus, nor Paul, nor anyone else is saying that those people get a free pass. In fact, Jesus was careful to distinguish between those whose eyes, ears, hearts and minds were wide open when they chose to jeopardise the lives of others. Yet even they <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>MAY</u></b> respond to the Gospel’s message of love.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But Paul wasn’t thinking of these at this point. Paul was simply emphasising there is no one who is clean; there is no one who hasn’t sinned in one way or another. Yet there is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>NO ONE</u></b> who is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>NOT</u></b> invited to come to Jesus. And there is no one who’s not charged with the responsibility of inviting everyone, absolutely everyone, to come with us, to discover that life is infinitely more fulfilling when we accept the challenge of walking, yoked to Jesus.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I know I’ve messed up, and, no doubt, will continue to do so, especially when I forget about being yoked with Jesus and that that means that I go where <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>JESUS</u></b> wants; speak to those with whom Jesus would speak; listen to and pay attention to those to whom Jesus would; not only where I want and am comfortable to go, and so on.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>George Dewey Yancy is a philosopher who taught at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where I studied for a year, and is now a Professor at Emory University.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In a challenging article about examining our beliefs, our actions and how we relate to the God of our foremothers and forefathers, he questioned, “</span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>So, is your God dead? Have you buried God in the majestic, ornamental tombs of your churches, synagogues and mosques? Perhaps prosperity theology, boisterous, formalistic and mechanical prayer rituals, and skillful oratory have hastened the need for a eulogy.”</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Is this how I “mess up”?</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Perhaps by remaining in your ‘holy’ places, you have sacrificed looking in the face of your neighbor on the street. You know the one: the one who smells “bad” because she hasn’t bathed in days; the one who carries her home on her body; the one who begs. Surely you’ve seen that “unholy” face. I’ve seen you suddenly look away, making sure not to make eye contact with the “unclean.” Perhaps you’re preoccupied with texting, consumed by a work or family matter. Then again, perhaps it’s prayer time and you need to face east, or perhaps you’re too focused on holy communion as you make your way to church. Your refusal to stop, to linger, to look into her eyes, has already done its damage. Your body has already left a mark in its absence, in its fleeing the scene.”</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Is this how you and I mess up? Is this what we have to admit, publically, like Paul?</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yancy went on, “My hands are also dirty; I’m guilty of missing the opportunity to recognize something of the divine in the face of the Other on the street. I’m pretty sure I looked away when I caught a glimpse of a homeless man approaching the other day. How different is this from those who walked by the beaten and abandoned man in the parable of the good Samaritan? I failed to see the homeless man as a neighbor.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“When we turn away like this we behave as if our bodies had boundaries, as if our skin truly separated us from the Other. But what if, as I would argue, our bodies don’t have strict edges? What if we could develop a new way of seeing the body that reveals that we are always already touching, that we are inextricably linked to a larger institutional and social body that binds us all?” <sup>1</sup></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ALL</u></b> mess up, and it’s our responsibility to admit it and to come to terms with it. Yet we – you and I, and everyone in the universe – need also to admit that God loves us all anyway. God longs that we, and everyone else, know this. And act on it. And act like it.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But we don’t have to take on this task all by ourselves. Jesus begs us to yoke up with Him. Jesus hopes that we’ll come together in congregations and all sorts of other groups, whether religious or not, and learn to work together, to share the common yoke of working to make the Gospel real to the person sleeping in the fancy mansion as well as on the door steps of businesses and buildings around Albany.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Our God is not dead. Perhaps our understanding of how we relate may have lost some of its sharpness and polish. But our God is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>NOT</u></b> dead. Our God loves us, even through all the messes. </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>NOTE:</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style='margin: 0px; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>[1]</span></span></span></span></span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>Is Your God Dead?”</span></i><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> by </span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>George Yancy in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“<span style="margin: 0px; letter-spacing: 0.25pt;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-stone"><span style="margin: 0px; color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">THE STONE</span></a>”</span></i><span style="margin: 0px; letter-spacing: 0.25pt;"> JUNE 19, 2017 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/opinion/is-your-god-dead.html?smid=tw-share"><font color="#0000ff">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/opinion/is-your-god-dead.html?smid=tw-share</font></a></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; letter-spacing: 0.25pt; font-family: "Eurostile","sans-serif"; font-size: 8pt;'> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p></div></body></html>