Speak clearly! Pay personally! Pentecost! Jubilee! Spirit-Filled Body of Christ! Birth of Jesus Again in the Church! Birth of the Church Again in the World! Born to suspicion, suveillance, harassment! Bound to Counselor, Advocate, Holy Law Firm! Defenders of Justice, Disturbers of Peace!
As elected and consecrated bishops of the church, we repent of complicity in . . . unjust and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. In face of administration's rush toward military action based on misleading information, too many of us were silent.
We confess preoccupation with institutional enhancement and limited agendas while men and women sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die, poverty increases, preventable diseases go untreated.
We confess our betrayal of scriptural and prophetic authority to warn the nation: true security lies not in weapons of war, but in enabling the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized to flourish as beloved daughters and sons of God.
(United Methodist Bishops)
* * * * *
Witness to Gospel, to Living News, much too precious to be entrusting strictly with bishops, with preachers, with nominal leaders of any like ilk. Wars never ending unless, until least visible, vocal among us speak out, act out, faith-filled opposition: Greek parrhesia, word used once in Gospels but all during Acts -- speaking with "boldness," openly, riskily if not recklessly; term stolen from Greek city-state; language of citizenship/discipleship, prophetic place, persuasive participation, in public assembly, ecclesia --
Literally, "Freedom to Say It All!"
Resurrection! Jubilee! Life! Even, especially, to oldest, deadest of systems, structures, churches, states -- Paul proclaiming even in chains! Naming of Nations on Pentecost Day, "contents page from Roman Empire Atlas!"
192 constituencing United Nations - and counting!
"The Holy Spirit is a very political bird. And it does not stop for border guards! The authoritarian lines are crossed. Indeed, in Pentecost those lines are blown right off the face of the map!" (Bill Wylie-Kellerman)
Day of Imagine-Nations in every new way! My arthritis, much less her cancer, teaching, enhancing, not only attacking and seeking to conquer; but Spirit-filled bodies, and Body the Church, respecting, honoring, every last person, every last part; both gifts and limits, to who we are, to what we can do; death threats and life threats, pairing off, making up, letting go, tragicomically, metacosmically,
as we let and go on . . .
The people know the salt of the sea and the strength of the winds . . .
The people take the earth as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope . . .
They are in tune and step with constellations of universal law.
The people is a polychrome, a spectrum and a prism held in a moving monolith, a console organ of changing themes, a clavilaux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog and the fog moves off in rain and the labrador sunset shortens to a nocturne of clear stars serene over the shot spray of northern lights . . . The steel mill sky is alive . . . . (Carl Sandburg)
"Why, we're the people, we go on." (Ma Joad)
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