Tell the truth? Someone may be listening!

 

This sign is now posted at our nearby Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Makes me wonder how the Native American guide we had several years ago at Little Bighorn National Monument is faring. If she's not unemployed already, she soon will be. Makes me angry.

Deportation by the Numbers

Fox News reports this morning that President Trump has ordered ICE to “‘expand efforts to detain and deport’ illegal immigrants in ‘America’s largest [c]ities,’ including Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.”

Trump is quoted, “ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.” He further justified the effort as “fulfilling our Mandate to the American People.” (Did he mean from the American people?)

When the LA demonstrations were at their peak, I began a piece offering my opinion that, when it comes to immigration enforcement, quotas are the problem, referring to the demand that ICE arrest for deportation at least 3,000 people a day. An enforcement quota strongly pushes officers to round up as many people as possible, with little regard to their individual circumstances, in order to meet the quota. Trump’s Truth posting today confirms the fact that this whole thing is about politics, and nothing else.

Adding to it is the fact that he has now ordered ICE to ease up on the agricultural and hospitality industries, and to focus on urban areas largely populated by Democrats. It is patently obvious that the President is serving his own interests (votes from rural areas and money for his hotels and resorts) rather than the nation’s, something he instinctively does with almost everything he touches.

I am reasonably certain that the majority of Americans support the fair application of our laws when it comes to immigration enforcement, as flawed as many believe those laws to be. There was a chance to make these laws more just and tailored to current realities before the last election, but candidate Trump advocated not passing that bill. Doing so would not have served his need to keep the immigration pot boiling.

Deportation by the numbers and over-the-top responses to protests both make Donald Trump look strong. But behind that look there hides an extremely insecure man, and many are suffering and compromising their integrity in order to bolster his poor sense of self-worth.

We are all the people...

 

This is a story I wish I could fill with details, but I am afraid for the safety of its central characters.

A woman who helps us with an important job in our house immigrated to the United States from Central America several years ago. She is friendly, energetic, and a good worker.

Recently she, with the help of her husband whom we’ve not met, did a very great kindness for us. What she did was far beyond her job description. It was justplain neighborly, and she neither asked for nor seemed to expect anything in return.

She is a U.S. citizen, and has a U.S. passport. She recently returned from a visit to her homeland.

She told us that not long ago she was stopped by the police in a neighboring suburb, apparently for no other reason than that she looked foreign. At least that’s the only reason she can think of. She had to show them proof of her citizenship.

This is terrifying. I know it’s not new for police to stop people whose skin color seems to them to be reason enough to stop them. But it is always wrong, and it seems likely only to get more common as the Republican administration ramps up its war on immigration and immigrants.

It it is also one step closer to even more wrong as the Republican party takes aim at more and more Americans whom it considers outside its norms.

If we can’t save a man our government admits it wrongly deported to a two-bit dictator’s prison, who else will we not be able to save? In the end, none of us.

Christian belief and Christian nationalism, according to Karl Barth

 

Does what we believe matter? You bet it does! And it matters very much when it comes to so-called “Christian” nationalism in our own time.

Twentieth-century Swiss theologian Karl Barth had no doubt that belief mattered. And that is the point of Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac post for today, Barth’s birthday anniversary (1886). Find the whole post if you can.

Keillor writes that Barth “became disillusioned with the liberal theology he had learned at the university, and this came to a crisis point in 1914. Liberal theology was optimistic about modernity and felt that humanity's progress was part of God's plan and therefore had divine blessing. Barth believed that there was a fundamental divide between humanity and God, and that the line was too often blurry. He believed that the truth about Christianity came only from the revelation of Jesus Christ — he called Christ "the one word of God." He was particularly upset when governments used Christianity as a way to justify actions that he considered very un-Christian. In 1914, 93 German intellectuals signed a manifesto declaring their support of the German cause in World War I, and among the signers were several of Barth's former teachers. Barth was disgusted, and he began to doubt ‘everything which flowed at that time from the pens of the German theologians.’”

Keillor’s Barth birthday essay ends with this: “When the Third Reich came to power in Germany, Barth was strongly opposed to Hitler and the ‘German Christians’ who merged the Gospel with Nazi nationalism. He wrote most of the famous ‘Barmen Declaration,’ which rejected the idea that the state could have power over the Church, or that the Church could have power over the true essence of Christianity. When he refused to begin his classes with ‘Heil Hitler!’ or to swear allegiance to him, Barth was kicked out of his teaching post and Germany. He moved back to Switzerland, where he spent the rest of his life writing his monumental work Church Dogmatics, which at the time of his death was 13 volumes and more than 9,300 pages.” (italics are mine)

Terms like “liberal” and “conservative” can be slippery and their meanings certainly change with the passage of time. And thank God we don’t have to read all 9,300 pages of Church Dogmatics to get to the gospel truth that the melding of state and church is heresy. But maybe we should dust off at least some of Karl Barth's writings to help us clarify what we believe and how that belief informs our political convictions.

Earth Day 2025 and 1963 and 19963

 1963

We hereby demand more Jobs!

We hereby demand more Power!

Let us go on record right here and now that we hereby pledge

to Tame This Treacherous Torrent!

[applause.]

We hereby demand more Recreation!

We hereby demand more Reclamation!

We hereby demand more ECONOMIC GROWTH!

We hereby demand more…PROGRESS!

[thunderous applause.]

Spin the wheels. Faster. Hum whirl flash rumble hammer revolve

explode.

Grease the gears with outboard oil.

Grease the gears with the fat of beaver who aren’t any use.

Grease the gears with the blood of deer who aren’t any use.

Grease the gears with dissolving cottonwoods and the sickly

sweet perfume they wear when they drown.

Grease the gears with the stale slime on the shore as the banks

fall over and as the grass and the moss and the brush and

willows and reeds and seeds and pods sink underwater.

Grease the gears with my and your blood and the blood of

everyone who floated down and lost himself in the side

canyons and on the riffles and sand bars

And left part of himself on the walls.

We’re all under water now, and drowned.

We burst the ranks of the walking dead, and the killer goes

Unscathed.

19963

“No, it wasn’t always this nice.

Most always, yeah, but for a little while the water didn’t flow.”

He shook his antlers and went back to browsing.

Jerry and Renny Russell: On the Loose; Sierra Club-Ballentine Books, 1967.

-  -   -

From 1968 to 1970, I served as Assistant Pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Medford, Oregon. As a newly-minted young minister, one of my primary responsibilities was youth ministry. As my too-brief time in Medford neared its end, several of the senior highs and our adult advisors and I took a short back-packing trip into California’s Marble Mountain Wilderness.

As our trek ended, they presented me with a copy of On the Loose, in which those who made that hike wrote expressions of appreciation for my being with them. I’ve treasured the took and the memories it holds since then, but was recently reminded of it, and have reread it.

The two entries above struck me as even more appropriate for Earth Day, 2025, than perhaps ever before as our government abandons all pretense of caring for our home planet. I am quite sure they were written in response to the building of the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River, completed in 1966 despite long and passionate opposition.

Singing for joy while anger rages

I was privileged recently to be a chorus member in a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Church-goers who do not know the work itself likely know the main melody of the fourth movement because of the hymn, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” It’s a tune that’s hard to forget.

The words Beethoven (1770-1827) set to music are by German poet Frederich Schiller (1759-1805). Schiller and Beethoven were products of the Age of Enlightenment. Both the American and French revolutions happened in their lifetimes, and concern for the freedom and rights of all men was utmost in their minds. (Beethoven famously tore up his Third Symphony’s dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte when he learned Napoleon had crowned himself emperor.)

Schiller’s poem, “Ode to Joy,” is reflected in the words of the hymn. But the poem’s words are themselves worth our attention as our country is dragged into authoritarianism by a political party intent upon dividing us from one another in as many directions as it can.

What is the joy Schiller celebrates in his ode? What gives humankind joy? Schiller is very clear that joy comes in knowing that one day “all men will be brothers,” because “a loving Father” above us all has made us all, and intends for us to live as true friends to one another.

Not trusting and living according to such a hope for all is the enemy of joy.

That explains to me why the men and women who are today using their positions in government to divide us often look grim and angry. It is a sad business to despise and denigrate your siblings 24/7.

You cannot know joy when your hold on power depends on your ability to separate and isolate the members of your human family by class, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or anything else you might dream up. When, in order to hold onto your position, you have to keep finding new targets of your fear and wrath, you must make sure no one ever sees a spontaneous spark of pure joy flash from your eyes. Your eyes must look like the eyes of a bird of prey, always searching for its next victim. You dare never relent!

Ever-fearful vigilance leaves no room in the human heart for joy, or even for simple happiness.

The words of Schiller’s poem invite his readers to see that all of us are siblings because all of us are offspring of one creative process (to put it in inclusive and non-theological terms). In our concert, Beethoven’s music pushed our voices into impossibly high ranges as if singing in the stratosphere would finally make us and those who heard us listen, and look, and see the truth to which custom and habit blind us.

Our chorus sang together the joyful hope that one day “alle Menschen werden Brüder”—that one day, all men will become brothers. We all must choose whether we will continue to nurse and feed anger fueled by division and distrust, or embrace the joy of loving the humanity that all of us share. The world is weary of anger. I dare to hope it is not too late for more of us to try the way of joy.

Questions asked after the service has ended

 

We all were in worship this morning, a glorious array of humanity that, to me, represents our beloved human race. We came there hungry and went away filled.

The church my wife and I attend welcomes all hungry seekers. And while the diversity in our congregation does not include samples from all the kinds and conditions of humanity, it’s a wide enough slice to leave no doubt that we are intent upon following Jesus.

Watching my worshipping siblings come forward to receive the bread and wine of the sacrament is a major highpoint in my worship experience. These are a few of the people I see…

A couple of our families are from Africa—one who fled here to escape genocide. There is an elderly mixed-race couple who were married back when their love was not allowed to show itself. By all signs, they are still very much in love. There are, of course, white families—mom, dad, and 2 or 3 kids. And single parents, and parents of kids of a different color.

There are LGBTQIA+ individuals and couples, one of them parenting a beautiful two-year-old daughter. I suspect we welcome some trans folks to the altar, but I am not sure who they are.

There’s a young woman who nearly died a few years ago from a complicated, serious illness. She made her way up the steps to the chancel this morning with the help of her walker. And there are lots of us being helped along by our canes.

There is a range of material wealth in our congregation, though we do not seem to represent the outer extremes of either wealth or poverty. Almost everyone dresses casually, and it is difficult any more to tell by dress who has money and who doesn’t.

I do not know if I am supposed to watch this human parade as it approaches our altar. I know enough about some of them to offer specific prayers for them; others get a general prayer on their way to the rail. The only one who might hear me is God, which is just fine. We are together in God’s presence because of the people here and our prayers for one another and the world.

In my church, we not only hear about God’s love in Jesus for all humankind, but we see it embodied in those with whom we worship. It’s not idealized, abstract love, but love as inclusion of each one on an equal plane within the diverse variations of humankind. Love one another—love your neighbor as yourself—even love your enemies…the original, scriptural D.E.I. program of God’s great love.

To me, my church is a foretaste of the make-up of the heavenly commonwealth which Jesus proclaimed and for which he sacrificed himself. It is just as surely a signpost pointed toward what God wills for creation itself and for our particular order of creatures within it.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I thought our nation was on a path toward becoming more the sort of home for its people as my church is for me and us. I even thought that path was getting easier.

Now we are hearing that our nation is no longer to walk that path, that we are to attempt the restoration an imagined past. Some even invoke the name of Jesus to justify returning to isolation and separation, to a past when only a chosen few will thrive. But that’s not the way to follow Jesus, not the path he is walking.

Tears came to my eyes as we sang the final hymn this morning. What is to become of the long-marginalized folks in my church who are being threatened daily by hurtful, harmful, and hateful posts and X-ecutive orders, often buttressed by hurtful, harmful, and hateful theology? Will churches like ours become flashpoints of resistance simply by virtue of the range of human beings who come together week after week to be fed by the God who loves us all? What will become of the likes of us?