On Multiplying Life

 

Last night we went to hear The Indigo Girls and Melissa Etheridge in concert.  We’ve been to Indigo Girls concerts before, though this was a first for Etheridge.  She had the artistic misfortune of gaining popularity at a time when my attention to the radio was distracted by earning a living and raising kids.  I recognized her hits, but the others were new to me.  Not to others in the audience.  They were genuine and voluble fans.  They knew the lyrics, and sang them lustily.  They were strangers to neither the music nor the musicians.

Let’s just get this out there for the uninitiated.  These are three rather iconic lesbian performers.  They have been at it a long time, writing honestly, passionately, personally.  They know their chops.  We happen to like their music. Their sexuality is their business.  On those previous concert occasions, that’s what it felt like:  going to a concert.  Last night it felt...different.  It felt daring.  It felt countercultural.  Frankly, it felt risky - for us and the others in the audience, but also for the performers.  This is no longer safe territory.

This is a weird time in our culture.  Since Hamas took over Iowa politics, it’s not safe to be outside the normative straight-jacket - of foreign origin, non-Christian, non-white, non-traditional, gender ambiguous, gay.  Plenty are leaving the state out of safety concerns.  Many are reinforcing their roots, hoping for the best.  Relying on the security of their relationships.  Hoping for a change in the direction of the political winds.  And to be clear, this isn’t about Democrats vs. Republicans.  Iowa has long tilted toward the pink side of the ideological spectrum.  But this blood red is different.  We used to be a rational state, open to wisdom and responsible ideas from whatever direction they may come.  Common sense prevailed.  We could talk.  We had legitimate debates.  We made room for creative expression and innovative ideas.  What flag you were flying was rarely the focus of discussion.  We were neighbors, interested in shared concerns - quality education, local communities, neighborliness.  

Now we ban, suppress, repress, and regress.  Now the state tells towns what they can and can’t do; schools what they can and can’t mention, let alone teach. In a kind of pietistic gavage, the populace is force-fed a Jesus-free version of Christianity, producing a toxic ideological foie gras. Meanwhile, the real issues - like the highest cancer rate in the country and rising; like concerning water quality; like climate change and the intensification and increasing frequency of severe storms; like public health and well-being are all off the table.  They are “woke” or “anti-American” or simply inconvenient.  

I don’t have the answers, but there are still citizens around who haven’t fled the state, who grew up here when Iowa still led the nation in educational excellence.  They are bright and grounded and intellectually prepared to engage these thorny issues.  But the questions aren’t permitted.  The conversation is squelched.  Municipalities are constrained by state mandates. Libraries and schools are muzzled by censoring prohibitions.  Our primary workforce is rounded up, caged, and deported.  Our guard units are sent off as political pawns.  Meanwhile, our public beaches are closed by contamination, and our “water cooler conversations” are choked into silence.  

And it feels strangely unsafe to go to a rock concert downtown.

It is a deeply troubling time.  

Meanwhile, these dangerous, insurrectionist women sang of care and mutual support.

Smarter than the tricks played on your heart

We'll look at them together then we'll take 'em apart

Adding up the total of a love that's true

Multiply life by the power of two.

Multiplying life by the power of mutual support, rather than rhetorical annihilation.

Radical.  I might even say, “Christian.”  I might even say “American” and “Iowan.”  

 

At least I would have a few years ago.

A Political Ode to Mortality

This week Joni Ernst, half of Iowa's dubious Senatorial team, bravely - if perhaps injudiciously - held a now infamous public meeting in northern Iowa. In the midst of defending the federal government's wildly unpopular actions of recent months, a citizen challenged the reductions in Medicaid funding with the stark observation, "People are going to die!"

It's not a hyperbolic concern. Internationally, people are in fact dying as a result of the decimation of USAID funding. With funding red-lined for AIDS prevention in Africa, the numbers of infants being born HIV-positive is frighteningly on the rise. And now we are cutting funding at home. "People are going to die," the audience member asserted.

After an initial stammer, Senator Ernst flippantly responded, "We are all going to die."

As a point of fact, the Senator is irrefutably correct. Funding or not funding Medicaid will not change that. As a species we are universally mortal. For the religiously minded, that is Bible 101. As God told Adam in Genesis 3, "From dust you came, and to dust you shall return." It is a summary acknowledgement echoed by the wry writer of Ecclesiastes in the third chapter of that Sage's book: "All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return."

So yes, we are all going to die, though I suspect the impassioned audience member didn't need Senator Ernst's reminder. It's not exactly news.

But it is curious and callous logic with which to defend cuts to a budget that provides medical care to those unable to afford it themselves. As part of the social "safety net" that Americans once insisted we collectively keep mended and secure, Medicaid is fairly understood to be life saving. Is it perfect? Of course not. Is there waste and fraud? Almost certainly. It is a system of people, for people. Intrinsically it will be as flawed as the people supervising it and benefiting from it. A key cultural question is where we choose to err. Will we help all we can, accepting that some are scamming the system, or will we tighten the strings, accepting that some who qualify will be denied and die?

Senator Ernst has made her answer pretty clear. "We are all going to die." Our own modern day Marie Antoinette quipping her equivalent of, "Let them eat cake."

Accepting her logic, however, one begins to wonder where her course of "thinking" extends. My doctor friends will surely be displeased because, continuing with her train of thought, we really have no need of them. Hospitals? Extraneous and certainly costly. Ambulances? What's the point? Helmets for cyclists? So what if the rider crashes? We are all going to die. The pharmaceutical industry suddenly sounds completely superfluous. What, after all, is the value of one more day?

Perhaps the ancient Epicureans in culture and scripture were right: "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."

With a full stomach and a woozy mind, perhaps we won't care.

Maybe that's what the government should fund instead of health care. Food and booze. It's bound to be cheaper.

And that seems to be all that matters.

Remembering the Purpose of the Pulpit

 

So, the newly inaugurated President went to church on Tuesday.  Depending on your point of view, it didn’t go so well.  Or it did. 

 

I’ve been fascinated by the varied public reaction to the sermon that the President and Vice President were positioned on the front row of the National Cathedral to hear.  The Episcopal Bishop who brought the message, on her home turf, offered a kind of homiletical prayer for unity, and concluded with a plea for mercy.  I understand why the two principals in the audience weren’t receptive to the plea.  The President, himself, has since demanded an apology.  Having mercy on the controversial and the unpopular, on those whose very presence in this country is perceived as an affront isn’t what the electoral winners campaigned on.  Quite the contrary.  Different, they insist, is deviant.  Refugees, unwelcome.  I get their indignation at being preached to.  And while it is fair enough to argue political ideologies, that was neither the preacher’s setting, nor her assignment. 

 

Nor mine. It’s not the politics that has me scratching my head.

 

What has surprised me is the mixed reaction to the sermon within the Christian community.  Yes, some have expressed appreciation for the message that was proclaimed.  But more volubly, others have spoken condemnation; indignation; disapproval.  Many views I have heard and seen accused the Bishop of being “inappropriate.”  “Out of line.”  “Taking a cheap shop.”  “Abusing the privileged moment.”   “Imposing her radical views.”

 

That’s what surprises me. What she did is really nothing new. People of faith have been speaking bluntly to the powerful at least since Moses challenged the Pharaoh. The Hebrew prophets certainly won no powerful friends with their confrontational and condemnatory words addressed to kings and those in leadership. Unwelcome words spoken forcefully, and directly. Face to face. Jesus certainly didn’t hesitate to speak such words. Neither Peter nor Paul nor any of the subsequent martyrs.  From Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, jr, the faithful have spoken the truth as they have understood it to power.  And they were hardly thanked for their integrity.  The “blood of the martyrs” wasn’t shed for being polite.

 

And what, in her moment, did the Bishop actually say to the President?  She spoke of unity—that, after all, was the advertised focus of the gathering.  She spoke of living out what we, as Christians, profess, even if it is unpopular—respecting differences, living sacrificially.  She cited Jesus’ admonition to love not only our neighbors—our beloveds—but also our enemies, and even those who persecute us.  She noted Jesus’ insistence that we be merciful, forgiving others as God forgives us.  Central to our faith, she recalled, is the recognition of the inherent dignity of every person; that it is antithetical to the faith to demonize or belittle those with whom we disagree.  She spoke of honesty and humility, and then closed with that now famous plea for mercy. 

 

I simply don’t understand what a Christian would find objectionable in those reminders; those enjoinders. Standing in a long line of prophetic voices, she offered the straight-forward gospel, unadorned.  Not, to be sure, all the theological contortions that the domesticated church has twisted itself into that focus exclusively on personal salvation as the guest pass for some eventual eternity, but rather the basic adherence to Jesus’ invitation to follow him.   

 

Not to worship him, but to follow him.  

 

 I have no doubt that Jesus would have recognized his words in every one of the Bishop’s sentences.  It was, after all, pretty basic stuff.  Christianity 101.  Hard to make it liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat.  But somehow, dishearteningly, the sermon was controversial…among Christians.  Amazing.

 

In response to those who chastise the Bishop for speaking out of turn, I hear Paul nudging Timothy to,

“…proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching.  For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but, having their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths” (2 Timothy 4:1-4).

 

Whether it is popular or not.  In season and out of season.  Preach the gospel.  Say what Jesus said.  Do what Jesus did.  And all those prophets before him and since.  Proclaim the good news in ways that inevitably hold us accountable.  That demand that our words become deeds.  You know, all that “looking out for the least of these” business.

 

It may or may not be patriotic, but it is certainly and transparently Christian.  Following Jesus. Like we were called to do.

 

If we don’t like what the Bishop had to say—if our ears tickled when we heard her words— perhaps our problem is less with the Bishop…

 

…than with ourselves. 

 

Heaven help us.