January 26, 2025
Dear St. Paul’s,
With the recent change in our federal government leadership, and the reading of the barrage of executive orders on the first day, I share with you a recent posting from the blog Rose of Sharon. She reminds us of Walter Brueggemann’s words written almost twenty years ago, that I believe still speak to us in this moment of time.
The Noise of Politics
We watch as the jets fly in with the power people and the money people, the suits, the budgets, the billions.
We wonder about monetary policy because we are among the halves, and about generosity because we care about the have-nots.
By slower modes we notice Lazarus and the poor arriving from Africa, and the beggars from Central Europe, and the throng of environmentalists with their visions of butterflies and oil of flowers and tanks of growing things and killing fields.
We wonder about peace and war, about ecology and development, about hope and entitlement.
We listen beyond jeering protesters and soaring jets and faintly we hear the mumbling of the crucified one, something about feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty, about clothing the naked, and noticing the prisoners, more about the least and about holiness among them.
We are moved by the mumbles of the gospel, even while we are tenured in our privilege.
We are half ready to join the choir of hope, half afraid things might change, and in a third half of our faith turning to you, and your outpouring love that works justice and that binds us each and all to one another.
So, we pray amid jeering protesters and soaring jets. Come by here and make new, even at some risk to our entitlements.
Walter Brueggemann. Prayers for a Privileged People (Abingdon, 2008), 21-22.
Please remember your prayers.
Blessings, Karen+