Real life Hunger Games

Two weeks ago, I began a journey through the Hunger Games series.  I have since spent many hours devouring the first two books and am anxious to read the third book (Cliff hangers make me anxious).

The books are addicting, they draw you in and have kept me in more suspense than the John Grisham novel "the street lawyer, " and "water for elephants" (It's rare that a book will grab my attention as much as these novels have).

Suzanne Collins succeeded in roping in thousands upon thousands into her novels, she also wrote books that are an incredible social commentary for our current times.  Basic plot:  Post apocalyptic America, now called Panem, is divided into 13 districts, all of which are ruled by the Capitol.  At one period in Panem's history, there was a rebellion.  The Capitol squashed the rebels and as a result, the Capitol punished the districts every year by forcing them to send 1 male and 1 female teenager into the hunger games (District 13 doesn't send tributes because it's a wasteland).  In the hunger games, 24 teens go in and only 1 comes out, leaving the other 23 tributes dead.
Where the real social commentary comes in is not in the games themselves, but in the contrast between the Capitol and the districts.  In the Capitol, they lack nothing.  There is no hunger, no poverty, and lots of excess (they drink ipecac syrup at parties so they can gorge themselves on delicious foods all evening).  In the districts, there is lots of hunger, lots of poverty, and people doing anything they can to survive.

I see some of this happening in real life.  In the Capitol, politicians lack very little, if anything.  They have outrageous salaries, even more outrageous pensions, and their health care packages are the best in the country. If SNAP funding, the earned income tax credit (EITC), and the child tax credit (CTC) get cut from the federal budget, they are not going to feel it.  Meanwhile, in Lawrence, KS, there are families who work for minimum wage, have no pension, who depend on free health care clinics (Major props to Health Care Access for providing such excellent care to these folks)...and have found SNAP, the EITC, and the CTC to be a hand up when faced with the necessity of feeding their children, avoiding eviction from housing, etc.  Most do what they can to survive and we have many agencies in this town that do everything they can to help folks out of tough situations and back onto their feet.

We are the richest country on the planet, we can apparently afford to pay congress generous salaries ($174,000 for 'regular' congressmen and women, plus benefits in 2012, according to www.house.gov), we have citizens that can afford to spend millions financing political campaigns, and yet, do not have the financial resources to ensure that every single child in this country goes to bed with a full tummy.  Furthermore, we are told by congress that by cutting funding to programs like SNAP, we are helping parents to get out of the situation they are in so they can better care for their children.  When I hear the words "cut SNAP funding" the first thing that pops into my mind is that we will have more than 1 in 5 children going to bed hungry, which is the current (and a very unacceptable) statistic.

So I wrote my congressmen about my concerns. Senator Roberts was gracious in his response and addressed my concerns.  Senator Yoder, on the other hand, spent two pages bashing the current administration and never once addressed my concerns for the children of this country and our charge as Christians to care for the least of these.  I find this unacceptable.  I wrote Senator Yoder back to tell him this.  Still waiting on a response.

Now, I get that we are in the midst of great federal debt. I also get that it is irresponsible to spend more than we have.  But not if it means that more people will live in hunger and poverty when there is obviously enough money in this country to fund adequate governmental programs without the government getting too big.  And I'm not advocating socialism...but I am old enough to remember a time in this country where there was no federal deficit at the same time that millions of jobs were created (I'm looking at you Clinton administration).  And I don't care if it was President Clinton or the congress that was responsible for this (or maybe they actually worked together on this...what an unique idea!).  So see us go from that to such a large federal deficit in less than a decade, befuddles me. 

But I still have hope as I imagine what could happen is congress made the same median wage that the rest of us do, what would happen if they had the same health care that we do.  How much more they would have their sights set on matters of justice.    

These are not purely political issues I speak of, they are justice issues.  Children going to bed with full tummies is a justice issue.  Helping parents get out of poverty so they can feed their kids without the need for SNAP and the EITC is a justice issue.  Doing everything we can to ensure that every citizen of this country gets to fully live out their 14th amendment rights is a justice issue.

These are things that Jesus preached about.
   

Thankful Thursday - the VBS edition

Every year I convince myself that VBS will not be as tiring as the year before. Every year, I am wrong.  It is a good exhausting.  Kids really get what praising God is all about. It's about time for prayer and for being serious...but it is equally about time for play and for recreation (or is it re-creation?) And with 73 of them running around the church this week, it's hard not to be reminded of this. 

This week, I am thankful for:
For 2,3, and 4 year olds who are so excited to tell you about their day
For a week of abundant laughter
For getting to see faith through the eyes of a child 
For getting to share the message of God's love with 73 children and their parents
For an opportunity to share ministry with our ecumenical partners (Plymouth UCC, you rock!)
For getting "Oh, Oh, Oh, let's go! Operation Overboard! Dive deep into God's majesty" stuck in my head
For naps
For God's grace when you get the words of the day wrong (Trusting Jesus and Claiming Jesus are similar concepts!)

Next week's Thankful Thursday will be the confirmation camp edition.  I'm already singing camp songs in anticipation of this awesomeness. "shake a friend's hand, shake a hand next to you, shake a friend's hand and sing this song!"

The sun sets on Camp Tomah Shinga, confirmation camp 2010

A Top Ten for Tuesday

With my wellness goes moving along smoothly I have been listening to more music, which is one of my goals.  And as a result, I've realized how eclectic my music collection is! To that end, I give you a top ten list:

Top Ten 80's songs for doing chores: (in no particular order)
10: Faith - George Michael
9: You Spin me Round - Dead or Alive
8: Tainted Love - Soft Cell
7: Love is a Battlefield - Pat Benetar
6: Take On Me - Aha
5: Walk like an Egyptian - The Bangles
4: Karma Chameleon - The Culture Club
3: Heaven is a Place on Earth - Belinda Carlisle
2: Our house - Madness
1: Wake me up before you go-go - Wham

What songs help you though housework/general chores?


p.s. Total miles logged - 22!!

“What is God Like?” A Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Trinity

June 3, 2012

Holy Trinity Sunday

Isaiah 6, Romans 8, John 3

 

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our father, our lord and savior Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, the great Three-in-one, One-in-three, amen. 

Lots of time, and energy, and trees, have gone into an attempt to explain what we celebrate today.  How does one speak about the Holy Trinity, a God who is simultaneously one-in-three and three-in-one when there is very little in scripture that actually speaks of the Trinity?  When I was in confirmation class, our teacher, Mrs. Ropes, explained the concept of the Trinity to us using an apple and an orange.  With and apple or orange, or many other forms of fruit, you have three parts: the fruit, the rind, and the seeds, all three are apple, but in different forms…and all three forms make up one piece of fruit.  Now Chris was taught about the Trinity using water. Water exists in three forms, solid, liquid, and gas, and yet it is always water. 

It makes sense to explain something as abstract as the Trinity in such concrete terms…especially with young teens, who think better in concrete terms but are starting to think in the abstract.  But even as good as these examples are, it still doesn’t capture the entire mystery that is the Trinity.  It’s probably because the Trinity is what it is, a mystery…and sometimes a little mystery in the world of faith is ok. 

The word Trinity never appears in the bible, and there are only a few references to a three personed Deity actually mentioned, the most clear reference being in the Great Commission in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus sends the disciples out to baptize in the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. So when you think about it, today we celebrate both a teaching of the church and a great mystery. 

What is the Trinity?

Scholars and church leaders have tried for centuries to explain this, but in the end they have all thrown their hands up and allowed the mystery to remain, recognizing that the more we think we have a handle on who God is, the less we actually do.  So how do you preach a sermon on a topic that the more we realize we don’t understand and cannot understand, the better off we are? 

Instead of trying to find the darkest corner of scripture and the churches history to figure this all out and come up with the answer that solves the mystery once and for all, I think that it is better to take a look less for proofs about the Trinity and more for information on what God is like. 

There is a lot of talk about what God is like.  Just turn on the TV and evangelists will all give you their take on God.  Lately, it seems, you don’t even have to look that hard to find preachers talking about what God is like, just turn on the news and you will find it.  God wants you to be rich, if you have enough faith and give enough money to the church…God is angry at this group or that group, that’s why natural disasters have happened around places where those people live…God hates you and me and our children and our whole country…God loves this country best, that’s why we are the richest country in the world, even though one in five children in this country go to bed hungry at night.  Have you heard these messages? 

There are lots of folks out there preaching them.  And sure, there are troubling passages in scripture that may lead some folks to think that these things are true.  Plagues, folks getting struck down by lighting for worshiping incorrectly, she-bears, the trials of Job, the list goes on. 

But it seems to me that there is a danger when we look only to these troubling passages, when God starts to take on a form that only shows one side of God’s story, is the story of God and what God is like being told by folks made in the image of God? or folks who have made god in their image?  Writer Anne Lamont once wrote that you can be sure that you have made god in your image when god hates all the same people that you do.  It’s a pretty spot on assessment of something that is really easy to do. 

But there is another side of the story, one that comes from our scripture passages this morning.  One that tells a story of God that counters stories of a god who is angry and vengeful and hates you and me and the country we live in.

The first thing we hear is from the prophet Isaiah who is reporting on a vision he had of the temple of the Lord and the greatness and majesty of God…a grandeur for which the only response is worship and praise…and we sing with the seraphs and cherubs around the throne of God each time we celebrate communion and sing “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory!” 

And then we hear from Paul, in his letter to the Romans, about the love of God which, through the work of the Spirit, has called us all to be adopted to be God’s daughters and sons and invited us into and intimate and loving relationship with our creator.  This is a relationship that allows us to be free from fear, for it is not with a spirit of slavery that we have received, but rather that spirit of adoption.  And so, like an adopted child cries out to his daddy or mommy, and they respond with all the love they can muster, so we can cry out “Abba, Father,” knowing that God will hear us and that God cares for us in our relationship with him. 

But that’s not all.  Yes, it could be enough to just stop there and still have an image of God, a caring creator who is great in majesty, but God kept going. 

In the gospel reading from John we hear about the ultimate love that God has for us.  In his visit to Jesus, Nicodemus got a glimpse of a God whose love is so great that God did not even withhold his own son, but rather sent his son into the world so that the world might be saved through his life giving death on the cross.  Jesus told Nicodemus that he did not come into the world to condemn the world, but rather to save it. 

On Trinity Sunday, we have a God who defies definition.  The doctrine of the Trinity, how God is one-in-three and three-in-one, is something that we cannot explain…and that is ok, not everything in this world needs to be explained away, that is where our faith comes in…faith in a God whose love also defies definition, as well as logic.  When we confess our faith in God, we confess our faith in a God of great grandeur, a God who has made us his own and claimed us to be his children, a God who hasn’t withheld anything from us, not even his own son, so that we could be given abundant life and be empowered to call out to our heavenly parent and serve him without fear, knowing that we are cared for and heard…even when the answer we get is not necessarily the one we are looking for. 

So let’s celebrate, let’s celebrate the Holy Trinity, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit, an indescribable God of love and grace. Amen.      

And the journey continues...

Last Thursday, I had an assessment done by a personal trainer.  She kicked my butt making me spend three minutes stepping up and down on a chair that was 18" tall. I was good for the first minute and a half, but the last minute and a half was killer!  It's all good though. I'm glad that I asked for her help.  The assessment showed that there are muscle groups that I am not using properly, so she is going to teach me some exercises to re-train my body to properly use those muscles.  I don't get all the results of the assessment until next week, but since last Thursday, I have been keeping closer track of how often and how far I walk (pro tip: mapmyrun is a great resource for figuring this out, well the distance part anyways).  And, thanks to a visit from a dear friend from seminary, I got off to a great start on the walking last weekend...I walked 10 miles in 3 days!

All good motivation...as well as keeping in mind that in a month and a half, there will be at least 5 miles a day to walk in the city of New Orleans (and God only knows how high the heat and humidity will be that week).  So, I figure that as long as I walk at least 15 miles a week (which isn't hard when you live 2 miles from work), I'll be good to go come the time of the gathering.  And I'm looking forward to working with Elizabeth, too.  I've got the motivation to get this done, and now I've got someone who is willing to (kindly) kick me in the pants when I slack.

And as far as diet goes, I slacked a bit this week, but still managed to stay relatively close to my daily calorie count thanks to the exercise.  And Chris and I have finally figured out what we need to get from the grocery store so that we have enough healthy snacks for the time between trips. (pro tip: pack healthy snacks in your bag the night before so you make sure you have them when you run out the door in the morning...this doesn't work so well if you pack perishable snacks like yogurt and cheese, set those at the front of the fridge so they're easy to access).

Miles logged (since last week): 15!!