What is hate?

What is hate?

The word is used too loosely. It’s used to describe feelings about food. “I hate liver and onions.” In these parts, Bronco fans “hate” the Raiders. My Denver daughter “hates” the traffic.

Dictionaries teach hate is a deep, emotional, extreme dislike. That doesn’t fit speaking about liver, rival sports teams or traffic jams. Sigmund Freud took it more seriously. Freud studied the use of words in human intercourse. He defined “hate” as a deep desire to destroy the cause of one’s unhappiness.

Hate is a "deep, enduring, intense emotion expressing animosity, anger, and hostility towards a person, group, or object,” according to one Dictionary of Psychology. It sees “hate” as more of a disposition than a temporary emotional state.

Like many “dispositions” it’s easier to see it in others than in ourselves. Take the current debate over the question of whether the law should permit employers to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bi-sexual or transgender people.

SF 115 seeks to protect LGBT workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation. The bill has wide support from groups including the Wyoming Business Alliance and the Wyoming Association of Municipalities; but not from the Catholic Church.

Dr. Donna M. Adler is the communication director in the Office of the Legislative Liaison for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne. On the eve of the state senate’s vote on the bill, Adler sent an email to all lawmakers.

She used the term “hate” to substantiate a claim that, while the Church opposes prohibiting job-discrimination, “the Roman Catholic Church does not hate people who identify as having attractions not in line with their biology.” Adler called the people she says the Church doesn’t hate “disordered.” She said the human beings the law seeks to protect are “engaging in seriously sinful behavior.”

The basis for the official Catholic view arises from a literal interpretation of scripture, which it seeks to impose on all of us. The 18^th chapter of Leviticus quotes God admonishing Jewish men not to have sex with other men. That which God imposed on Jews, some Catholics would impose on everyone. Then God said, “Everyone who does any of these detestable things, such persons must be cut off from their people.” Adler and her immediate supervisors, which apparently don’t include Pope Francis, see their responsibility is to make certain that’s exactly what happens to LGBT folks.

Aside from a questionable interpretation of scripture, the position of the Diocese of Cheyenne calls into question the meaning of “hate.” They support the idea that some people should be denied their livelihoods because they are LGBT. The Diocese defines those folks as “disordered.” They judge them as “seriously sinful.” But Adler says the Catholic Church does not hate them. It just wants to cut them off from their jobs.

Is the definition of “hate” really that complicated? Is the definition of “hate” so obtuse that it can be used, as Adler does, to support discrimination that results in the loss of a person’s livelihood?

We’ve become accustomed to using the “H” word so loosely we don’t recognize its real impact when people with power have the disposition to hate. When some exhibit a “deep, enduring, intense emotion expressing animosity, anger, and hostility towards a person or group,” do we let them off the hook when they claim that otherwise hateful acts are not “hate”? 

Truthfully, we must call it what it is. It’s hate. The Church disguises its disdain for the LGBT community behind an incongruously professed “compassion” for those they believe to be disordered and sinful. That’s fine inside the Cathedral walls. From the pulpit, the Church should teach what it believes. But when they walk out those doors and head to the state capitol, the disguise should be seen for what it is.

While your theology may permit you to claim you love those against whom you seek to “cut off from their people” the state legislature is a place where such a specious religious arguments must be rejected.

Cool Hand Luke?

“What we got heah…is failyah to communicate.”

If you’re old enough to have seen Paul Newman play “Cool Hand Luke,” you’ll remember. The captain of the Southern prison road crew said this just before Luke was killed.

The hopes of nearly 18 thousand low-income, mostly working Wyoming people were killed by the legislature last week, just as dead as Luke. It wasn’t because of a failure to communicate.

It was a failure of honest leadership starting with Governor Matt Mead. He’s so afraid of his own shadow he doesn’t emerge from his hole as often as Punxsutawney Phil. After this year’s defeat, Mead emerged long enough to say, "We must recognize what health care means to individuals and to our economy. While I respect different views, the fact is today we are left with working poor without coverage.” He was right…finally.

This “leader” spent three years telling legislators Medicaid expansion was a bad idea. He wrote the talking points Republican legislators used to poison the well.

The blatant dishonesty reached peaks seldom realized in the legislature. We’ve come to expect nothing less from Senator Charlie Scott. Scott has served since Jimmy Carter was president. He’s made a career of harming low-income workers. He successfully fought workplace safety and adequate wages. He gerrymandered legislative districts to assure one-party control.

During the debate, Scott warned legislators not to trust the feds. While depositing thousands of dollars from agricultural subsidies into his own bank account, Scott said, "You know that because when you look at their finances, they’re in bad trouble across the United States."

Sen. Leland Christensen said, “Wyoming needs to find its own way to take care of the uninsured.” He said the Affordable Care Act is not the answer. The disingenuousness of this proclamation is evidenced by the fact that during the years-long debate on Obamacare and Medicaid expansion, neither Christensen nor any of his colleagues have offered a single idea for doing so. Not one.

Then there’s Sen. Larry Hicks who says, “The federal government has crippling debt. This puts us one step closer to economic collapse.” Wyoming, the argument goes, must help reduce the federal debt by refusing this program, but, only this one.

This assertion flunks the “pants-on-fire” test. These same legislators are willing to rely on the federal government to balance the state budget. The state constitution requires they balance that budget. They can do so only because nearly 20% of it comes from Washington.

They can’t balance the state’s budget without violating the arguments they make against Medicaid expansion. Yet neither Hicks nor Scott nor any of their anti-Medicaid colleagues have ever suggested Wyoming reject any of that money. They reserve that specious argument for dollars that could otherwise provide healthcare for low-income working people. 

Then there’s Tony Ross. He was the only Laramie County state senator voting against Medicaid. Ross’s argument? He didn’t really have one of his own. He just mimicked Charlie Scott despite the fact that Medicaid experts proved Charlie’s “facts” untrustworthy. Ross has the position and the wherewithal to lead. But he decided to follow and to follow the wrong man.

When the legislature killed Medicaid expansion this year, they did so knowing their votes will cost Wyoming taxpayers at least 100 million dollars each biennium. They knew their votes rejected tens of millions more that could have been used to improve the state’s health infrastructure and local economies while providing more than 800 new jobs. They knew some hospitals in the state wouldn’t survive because of the financial hemorrhaging caused by the cost of uncompensated care for the uninsured.  They knew 18,000 people would be needlessly left without health insurance meaning many will get far sicker than need be and some will die prematurely.

They also knew the arguments they made against the bill were entirely bogus.

Unlike Cool Hand Luke, Medicaid expansion wasn’t killed because of any “failyah to communicate.” They knew the truth. The bill died because of a willful “failyah of political honestly.”

"Ravens and Elves"

Ravens and Elves

Highlands Presbyterian Church

February 8, 2015

Last month Marcus Borg left this earth. Borg was a thoughtful and thought provoking teacher whose calling was to challenge age-old assumptions that Christians have been taught from pulpits all over the world. I was fortunate to have had a class from him at seminary. That quarter we studied his book “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.” The book gave us permission to see how far Christianity has strayed from its roots in Jesus by entangling itself in doctrine that came not from the teachings of Jesus but from those who sought to establish their religion as exclusive truth.

Borg asked us to think about issues like the resurrection. Did it have to be actual, he asked, or can you still follow Jesus if you see it as symbolic. Borg opened a new world of Biblical scholarship that many others have entered. He is gone but that path is opened for others to take. And it is a path where many will find a chance to reclaim the Bible from those who use it as a weapon to deny others their own beliefs.

I have come along one of those, a contemporary theologian whom I enjoy a great deal. Her unusual name drew me to her writings. Sea Raven. Dr. Sea Raven. Dr. Raven is a Unitarian Universalists preacher, a write, and musician. She lives in Maryland. Sea Raven Dr. Sea Raven is a member of a group of academics calling themselves the Westar Institute, a part of the Jesus Seminar.

The Jesus Seminar was organized in 1985 to renew the quest of the historical Jesus and to report the results of its research to the general public, rather than just to a handful of gospel specialists. Initially, the goal of the Seminar was to review each of the sayings and deeds attributed to Jesus in the gospels and determine which of them could be considered authentic.

When Dr. Robert W. Funk launched the Jesus Seminar in March 1985 in Berkeley, California, he said, “We are about to embark on a momentous enterprise. We are going to inquire simply, rigorously after the voice of Jesus, after what he really said. In this process, we will be asking questions that border on the sacred, that even abut up against blasphemy for many in our society. As a consequence, the course we shall follow may prove hazardous. We may well provoke hostility. But we will set out, in spite of the dangers, because we are professionals and because the issue of Jesus is there to be faced, much as Mt. Everest confronts the team of climbers.”

Sea Raven is one of those theologians who continue the bold search for who this Jesus we claim to follow really is. Dr. Raven asks those questions. She has written a series of texts following the lectionary. You get a sense of her willingness to challenge the old thinking when she refers to those, whoever they are, who dictate what scripture will be preached each Sunday on the pages of the lectionary. She calls them “the elves.”

Just who are these elves telling preachers what scripture they should preach each Sunday? The Revised Common Lectionary suggests readings for each Sunday. There is always a passage from the Old Testament, one of the Psalms, another from either the Epistles or the Book of Revelation; and finally a passage from one of the four Gospels. The lectionary runs in three-year cycles.

The idea is that through those three years, you will be able to hear most of the voices contained in the Bible. The task of the preacher is to take the four texts and figure out the relationship between them. The irreverent Reverend Raven says the four texts often appear to have been cobbled together, not just by elves, but by “drunken elves.”

I’m not sure I’d go that far but I am glad someone finally said it. There are so many Sundays when you just cannot figure out how the four relate to one another. I can almost hear the snickering of the elves as I struggle.

Let me give you an example of how people like Sea Raven and the Jesus Seminar give us an alternative view. The lectionary epistle reading this morning is from 1 Corinthians 9

Paul writes, “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

Dr. Raven and I agree. How can you pair Paul’s argumentive letter to the Corinthians with either the verses Cathy read from Isaiah or the Psalm which we read together in the call to worship much less the Gospel reading from Mark which reads:

And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Mark talks about Jesus healing a mother-in-law and going off to pray and being called back. Isaiah is talking about the injustices of this earth and how the rich and powerful abuse the poor and powerless. He teaches that God will cause the unjust to wither while God strengthens their victims. God, writes the prophet, gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless…for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Paul then comes along and changes the subject. He says the he became all things to all people in order to save their souls.

Whoa! Now here it comes. Maybe this is what the elves are trying to do.

Dr. Raven wants to know what it is Paul is trying to save us from? This is the question that divides many Christians…the fundamentalists from the progressive churches. Paul says he needed to become all things to all people- “I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.

Paul, many churches will tell you, is speaking about saving souls…it’s about the life after this one. Isaiah, on the other hand is not willing to be all things to all people. He says the same thing to the unjust as he does to the victims of injustice. Isaiah is unconcerned with whether there is a hell in the next life. He is trying to save people from the hell in which they live in this life.

When the elves decided that 1^st Corinthians 9:16-28 should be a part of today’s lectionary, they omitted earlier verses that might have helped correlate Paul with Isaiah. For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake?”

The elves aside…the afterlife will take care of itself if we focus on justice during this life.

Maybe Paul and Isaiah are saying the same thing. Consider how all of this changes if just by chance, they are. And then toss in Mark’s story. Looking at it that way gives us a new sense of what God is saying through the lectionary selections. Maybe the elves are saying the Bible is not a hitchhiker’s guide to Heaven but rather a “follower of Jesus’s guide through our own times and the needs of those around us.

You then have Paul’s concerns for others and Isaiah’s promise that God cares for the victims of injustice paired with a story of how Jesus, tired and in need of rest goes off to pray but is called away from a ritual back to the needs of the real and present world.

I have no idea what awaits me after death. But I do know what awaits us all during this lifetime and that doing justice here and now is what Jesus meant when he taught us to pray those words “thy Kingdom com, thy will be done, on EARTH as it is in Heaven.” AMEN.

Guess who's coming to breakfast

Late last month something extraordinary happened in Cheyenne. Certainly counter-cultural, it was special.

We live in times defined by our differences. Whether it’s politics or religion or science or education, most of us are looking for a fight and someone to fight with. If a Democrat proposes it, a Republican is opposed. If a Republican thinks it’s a good idea, a Democrat doesn’t.

The people claim to despise negative campaigning but they generally vote for the candidate who proves best at making his or her opponent seem almost un-American. By the time one candidate or the other gets enough votes to be sworn in, nearly half of the voters think that person to be a dishonest, corrupt devil.

As if to prove it doesn’t have to be that way, two Wyoming politicians recently did something earthshaking.

Late on a Friday evening the telephone at Charlie Hardy’s home rang.

Charlie was the Democratic Party’s nominee for the United States Senate in last year’s campaign. Charlie is a Democrat. Though quixotic, Charlie ran an aggressive campaign sincerely aimed at defeating the incumbent Republican. Hardy was born and raised in Cheyenne. As a priest, he served in Rock Springs, Laramie, Casper and Cheyenne. Father Hardy worked as a missionary in Venezuela for eight years, living in a dirt-floored hovel among the poorest.

Charlie was more interested in talking about issues than Mike Enzi’s almost-primary election opponent. For a time he was opposed by Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz. They thought he was too old and too liberal and too useless. She learned quickly that Wyoming people didn’t care for her and her father as much as they thought. Liz dropped out of the campaign.

That left Mike Enzi with no primary challenge and a general election contest against Charlie Hardy. Charlie’s decidedly liberal challenge to the conservative Senator Enzi ended as most predicted. Charlie received 17% of the vote. Mike Enzi got the rest.

Which brings us back to that night last month when Charlie’s phone rang. It was about 8 PM on a Friday evening. Charlie, a couple of his young campaign volunteers, and his son were eating dinner before a late night showing of “Selma.”

“Charlie,” the caller said, “this is Mike Enzi. Are you free for breakfast tomorrow morning?”

Really? Mike Enzi? Yes it was. Charlie fumbled his word momentarily. He asked Mike if he’d ever been to the home where Charlie grew up on 18^th Street in Cheyenne. Of course he hadn’t. Charlie suggested they have breakfast there. Charlie asked if Senator Enzi’s wife was with him. She was. “Please bring her with you.”

The Enzi’s rang Charlie’s doorbell at 9 AM on Saturday morning as planned. Charlie welcomed them. He gave a quick tour of the house his immigrant parents built so long ago. Charlie then prepared his famous Kaisersharm. I’ve enjoyed it before and it is a breakfast feast worthy of serving a United States Senator.

Mike and Diana visited with Charlie. He mixed the flour, milk, eggs, butter, and sugar. Charlie cooked the mixture in a cast iron skillet. He sprinkled it with powdered sugar and limejuice and sat the table.

For the next two hours they visited. It was Charlie and his political opponent, his wife, Carlos, sister Francis, and a couple of Charlie’s young campaign volunteers. Democrats. Republicans. Liberals. Conservatives. Young and old.

They drank coffee and ate breakfast. They spoke of the fine Wyoming weather. They talked about the historic home in which they shared the meal. They discussed a few issues such as how to provide for the street people who concerned Charlie and his son.

Mostly those diverse folks gathered round the kitchen table enjoyed Charlie’s Kaisersharm and the fellowship.

Who knows? Maybe it was the Kaisersharm. Maybe it was the old historic home in which they gathered. But I think it was something more. It was Mike and Diana Enzi. It was Charlie Hardy. It is Wyoming. It is what the United States should be.