Co-missioners,
Our editor had trouble getting his post for June 26the person who publishes these things on our website. That’s why nothing reached you last Thursday. See below for what you would have gotten. It’s been slightly tweaked to reflect the fact that it’s appearing only today, on the third of July. We hope the first item you encounter will prompt some extra prayers for the troubled land that celebrates its birthday tomorrow.
Peace and Joy,
The Crossings Community
_______________________________________________________
Assorted Mid-Year Notes
by Jerome Burce
I have several files on my computer where I’ve stashed bits and pieces of this and that, all of it having seemed at some point to be worth sharing with Thursday Theology readers—my grab-bag files, you might say. From them come a couple of things I pass along today along with others that have popped up more recently.
It Can’t Happen Here?
I start with an item I found on Facebook on June 24, a week ago Tuesday. It was posted early that morning by the Rev. Khader El-Yateem, Executive Director of the ELCA’s Service and Justice unit. Crossings friend Gerry Mansholt shared it in his Facebook feed, which is how it reached me. It struck me immediately as something to be passed along to readers who either don’t use Facebook at all or who would not have seen it in any case because the Facebook mini-gods, aka algorithms, would have deemed them unworthy. (Yes, I’m being cynical.)
Pastor El-Yateem is an American citizen who was born and raised in Palestine. Here’s what he wrote two days ago—
Reverend Khader El-Yateem
Photo from Wikipedia.org
After a long 15.5-hour flight from Johannesburg to Newark—grateful to have been upgraded to first class—I had planned to rest and recharge at the Polaris Lounge before continuing to Florida. But instead, I was unexpectedly and without explanation escorted to a detention center at Newark Airport.
Despite being a frequent flyer with Global Entry and TSA PreCheck, with every document and permit in order, I was detained and interrogated for nearly 20 minutes. They asked invasive questions, combed through my life, demanded access to my social media—which I refused—and even asked if I had any accounts under nicknames.
No one told me why I was being held. There was no explanation. No justification. I just found myself waiting, confused, and increasingly disturbed.
What was even more telling—and heartbreaking—was the stark racial divide I saw: every worker at the detention center was Black; every interrogator, white. What does that say about the systems we uphold in this country?
And as I finally reached the security checkpoint to continue my journey, I was “randomly” selected again. I was scanned four times. They told me the machine “couldn’t detect” me. What does that mean? Am I invisible? Or just seen as suspicious—because of who I am?
As an American, I am angry. I am hurt. But above all, I am determined.
I was reminded today—painfully—of the deep work we still have to do in this country. And yes, the interrogator was lectured about “peace” and “justice” and how the gospel compels us to be peacemakers. I wanted to ask: Is America truly for all Americans?
I believe it can be. I still believe in the promise of this nation. But that promise must be made real—for everyone.
So I’m going home with a heavy heart—but also with a fire inside. Because America can be better. And it must be. Not by ignoring injustice—but by confronting it. Not by being silent—but by speaking up.
This is not just about me. It’s about all of us.
Thus Pr. El-Yateem. A quick suggestion as you mull on this: “Let us pray.”
+ + +
Audiovisuals
Here I point you to three items that caught my eye, or ear, in the weeks since Easter. One of them is a “must-see,” or rather a “must-hear.” The second is of more passing interest. The third is a bit of tomfoolery.
David Foster Wallace – (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American writer and professor who published novels, short stories, and essays.
From Wikipedia.
- Was it my wife who pointed me to this? It’s a You Tube recording of the late David Foster Wallace delivering a commencement address at Kenyon College in 2008. Kenyon is an elite school tucked away in Gambier, Ohio, northeast of Columbus. Its graduates tend to excel wherever they land. Here Wallace sends them off with a reminder of who they are and the biggest challenge they will face. A few minutes in you’ll hear the hands-down best secular description of original sin that I’ve ever encountered. Not that Wallace uses the word “sin” in that venue; but he certainly lays it out in its most entrenched and universal form. Anyone who wants to tell the truth about the human condition will pay attention to this. Pastors, that includes you. Especially you. Once again, here’s the link.
Comes then Wallace’s equivalent of an exhortation to good works. This too is very moving. It’s also a painful reminder of the misery that Sunday-morning preachers inflict on their audiences when their remarks, however wise and rich in law, are empty of Gospel. “Do it,” says Wallace, “and you will live, or at least you’ll live better than you would if you didn’t do it.” Really, what else can he say? Sunday preachers, by contrast, have so much more to add about the Christ who does for us what we don’t and won’t and can’t do. Shame on us all whenever we fail to bring this up with the people we’re given to talk to.
- I snagged Item 2 on Facebook which peddles lots of things like this. It’s a so-called “reel”—I speak like an old guy here—by an art critic named Matthew Oliver. Oliver has a marvelous knack for helping rubes like me to notice what’s going on in great works of art, paintings in particular. Here is his discussion of “The Four Apostles,” a diptych by Albrecht Dürer that dates to 1526. To hear and see how Reformation themes are embedded in paint is fascinating.
- The last item is one I ran across some years ago. I had forgotten it. Then someone shared it as we closed in on this past Trinity Sunday. I watched again. I have a slightly twisted sense of humor, so I enjoyed it again. I have dear ones who would find it obnoxious and cheerfully tell me so. If snark is not your thing, skip it.
Otherwise expect a quick and snappy refresher in some of the common mistakes people make when they try to talk about God. There’s a lot of that going on these days as I mentioned a couple of posts ago. The discussion here, “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies,” comes from a You Tube channel called Lutheran Satire. The person behind it is a forty-something LCMS pastor named Hans Fiene, a grandson of Robert Preus. I’m pretty sure he’d have some sharp and crackling things to say about Crossings and Thursday Theology, but there it is. Enjoy anyway—if, as I say, you have the stomach for this kind of humor.
+ + +
In Blessed Memory
I wrote a year and a half ago about shuffling along in the pack of students and teachers that streamed down the driveway of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis in February 1974 enroute to what was soon to be called Seminex. Among the leaders in the pack was a fourth-year student named James Wind. Jim was on his way to a distinguished career of service as a program director at the Lilly Endowment and as president of the Alban Institute.
Waiting for all of us at the bottom of the driveway was a tall man in a distinctive winter hat. His name, I learned, was Walter Brueggemann. He was the Dean of Eden Theological Seminary, a United Church of Christ school that was cooperating with the Jesuits of St. Louis University to provide the new exiles with rooms and facilities to keep their classes going. I don’t suppose any us imagined that day how Brueggemann would emerge over the next few decades as one of the preeminent Old Testament scholars in the U.S., if not the entire world.
Drs. Wind and Brueggemann both died within the past several weeks, Wind on May 22 and Brueggemann on June 5. Given the roots we share with them, we at Crossings would do well to thank God for them both. May the promise they bore witness to in their remarkable careers continue to hold them in its grip and to refresh their dear ones in hope.
“Rest eternal grant them, O Lord; and let light perpetual shine upon them.”
