Musings

The Blessing of the Taxes

Every Sunday in worship, we offer a blessing for our pledges and offerings we make to our church.  It's a prayer of hope that what we give will be well-spent for the mission of our congregation, within and beyond the walls of our sanctuary.  It's a prayer that expresses our covenant with each other, and with the Spirit that unites us, to work for the common good to which we are divinely called.

As strong as our love for each other may be, as warm and close as relationships are among our people, there is probably no single person in the congregation who would agree with the way that every last dollar of our offerings is spent.  Nonetheless, at the end of the offertory prayer spoken by the lay leader in worship, the "amen" speaks for us all.  Our church (Mt Hollywood UCC in Los Angeles) is a little democracy.  We trust that the collective will of our people is striving to align with the divine as we make our financial decisions.  We know we're far from perfect in that quest.  All the more reason for us to pray a blessing on our gifts to the church, and celebrate the blessing that follows from them.

Likewise, in the much bigger democracy of our nation, we are blessed to have representation in the process of our taxation.  We are blessed with the freedom to be citizen activists pushing for the best use of the taxes we pay.  We are blessed also by the benefits funded by our taxes: schools, roads, sewers, public health services, income support for elderly and disabled and vulnerable people, national defense.  Taxes make civilization possible.  We pay tax to the government, but in a democracy, we are the government.  So we're really paying ourselves to take care of our shared tasks.  To be sure, we often disagree with exactly how taxes should be spent, or how much tax should be paid and by whom.  But given the many blessings that flow from them, it is good that we offer a blessing in return.

Over the past thirty years, there has been a well-organized, brilliantly-executed political media campaign by conservatives to demonize taxes.  One need look no further than last night's presidential State of the Union address to see how successful it has been.  Our President felt compelled to brag about how he had accomplished so much without raising taxes on anybody by "a single dime".  This was after he outlined the disastrous consequences of deficit spending over the last decade.  Not raising taxes has become a dogma adopted by both major political parties in this country, and few have the nerve to challenge it.  Want to go to war?  Go deep into hock, but don't breathe the idea of raising taxes to pay for it.  Want to bail out the banks?  Go ahead and mortgage your grandchildren's future to fund it.  To suggest that it be paid for with increased taxes on anyone, even on those who could easily afford a tax increase, would be considered political suicide.  Conservative leaders have made a breathtakingly cynical effort to bankrupt the government so that it will be forced to withdraw from providing a basic social safety net for our people.  The strategy has worked all too well. 

It's far past time to "re-frame" the political discourse in this country.  It's time to change the way we think about taxes. It's time to do for taxes exactly what we do for our offerings to the church, and bless them while praying for guidance about how best to spend them. 

A few years ago, I wrote such a blessing ( http://tcpc.blogs.com/musings/2005/04/a_prayer_at_tax.html ).  It is a prayer for use by faith community leaders to give thanks for the blessings that come through our taxes.  It also prays for wisdom and for citizen action to see to it that our taxes are spent best for the common good.  In 2005, I proposed to churches that they invite their members to bring their tax forms to worship, lay them on the altar, and have the pastor offer this kind of blessing on them.  This event happened at a small number of congregations around the U.S., including the one I served at the time.

If taxes are being blessed in churches, temples, and other houses of worship all over America, it demonstrates that people of faith consider taxes to be fundamentally good, even if we might differ respectfully about exactly how they are spent.  Such a ceremony, conducted all over the country, would do much to re-unite Americans around our divine calling to take care and protect each other, especially those most vulnerable, through our democratic process.

On April 11 this year, the Sunday before our IRS forms are due, let's see if we can get this to spread around the country in a much bigger way.  Progressive Christians Uniting - www.pcu-la.org - is planning to organize a national tax-blessing event on that weekend, mobilizing congregations to participate and getting media attention for what they are doing.  (I now serve on PCU's board of directors.)  If your congregation plans to do a "blessing of the taxes", let me know, and let me know how you plan to do it.  If you have suggestions about how to make this a meaningful and significant event, please let me know, also, so I can pass along your suggestions to PCU.

 

Light and Rifle-Sights

It came to light recently that the US military bought rifle-sights which are engraved with references to passages in the New Testament.  When a soldier trains the cross-hairs on a fellow human being whom he or she is about to kill, the soldier also will see “JN8:12” or “2COR4:6” inside the scope.

This is a blatant violation of the separation of church and state.  Unconstitutional enough to have any reference to the Bible in an Army-issued rifle-sight, but worse yet that it is specifically Christian.  And it's much worse yet that anyone would suggest that there is anything Christian about killing other human beings, for any reason.  This incident is another example of the serious constitutional breaches that are endemic in our armed forces today.  In many cases, military career advancement depends on professing evangelical Christian faith.  (See more about this problem at www.au.org .)

Our country is unusually humane in comparison to the behavior of many other nations throughout history. Yet still, most of the decisions America has made to go to war have been based on greed, unfounded fear, or breathtaking hubris.

There are occasions when war is justified in order to protect human life and prevent gross oppression.  I believe that it is appropriate for our country to be engaged in military action in Afghanistan.  But my view is a tentative one.  This war barely crosses the ethical threshold that was set forth by Saint Augustine so long ago in his doctrine of “just war”.  His was a Christian effort to look critically at the justifications for armed conflict, and come up with a rubric for when it could be morally appropriate.  Yet there’s still nothing Christian about war, even if the war passes Augustine's test, even if Christians like myself conclude that there’s no other way to protect life and basic human rights.  There is not a word in the New Testament to condone or encourage warfare or any other form of violence, under any circumstances.  Christianity is anti-war to the core.

It’s worth a look at the scriptures which have found their way into the gunsights of our soldiers’ weapons:

John 8: 12:  “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”

2 Corinthians 4:6   “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

It tortures these texts beyond recognition to suggest that they should illuminate the eyes of human beings who are about to kill other human beings.  On the complete contrary, the divine light helps us aim at compassion, forgiveness, and patience.  The divine light illuminates the way to peace and reconciliation.  The divine light shines on every possible way to avoid the use of rifle-sights.  Even in a war that has moral justification, we should invoke divine light to guide us to the most peaceable and just path to the cessation of hostilities.

War is never right.  At most, it is an evil that must be utilized to prevent worse evils.  A morally justifiable military intervention must be conducted with the utmost care to avoid unnecessary harm to combatants and civilians alike.  But even surgically precise warfare isn’t good; it’s just less bad than the alternatives.

The Christian faith has an overwhelming bias against violence, even in response to aggression.  It errs on the side of forbearance.  A Christian’s conscience must grapple with Jesus’ imperative toward self-sacrificial compassion and forgiveness on one hand, and the practical necessity of protecting vulnerable people from murder or terrible oppression on the other.  Christians must grapple with the contradiction between what is Christian and what a Christian must sometimes do.  There is no neat and tidy resolution to this dilemma.  It’s a cross all of us must bear, whether we are soldiers or just voters.  This uncomfortable engagement with the imperatives of our faith will, hopefully, lead us to erase any hint of Christian endorsement for killing.  Let us take this shameful incident as an opportunity to remember that Christianity leaves the Bible out of rifle-sights and instead puts it into visions for peace.

Not Yet

It was Christmas Eve, and amidst all the bustle of family activity I asked who might be up for going to the candlelight service.  Everybody was engaged in cooking, eating, and talking.  But our three year old granddaughter perked right up and said “Me!  Me!”  She and her Iranian Muslim paternal grandmother joined me in driving to the church.

Before the service, I took little Rumi up to the altar of Mt Hollywood Congregational United Church of Christ in Los Angeles.  There were several crèches there, none of them with the baby Jesus in the manger.  “The baby is coming!” I told Rumi.  “They’re going to put him here!  It’s all about the baby!”

Then we sat in the front row.  Rumi’s eyes were aglow with the magic of Christmas.  She loved the music and the candles.  In the middle of the service, she bolted out of her seat, ran up to the altar, looked for the baby in the crèche, turned around, shrugged her little shoulders and said, for all to hear, “Not yet!”

Well, that made Christmas Eve for me.  And for a lot of others in the church that night.  There is a “not yet” about Christmas that inflames the imagination, quickens the heart, warms the soul.  She got it, and in that moment, so did the rest of us.

Christmas has come and gone for the season.  Some hopes and dreams were realized, to be sure.  Rumi was thrilled when it came time for all the children to come up to the altar on Christmas Eve.  There may have been fewer packages under the Christmas tree for a lot of people this time, but still there were enough to make it a good day for most folks.

Then came December 26, with plenty of “not yets” left unresolved.  High-quality, universal, single-payer health care coverage for Americans?  Not yet.  An employment safety net that makes sure every American who is able to work can get a job?  Not yet.  Affordable higher education for every eligible young adult in California?  Once upon a time, but now, not yet.  An end to Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank, leading to a comprehensive peace agreement with Palestine?  Not yet.  Resolutions to the civil wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan?  Not yet.

How shall we live with “not yet”?  With frustration and despair?  With anger that promises have been broken, lies have deceived?  With resignation and hopelessness, assuming that we shouldn’t expect much due to the immutability of “the powers that be”?

Or shall “not yet” keep our attention focused on getting Jesus into the manger, focused on manifesting divinity through our humanity?  Shall we take “not yet” as a sign that it is time for patient, persistent action for positive social change?  Shall we hear “not yet” as a call to engagement with the practical processes of making the world a better place for us all?

Rumi went back to her seat in the church, delighted that she got to put a figurine of the baby Jesus into one of the little mangers. Christmas Eve may be over, but the work of Christmas continues as we turn “not yet” into “now”.