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hand of kindness

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
hand of kindness

This is my sermon for this week, based on one of my favorite stories in the gospels, which I came to see in a new light based on the way life has been crashing down around here lately. It was a Communion Sunday for us, so my sermon led us into the meal. I hope you find something that feeds you here.

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I have spent most of the last week driving back and forth to Yale New Haven Hospital, as many of you know. Our week started with Ginger taking Rachel, her mother, to the Emergency Department at Goose Lane, which led to her being admitted and then having surgery on Wednesday. She is still there as we try to figure out what comes next, which is not so easy to figure out.

Most every day this week, I read the passage for this morning and tried to think of what to say to you that felt true to the story and true to life.

Perhaps it is my heightened sense of how fragile we all are that made me more mindful of the fact that none of the gospel writers spends a lot of time on Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection. All four of them bring their books to a close rather quickly. You can almost count the times Jesus shows up on one hand, which makes me think perhaps Easter mattered to them not because it is the day that death was somehow vanquished, but that it opened the door to trusting God in a more profound way.

First, let’s look at the story.

After Jesus had appeared to them in the room with Thomas, it seems at least some of the disciples made their way back home to Galilee—Thomas being one of them. Maybe his realism was contagious. They were just trying to figure out what to do next.

We don’t know how much time had passed when they decided to go fishing, which was what they had done before they met Jesus, but Peter, Thomas, Nathaniel, James, and John were out in the boat together—and I think that’s the part that mattered most to them.

When you don’t know what’s coming, stick together.

After a night of nothing in the fish-catching department, they were just a little offshore when someone on the beach asked if they had caught anything to eat. When the said they had not, he told them to try one more time on the other side of the boat. Since they had nothing to lose, they followed the stranger’s instructions and their catch almost sunk their boats.

John looked at the man on the shore and said, “It’s Jesus,” which prompted Peter to jump in the lake and swim to shore. The others pulled the boats and the bursting nets on to the sand and found Jesus, who already had breakfast cooking. He didn’t even need their fish in order to feed them, though he told them to bring some anyway.

In the middle of it all, someone counted the catch: 153 fish.

That piece of information has always fascinated me. What are we to make of that? Trust me, you can spend a whole afternoon on the internet about what that number means. Some of the most helpful are these from theologian Karoline Lewis who says to take it as a clear statement about the grace of God. She says,

Don’t metaphorize this. And I don’t care if that’s not a word. What if it was really true? 153 fish? That is a crazy amount—and why? Because that is how much God loves us. . . . What good is the incarnation if you can’t touch, taste, smell, see, and hear it? So, 153 fish is that very truth. This fourth resurrection appearance is to reveal that grace upon grace is true. . . . To show, by a ridiculous amount of fish, that God’s grace cannot be limited to the incarnation, to the crucifixion, to the tomb, to the resurrection, and certainly not to the end of a Gospel story called John. . . . Resurrection is abundance.

Resurrection is abundance. Just when we think it was over, we pull up more fish than we know what to do with and we have to figure out how to take it all in.

This is not the only place in his gospel that John made this point. He is the one who tells of Jesus’ first miracle at a wedding in Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine so the party didn’t have to stop—and it was really good wine, too.

John also told about feeding the masses on the hillside with the five loaves and seven fishes. The disciples could only see too many hungry people and one little lunch and when the meal was finished there were twelve baskets of leftovers.

Resurrection is abundance. Just when we think it was over, God shows up with more than we know what to do with and we have to figure out how to take it all in.

How then do we learn to digest it? How do we learn to trust the extravagant abundance of God?

God’s grace upon grace. Let’s talk about that word.

Biblical translator Sarah Ruden points out the word grace is hard to translate because it is so “heavily abstracted” in English, which is another way of saying we know how to make things more complicated than they need to be. Ask a minister or a theologian what grace is, and they are likely to say something like “unmerited favor,” which doesn’t clear up much. Ruden points out that the Latin word means “thankfulness” and the Greek word we translate as grace means “kindness,” which she says, “seems more useful than our theologically overwrought grace.” Indeed.

Grace upon grace: kindness upon kindness.

As long as I’m digging up roots, let me give you one more. The root of the word kindness is linked to kinship and means “with the feeling of family.”

My friend Bob Bennett, who is a singer-songwriter, wrote a song called “Hand of Kindness,” which says it like this:

forgiveness comes in just a moment
but sometimes the consequences last
and it’s hard to walk inside that mercy
when the present is so tied up to the past
in this crucible of cause and effect
I walk the wire without a net
and I wonder if I’ll ever fall too far
but that day has not happened yet

there’s a hand of kindness holding me, holding me
there’s a hand of kindness holding me, holding onto me

Resurrection is abundance, grace upon grace, kindness upon kindness, gratitude upon gratitude. To digest all of that means to talk about something other than hypotheticals. To take it all in, we need to talk about where it hurts, what we need, all that we can’t see coming. When the net is empty and the wine is gone and we are trying to feed the world with a sack lunch is when we find once again how much God loves us.

Morning by morning new mercies I see . . .

I know I’m pulling in all kinds of folks whose words can help us find “the feeling of family” this morning because I feel like one of those in the boat on the Sea of Galilee—I have been fishing all week and my nets are empty. And I feel you there with me, whatever your week has been like.

We all need to feel the hand of kindness that is holding us. Here is another one of the voices that speaks to me in times like these: W S Merwin’s poem, “Thanks.”

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

This morning with Rachel in the hospital and our country going up in flames, with wars around the world, with all the hurt and grief we are carrying, with our questions and our struggles, our dreams and our failures, with tag sale leftovers and coffee hour waiting, waiting for the rain that was supposed to come and didn’t, living day to day without knowing what is coming next, we are saying thank you.

Thank you that resurrection is abundance, that grace is kindness, that God’s love is extravagant and untiring, even when we are exhausted. That is one of the big reasons we keep coming to this Table to be fed, just as Jesus fed the fishers when they came up from their boats.

This meal is more than a metaphor, it is a statement of trust. We are here together, caught and held once again by God’s hand of kindness. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

 

get out of the room

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
get out of the room

My sermon this past Sunday had less to do with trying to explain Thomas and more to do with what lies beyond our fear. It’s a little site specific, since I was preaching before our congregation’s annual meeting, but I hope you find something here.

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Over the past few months, I have become enamored of a South American animal called a capybara. It is the world’s largest rodent, weighing up to nearly two hundred pounds full grown. Capybaras are extreme extroverts and crave community, which certainly shows why they caught my attention—and they are just fun to watch.

As you might imagine, my social media began to fill up with not only capybara videos but also links to other exotic animals, one of which was the quokka. It is a marsupial—a cousin of the kangaroo–that lives on a couple of islands off the coast of Australia, and it looks like it is constantly smiling.

When I mentioned them to our friend Jenny in Durham, who is a vet, she said, “Yes, but they also throw their babies when they are being chased predators so they can get away.”

When we got back to Guilford, I started reading more and learned that they the way they “throw” their little ones is actually to loosen the muscles around the pouch that holds the baby so it falls out.

Fear makes us do strange things.

When we left the story last week, most everyone had seen the empty tomb, several of the women had seen and talked to Jesus, and they had all gone home bewildered, not really knowing what to do next. They were still scared.

Easter morning had not brought a tsunami of trust and confidence into the world, or the disciples, for that matter. They weren’t out throwing each other at the Romans, but they also weren’t out telling people what they had seen or shouting, “Alleluia.” They went into hiding, afraid that those who had executed Jesus would be coming for them as well, afraid that life would never be the same.

All of them except Thomas.

As a result, when Jesus appeared in the room where the groups was hiding and passed the peace, offering them hope and trust instead of fear and dread, and telling them–as he had told them many times before–that God’s presence in their lives made them agents of change–agents of forgiveness, compassion, and justice–Thomas missed the reunion.

Do you ever wonder where he went after the crucifixion? What he was doing?

Wherever he was, he handled his fear differently.

Though the enduring label for Thomas was that he was a doubter, theologian David Lose sees him as a realist–the kind of person who relentlessly took stock of a situation before making a decision. He writes,

Thomas wasn’t with the other disciples when they were cowering in fear in the upper room. We don’t know where he was, but I’m guessing he was out getting on with his life, figuring out what was going to come next and getting on with it. Because Thomas is, first and foremost, a realist.

And here’s the thing: reality came like never before on that Friday just two days before this scene, when Thomas watched as they nailed his Lord, teacher, and friend to two slabs of wood. Jesus was dead, and with him all the hopes and dreams of the past three years had perished as well.

So when the disciples come saying that they had seen Jesus, Thomas doesn’t merely doubt them. He out and out just plain doesn’t believe. And so I suspect that his demand to see and feel the mark of the nails in Jesus’ hands is less a request for proof than it is mocking the disciple’s claim. He makes that demand, in other words, because he knows it will never happen; it’s a request as absurd, even ridiculous, as what his friends are claiming.

Jesus appeared to them in the room again eight days later–basically today. (Maybe that’s why the lectionary offers this passage every year on the Sunday after Easter.) We don’t know what their week had been like. We don’t know if they had seen Jesus otherwise; it doesn’t appear that they had been together much. We do know they were still gathering in that room.

Maybe Jesus showed up again to get them out of there, to help them grasp what God could do through them.

When Jesus turned to Thomas, he didn’t offer him the chance to touch his wounds in order to assuage Thomas’ guilt; he did it to change Thomas’ perception of reality, of what was possible, of what God could do through him.

And Thomas, responded–without touching Jesus–by saying, “My master and my God.”

Then Jesus said something that feels a bit puzzling, “Do you believe because you see me? Happy are those who don’t see and yet believe.” Too often those words have been read as a sort of corrective, a back-handed criticism of Thomas and the others, as though Jesus was saying the best believers were those who trusted without questioning.

New Testament professor Dr. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw notes the Greek word that is translated as happy in our passage is not an indication of God’s blessing, but simply an adjective. She says,

People who have that simple kind of faith, the kind that doesn’t ask questions or have doubts or require evidence, are pretty undisturbed, blissfully happy, even. But is that the goal? Is John trying to tell us that we should all believe without seeing, without reasoning or questioning? I don’t think so. No one in this story believes like that. It takes Jesus’ voice to bring Mary around to recognition. Peter and the other disciple require a glimpse into the tomb, and even then they don’t understand. The other disciples need Jesus to show up miraculously in their midst. So, Thomas’s delayed recognition of the resurrected Jesus is not an inferior form of faith but just another way that people might move from doubt to belief in order to follow Jesus.

Faith–trusting God–was hard work for them. I think it is fair to say that is probably true in one way or another for most of us in this room where we are gathered. We are, after all, a UCC church. (That’s intended as a joke.) The reality is the history of our congregation and of our denomination is filled with faithful people who did the hard work of trusting God in the middle of all kinds of realities.

This is our 260th annual meeting, which puts the inaugural meeting a decade before the Revolutionary War. We have held annual meetings through the Civil War, two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, 9/11–and that doesn’t even cover all the wars. We held annual meetings during two worldwide pandemics (most of you were here for the last one), through the Great Depression, through elections when our parties both won and lost. We have also held annual meetings without loved ones, in the middle of family tragedies and difficulties, in between settled pastors when folks didn’t know who would come next.

Those annual meetings, like the one we will hold in this room shortly, were statements of our faith in God and in ourselves as the people of God. I won’t assume everyone was happy at all those meetings. I will assume most every meeting had several questions as the congregation worked out the details of whatever they were voting on, as leadership changed, and as our financial situation fluctuated.

Our story about the disciples offers us the chance to look at our forebearers as those who gathered to further understand how to get out of the room and see what God could do.

We are still gathering not because those who came before us just simply trusted that everything would work out. We are still here because people generously chose relationship over doctrine, over politics, over uncertainty, even over the really crucial things that divide churches like what color to paint the walls, or whether or not to hold annual meetings in the sanctuary or in the fellowship hall.

We are still here because people were willing to trust God to show them a new reality, the way Thomas and the others were willing to trust that Jesus was alive and standing there with them.

We are still here because they got out of the room and followed God’s call. We are also still here because every year we get out of the room as well and do the things we trust will share God’s love with those around us and with one another.

As we gather for our 260th meeting, our task once again is to do the work we have to do to continue to trust God and to trust each other. Let us ask the questions we need to ask, let us listen in love when folks respond, and let us remember there is not one detail in any of the reports or in any of the decisions we face that matters more than the relationships we share as the followers of Christ here at the Mount Carmel Congregational Church, no matter what is going on around us so that we can move past our fear, our realism, whatever it is that blocks us from seeing what the Spirit can bring to life in us.

Let us follow Jesus out of the room. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

stone rollers

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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2
stone rollers

My sermon for this morning.

________________________

No one remembered exactly what happened.

They knew the tomb was empty when those who came to anoint the body got there—but the list of exactly who went to the tomb with Mary Magdelene differs from gospel to gospel, though all four make it clear that it was the women who first learned that Jesus was resurrected.

The men—the ones who get called “the disciples”—had fled the scene of Jesus’ execution and had gone into hiding. The women were the ones who stayed until Jesus had died. And they were the ones who went to care for the body once the sabbath was over.

The Roman practice was not to take the bodies of the executed down from their crosses, but to leave them to decompose, both to even further humiliate the one who had been killed and their families, and also to serve as a warning to others. Intentional humiliation was part of the plan.

Jewish tradition said the body had to be buried before the sabbath began. It was an essential kindness. Joseph of Arimathea, who was a follower of Christ and also quite wealthy, had a tomb (actually one intended for him) and also had the influence, as a rich man, to negotiate with those bent on death and to see to it that Jesus’ body was taken down and cared for rather than being left to rot in public. Jesus was placed in the tomb just before sabbath began on what we would call Friday evening.

As we know, right about dawn on Sunday morning, the women went to the tomb to finish the anointing, which, in those days, was work only done by women. They were neither rich nor influential. Most of the graves to which they might have attended would have held more than one body and probably had some way to open the crypt. Jesus’ body was sealed in a tomb intended only for one, and for a wealthy one at that, so it would have been well secured.

When it comes to the stone, each gospel account tells of its removal a bit differently. Matthew says there was an earthquake that made it roll away, even frightening the security guard. Both Luke (which we read today) and John simply note that the stone was moved. Mark recounts that as the women were walking to the cemetery, they asked themselves, “Who will roll back the stone from the tomb for us?” because they knew it wasn’t something they could do themselves.

I know I was supposed to focus on Luke this week, but that question grabbed me as I read the gospels again: Who will roll back the stone from the tomb?

Whatever happened that turned the crucified Jesus into the risen Christ could not have happened unless someone had rolled away the stone. Resurrection requires a rolling stone—and I don’t mean Mick Jagger.

Resurrection requires stone rollers.

Which brings me to the other thing that struck me this week as I prepared.

Ginger’s church has a sunrise service at Jacobs Beach in Guilford every Easter Sunday. That’s right, I’ve already been to church—at 5:35 this morning! Since my guitar is more portable than the church organ, I was the accompaniment for the hymn we sang—the same one that will close our service—“Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”

As I practiced, the opening lines struck me differently than ever before:

Jesus Christ is risen today, alleluia!
our triumphant holy day, alleluia!

Particularly the second line—“our triumphant holy day”—I stopped practicing and said out loud, “One day? That’s all the triumph we get? No!”

The schnauzers were puzzled by my outburst, but it was a revelation for me that tied in with my musings about rolling stones. We are not singing this morning because of something that happened one time on one morning so long ago that we don’t even have exact details. We are singing this morning because stones have continued to be rolled away across millennia, giving us the chance to trust that every last one of us are wonderfully and uniquely created in the image of God and worthy to be loved.

I did something in that last paragraph I work hard not to do: I used the passive voice. I said, “We are singing this morning because stones have continued to be rolled away.” I abhor the passive voice because it puts distance between the action and the actor. Politicians use it all the time: “Mistakes were made; actions have been taken.” It drives me crazy.

When I realized what I had written, I started to go back and fix it, but I decided it would be better to correct myself in real time because I want to underline that rolling away the stones requires an active voice. Stones aren’t just rolled away. Someone has to roll them.

And so I invite us on this Easter morning as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, to think in the active voice (I think that’s possible) about what stones we need to roll away so God’s resurrecting power can continue to bring new life into the world for more than one triumphant day.

We are called to be stone rollers; we are called to be those who practice resurrection—those who look for ways to make room for life in the face of all that would kill us and in the face of all that takes life from those around us.

The phrase “practice resurrection” is the last line from a poem by Wendell Berry called “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” which describes what it means to be a stone roller. Listen to this excerpt:

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands. . .

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts. . . 

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Berry was by no means a perfect man, and he worked hard to deal in specifics when he talked about practicing resurrection. What, then, are we talking about when we say we need to roll the stones away?

(Bear with me here—I’m going to stretch the metaphor a bit.)

We might say some stones are small and can be rolled away with ease; we just have to take the time to do it. What I mean is not all stone rolling is the stuff of Easter morning in terms of impact.

Now I’ll mix my metaphors to make my point: I spent part of yesterday cleaning the beds around our hosta and peony plants who are just poking their heads up through the soil for this year’s round of resurrection. I rolled away the debris that could impede their growth. It was a small and essential act. I rolled some small stones.

What small stones can we roll—what small, intentional acts can we do—to create space for growth and connection, to create room for new life to break forth?

What words of apology or clarification do we need to say? What habits do we need to change? What patterns do we need to reevaluate? How willing are to examine our presuppositions, or to imagine that we still have a lot to learn? How quickly do we judge instead of asking questions when we don’t understand something?

Some stones are larger and require greater effort and intentionality—even risk—on our part, calling us to ask how we can create room for new life rather than dig holes for more graves. To be able to speak the truth to power we first have to speak the truth to ourselves.

How can we start a conversation with the person in our neighborhood who has a sign in their yard that we disagree with or even detest? How do we turn our anger into compassion? How can we bring ourselves to feel what it would be like if our family members were the ones being accused and deported without due process of law? How do we give up having to be right so that we can choose to be loving? We are all going to need help rolling that stone.

Some stones are giant boulders and require continued effort over generations. Will we play a part in rolling them even just a little, or will be slip into the passive voice and just hope that stones get rolled away without costing us too much? In the poem, Wendell Berry said we should plant sequoias. (Again, I’m mixing metaphors to make my point.)

As many times as I have said that love wins in the end and if love is not winning it’s not the end—and meant it as a statement of hope, I want you to hear me say this morning—on this Resurrection Morning—I am pretty sure love is not going to win in my lifetime. Any stone I try to roll is going to be some version of planting a sequoia.

In the wake of the Civil War Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the carol “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” The next to the last verse says,

and in defeat I bowed my head
there is no peace on earth I said
for hate is strong and mocks the song
of peace on earth goodwill to all

He doesn’t end there, but that is the verse we are living in. We have followed Jesus from his birth to his death—a death that came about because he told people that God sided with the poor and those on the margins and those who were deemed to be of little value to society, other than to be the workforce.

So the powers that be executed him.

This morning, we have followed the women to the tomb to find that Christ is risen. If all that Easter means is that we have one triumphant holy day, then the power of the resurrection will last about as long as the forsythia bushes in the church yard. Luke says that those women and the frightened men they went to tell all went to their homes that night wondering what had happened.

They weren’t triumphant; they were bewildered. And so they kept gathering together and they kept telling the stories that mattered most and they rolled the stones of fear away from their hearts. Those are the stories we will read in the weeks to come.

Easter is about more than triumph, about more than a single victory; it is about more than one empty tomb. Jesus’ resurrection calls us to new life every day, to be stone rollers any time we see an opportunity, day after day with death all around us, planting sequoias we will not see grow large, offering invitations that cannot be reciprocated, taking care of people who cannot pay us back, clearing space for new life to grow and thrive, whether we’re talking about peonies or people.

Christ is risen today. Alleluia. And that only continues to matter if we keep rolling away the stones. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: choosing life

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0
lenten journal: choosing life

choosing life

when we moved to
Connecticut almost
a decade ago
I had an idea to plant
a tree each year

as a way to mark time
and to leave something
growing when we left
and so I planted two peach
trees over two summers

today I cut them down
not because they were dead
but because we also tell
time by schnauzers
and one who was not here

when I planted the trees
but has been here
when the meager harvests
fall to the ground faster
than we can pick them

and then after the fallen
fruit has rotted away
Loretta carries in the pits
as if they were prizes
to be treasured and

chewed to bits
and swallowed
which turns them into
life-threatening
schnauzer hazards

I chose one life
over two others just
as they were blooming
which gives me pause
as I await the resurrection

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: ice age

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0
lenten journal: ice age

ice age

if you have to go out in
winter ice is not your friend
whether the white ridges
or the translucent layer

disguised as asphalt
ice will take you down
maybe that’s what they
had in mind when it

became the acronym for
those who knock down doors
and scour streets scraping
people into oblivion

it chills me to think that
evil appreciates metaphor
freezes me in my tracks to
watch the hail of hatred

break hearts and windows
and leave us all shivering
the arctic temperature of
such hate cannot sustain life

humanity loses its footing
in such frigid heartlessness
we need to burn things down
so we don’t all freeze to death

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: mirror image

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0
lenten journal: mirror image

mirror image

what is it about grief and loss that
makes life feel as if the clouded glass
through which we gaze carries the same
caution as the passenger-side mirror:
“objects may be closer than they appear”

the old songs sing of crossing rivers
and farther shores, of flying away
like a bird freed from prison bars but
life is so much more than a sentence
we are meant for more than an escape

as you travel, check your mirrors
get a sense of those fellow travelers
who have merely shifted dimensions
even if the view still feels clouded
we will understand it better by and by

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: living among the dead

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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0
lenten journal: living among the dead

living among the dead

one church member stood
during prayer time to mark
five years since his wife died

at coffee hour another said
next Sunday will be two years
since her husband died

when I checked email I saw
a request to help with a burial
of who died last night

and then at lunch Ginger
told me that my spiritual
director had died in her sleep

those are just the ones
I heard about today
no doubt there are more

not a day goes by that
isn’t attached to someone
who is no longer with us

as we are wont to say
even as we keep bumping
into their absences

and marking our calendars
so we can recognize
today’s particular ache

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: holy weak

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
lenten journal: holy weak

holy weak

1.

Jesus rode into town
on a borrowed donkey
not wanting to be king.

we have a president who
thinks he’s a king and
is demanding a parade.

one is not like the other.

2.

to equate criticizing
Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza
with being antisemitic

is the same as saying
criticizing Trump for his actions
is being anti-American.

why are we scared to say so?

3.

the divider-in-chief says
Christians need to be protected
from those who choose their pronouns
even as he redefines words like
faith and freedom with impunity

If he had been in the crowd
around the woman when Jesus said,
“If you’re sinless, throw the first stone,”
I think he might have thrown his rock
and expected Jesus to be grateful

4.

contempt is not comfortable
(I’m talking to myself)

5.

I’m walking into Holy Week
assuming that I am going to die
in a country I don’t recognize

I wish I could ask the disciples
how in the world to get ready for
a resurrection you can’t see coming

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: rage room

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
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1
lenten journal: rage room

rage room

I was in a different city
a few weeks back
and saw a rage room
a shop that invited you
to come in a break things

through the open door
we saw drop cloths and
a stack of sledgehammers
as well as sheets of glass
plates cups and televisions
stuff that would shatter

once you paid your money
you put on the coveralls
and safety googles
grabbed a hammer
and started swinging

as though destruction
had some larger purpose
or maybe it was just
to blow off some steam
either way the damage done
never left the building

which is the illusion
damage breeds damage
next time you’ll want to
put holes in the walls
or maybe take a swing
at the shopkeeper

when you’re holding
a sledgehammer
everything looks like
something to break

just ask the president
he breaks stuff everyday
like he owns the place
and rage is his right

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: remember this

Milton Brasher-Cunningham
-
1
lenten journal: remember this

remember this

this grab for power
is an act of desperation
it may seem measured
calculated deliberate
but look in their eyes
and you can see fear
behind all of the greed

the damage is real
but their frantic grasp
for permanence is not
nobody lasts forever
despot or democrat
history forgets us all
we grieve and we leave

we matter as matter
as parts of the whole
love handed down
from one age to the next
regardless of the whims
of the rich and fearful
power is not absolute

those who are diseased
are not contagious
those who climb thrones
have no lasting significance
tell them to their faces
better yet set your gaze
on those taking the blows

let their love infect you
the greed hate and whim
of deluded demagogues
don’t hold a candle to
our weathered tenacity
include yourself in that
we are all in this together

Peace,
Milton

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