Equal Rights Must Be Conditional On The Acceptance Of Basic Equality Or They Are A Virtual Guarantee Of The Worst Kind Of Inequality

NOTE: This started as an answer to someone snarking about LGBTQ+ Christians.  I revised it to reflect my thinking on the latest school shooting.  Consider this my version of "thoughts and prayers."

ONE OF THE FIRST things I remember pointing out when I started commenting online to largely comfortable, affluent, straight, white college-credentialed, secular lefties was that I've been the focus of anti-LGBTQ+ violence and intimidation and if there's one thing that was clear in all of those incidents, the attackers were not church-goin' boys.  For a start they certainly didn't take the Commandment against taking The Lord's name in vain seriously.  The use of blasphemy was a part of much, I'd be convinced, most of the anti-gay hate spoken and expressed in my presence.  Living in the same small town for most of my life, I've known a lot of the L-Q+ haters here and know many of them are quite irreligious.  Though there may be regional variations in that.  And their hatred isn't confined to LGBTQ+ People, it is quite capacious, Women being another focus of their hatred, many of them are known to me to be racists, as well.  Of course, according to my recent posts on the issue, I would hold that any professed Christian who practices hatred and false witness against LGBTQ+ People is in violation of the teachings of Jesus, not to mention the Commandments and I don't consider that to be credibly Christian.

It is impossible to deny that religious institutions and their more genteel (in some cases) and their most vicious leadership and individuals are some of the worst promoters of discrimination against us.  And I certainly don't want to pretend that isn't the case, it is immoral to cover up corporate as well as individual hatred and so sinfulness within professed Christianity. Apart from the sins of oppression, false witness and murder, it allows those evils to continue unopposed and discredits Christianity.

But those bigots certainly aren't the sole representatives or in any way good examples of Christianity  and, the extent to which they violate the teachings of Jesus in doing so, they impeach their credentials.  For any preacher, priest, bishop or pope who preaches or campaigns in favor of discrimination against us, there is more than one sincerely Christian LGBTQ+ person who rejects the slanders against us and even more non-LGBTQ+ Christians who also reject that.

Some of the earliest organizers against legal discrimination against us were Christian believers. The first leader of a gay rights organization in the United States was a Black Minister.  The first mainstream institution in the United States to call for marriage equality was the United Church of Christ. Why should those of us who believe in Jesus and his teachings listen to those whose primary interest isn't our lives and rights, it's their anti-Christian bigotry?  Of course your condemnation of Christians is an expression of hatred just as much as any anti-Queer bigot's, and in slamming those of us who are Christians you are attacking the same People as they are.  I am not a divided entity, I'm LGBTQ+ as much as I am a Christian.

Expanding On That Point.  

I am an equality absolutist, an absolutist for equal rights of PEOPLE, first and most importantly their equal rights to live, to live a decent life, have their part in a decent society and an egalitarian government. Compared to that many other enumerated rights and, especially privileges stupidly called "rights" anyone who doesn't put such things first is not qualified to comment on the situation. (See yesterday's just most recent school shooting which the US Constitution and the fucking Bill of "Rights" not only is impotent to stop but it's the primary enablement of them.)

I believe that all humans are created in the image of God and that is especially true of the least among us, I am a Christian, after all.  So I am an economic leveler who favors the elimination of great wealth held by any individual any single group or small group, it's one of the greatest impediments towards a legitimate government, a just society and a decent life. I am in favor of people having an ample life, more than enough to merely maintain them as living and able to work ie, be profitable for exploitation by the rich and generally "The Nation" (the stingy basis of Brit social policy). I am in favor of all workers being respected and all work being as dignified and safe as it is possible to make it.  Among the thing that People are amply deserving of and entitled to is respect, consideration and love.  There are many People I'm still working on doing that for, myself.

I am not an absolutist stupid enough to believe all ideas and desires People have are necessarily equal and above constraint. It is one of the stupidest nearly universal, ill considered beliefs that ideas are all equal when they are not, no more than desires or acts are all equal and deserve the full protection of the law in their expression.

That should be the egalitarian democratic deal for the inclusion of those of diverse ideologies, ideas, faiths, etc. that so long as their belief really respects the basic equality of others of such good will, including material equality, that really holding that, then those ideas can come under the umbrella of safely permissible ideas within an egalitarian country.

To the extent that they deny equal rights to others, equal rights to a decent life, then they have made their thinking dangerous in some cases impermissibly dangerous.  As to who will judge that, the answer is the same as it is now under a dangerously and absurdly danger empowering system, we, mere human beings will have to be the ones who judge that.  

We make all kinds of decisions about what is permissible what isn't in far more complex matters. If some judges and even entire states are unreliable in the honest discernment in that matter then allowing them to adjudicate in other matters is already seriously dangerous and we have far bigger problems, that means that our federal system is fatally flawed already and our society is too corrupt to sustain even liberal democracy, let alone real, egalitarian democracy.

Anyone who favors equality of People is under no obligation to pretend that all Peoples' ideas and desires are equal or equally deserving of the protection of law.  In fact, if you hold that those who deny equality to others have a right to propagate their preferred ideas, really their unthinking and often manipulated and malignant desires, appealing to the worst in their audience to seal the deal (FOX's business model) and so to very possibly endanger the lives and legitimate freedoms of other People, you can't really be taken seriously as someone who holds that all People are equal and that rights are equally held.  If you hold that libertarian liberal bullshit as right you really don't favor their safety under equality, you prefer the possibility of them being treated as unequal, oppressed or murdered more than you value their safety, their equal rights and, ultimately, their lives.  

The monumentally dishonest pretense that there is a bright line between advocating violence and oppression and the actual commission of that,  which separates the advocacy from the act, and that it is never permissible to avoid the act by suppressing even the worst speech, is something that can be maintained only by those who have a high confidence that they are unlikely to be the focus of the predictably resulting violence.  Confident that THEY won't be even as they turn a blind eye to the enormous violence that is a certain product of the violent speech and press that is what leads to the violence.  It is easy for the safe and comfortable to pretend that the lessons of the history of such violence incited by speech and, these days, especially, the media is something we are not obliged to learn from AND DO SOMETHING TO PREVENT IT IN THE FUTURE. It is far harder for anyone who is a likely target WHOSE LOVED ONES ARE A LIKELY TARGET for violence in the here and now to pretend that they don't know what the result of such speech and media will mean for them and their loved ones and, as my experience that those who know such lessons of a hard life are more aware of it when they see others so endangered, their neighbors who are also so targeted.

Absolutist positions on "free speech-press" are an expression of habitual privilege and the customs and habits of long-term privilege and family privilege.  It is either that or some other, against all evidence, acquired delusion that chooses to ignore the murder, the oppression, the violence that has been propagated by words all during our history.  I doubt anyone who REALLY has a strong chance of being murdered by a lynch mob would mouth the inane slogans of "free speech-press" absolutism unless they'd been made stupid by going to law school or "journalism school" or reading civil-libertarian propaganda.  Such a choice to ignore the most glaring lessons of hard experience is a cultivated mental debility, often imparted through entertainment media.

It is pure insanity to hold that a right to say whatever you want to, to publish whatever you want to is to be valued more highly than the equality and so lives of those who have been, are and will be damaged by that "speech," that "press" which promotes inequality and oppression, to hold that while pretending to value equality in human lives is as ass-backward an idea as possible.  

If you coo or whine that "If we can suppress the speech of Nazis, fascists, white supremacists, misogynists, etc.  . . .  then, why, . . . why, then they may someday suppress that of their intended victims." FOR PETE'S SAKE, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THEY INTEND TO DO WITH THAT SPEECH THE DAMNED ACLU IS ASKING FOR MY MONEY TO SUPPORT BEFORE THE DAMNED SUPREME COURT! DOLTS!  I hold that those slogans in the Bill of Rights are what made courts and judges so dishonestly stupid as they pretend they can't tell the difference.

As I pointed out in one of my earliest and most objected to posts, the idea that if we're fair to fascists or nice to Nazis, they're going to all attend some seminar in new ideas in Nazism and suddenly reciprocate and be all live and let LIVE is about the daffiest idea that people with graduate degrees nearly universally hold. Such is the power of a pat slogan over reason and reality.  Such civil liberties advocates are demanding that we all be supreme chumps for their clients.

I have no faith in the sincerity of the traditional "civil libertarians" on or off that count.  The history of their successful advocacy in front of the Supreme Court certainly discredits the idea they uphold the rights of those who have suffered due to their clients having their say given "equal-rights" or, really, privileged.  There is no such thing as a right to lie, anyone who would frame such a thing as lying as a "right" has rocks in their heads. Publishing malicious lies and advocacy for oppression, violence and murder certainly don't constitute a "right".  Such "civil liberties" lawyers and advocates certainly don't think their First Amendment clients' victims lives are as important as their lofty, legalistic abstractions.  The idea that allowing Nazis to openly organize their hate group made us more safe since Skokie in the 1970s is certainly not what happened in history.  

If you wonder how the overtly fascist Trump became president, the legal advocacy of the "civil liberties" industry and their won privileging of media owners' self-interested lies, slander, libel, hate talk media had more than a little to do with it, just as it has the rest of the long slide into the endangerment of American style democracy. Both Trump and Reagan, the head of the previously most criminal presidency in history, were both products of the "free press," the profitable entertainment division of it, Trump(!), often appearing on "news" shows.  Such is the "journalism" which has prevailed in the freest "press" in our history, such which "journalism" has been expanded through "civil liberties" advocacy and judging.

There may seem to be a paradox in holding that People have a right to advocate their thinking but that if that thinking opposes equality and favors oppressing others those ideas have no right to be protected speech. That is a bad framing of the problem due to considering those as abstractions and pretending they are equivalent. "They're both speech."  But the right to do the one is not the same thing as the alleged "right" to do the other.

If you take the demonstrably following results AND CERTAINLY THE INTENDED results of the expression of such malignant speech as the actual reality of it, such as, in the American context, the speech which has resulted, thousands of times in a lynch mob torturing and murdering mostly People of Color or to mount an insurrection, more short-of-lethal attacks, or which results in fascist or Nazi or other gangster government such as we had under Trump, it's a lot clearer to see that the real paradox is for a free speech absolutist to then pretend they favor equality in real life instead of an equally abstract notion that they blather on about in front of a Supreme Court and on talk shows.  

Since they learned nothing from Skokie except to be encouraged in their malfeasance, the ACLU represented the Nazis before the deadly Charlottsville rally and won their "right" to march in court. Those well groomed, well-spoken civil liberties lawyers have blood on their  dainty, manicured hands. So do the courts. There is no bigger lie than the Supreme Court's pretense that they have delivered "Equal Justice Before The Law."  Equal rights in real life, the only place where such "rights" mean a damned thing, are certainly not what they have delivered.

The American slogan, "freedom of the press" is what led the Clinton administration to allow the genocidalists in Rwanda At Radio Television Mille Colines to keep broadcasting encouragement to commit genocide and instructions to where the mobs' victims could be found even as that genocide was happening and as one bomb on the radio tower could have made the genocide a lot harder to carry out. And that's in a country where the American First Amendment is unenforceable by American courts. "Presses" broadcast media companies don't have rights, their owners certainly don't have speech or press rights that supersede the rights of People to go on living and without having their limbs amputated by a mob. The lawyers who headed and largely filled the Clinton Administration couldn't navigate that reality despite, more like due to, their Ivy League educations and the results are a monumental shame. If Clinton deserved to be impeached for anything, that was far more consequential than him lying about getting a blow job.  Only that epic act of moral cowardice, what should have been criminal irresponsibility, wasn't an impeachable offense, it's the ill-thought out law of the land and a culturally imposed mental disability, especially common among those with an elite law degree and "journalists."

I have made a list of ideologies that are of such unambiguously proven murderousness and oppressiveness to individuals and to members of   identity groups, and hold that those who oppose who favor those have forfeited a right to propagate their hatred into the future.  Such equality must be made conditional on respecting basic equality.  Certainly there are many ideologies which have already proven they can mount mass murders going on years and decades and centuries.   Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, various other of the most extreme of gangster schemes of governance, the American indigenous form of fascism, white supremacy, the ubiquitous habit of male supremacy. It should never be forgotten that every day in practically every country Women are murdered by men because they are Women and Women live in a state of terror because of that. Every day in the United States the FBI has estimated 3-4 Women are lynched.  Self-defined civil libertarians who support the right of malignant ideologues from Nazis to white supremacists and on, malignant people who have proven they can gain power including right here, in the United States UNDER THE BILL OF RIGHTS and murder and oppress people and mount attempted coups here.  Those who advocate such dangerous people must be given the chance to repeat or continue that history have forfeited their right to be considered as supporters of real equality, they are enablers of the opponents of equality. They really have contributed to the endangerment of American democracy, maybe their pretenses of supporting equality is to cover up that history.  That's what it functions as.  

The lunacy of the Enlightenment idea that ideas have equal rights and so the Jewish population and others targeted by Nazis should and must eternally have to tolerate the possibility of the repeat of the Nazi genocides, Native Americans and Blacks and others should forever live in imminent fear of American style white supremacy gaining complete control, as in fact, it does in a number of states now.  As, indeed, due in no small part to "civil liberties" lawyering and judging and Hollywood's fascist chic starting in the 1970s, that danger is imminent here and now. Such a secular-civic faith holds Women should just accept that murderous male supremacy should forever be propagated through encouraging a sense of such physical entitlement in boys and men. That all targeted groups should remain targeted and ready for periodic pogroms if not genocidal violence against them as their clients get power through their hate speech.

About that last one, Hollywood, again, porn and gaming are certainly a far stronger forces in that than the misogyny of the churches which most men don't attend, some of its most angrily expressive advocates were found among online atheists in the past two decades.  I don't recall any living religious figures talking like ThunderF00t or even Richard Dawkins on that count, certainly not in any mainline church without a swift and harsh internal reaction.  

That the major figures of the Enlightenment were mostly wealthy, all  privileged, and exclusively white, males, those who weren't atheists or "deists" were nominally Christian but of the type who seldom took Jesus seriously,  certainly plays no small part in the nature of the slogans, apothegms, ideological formulas, laws and legal structures they created. And not just them.  Voltaire, the hero of such daffy current, latter day "enlightenment" was a promoter of vicious biologically based  antisemitism and racism that anticipates the racism that was promoted as science in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.  John Locke, when he was given the chance to demonstrate his political theory in practice, when he was assigned to write a Constitution for the Carolinas, recreated a rationalized feudalism with serfdom, slavery and a titled aristocracy.  The Americans who wrote the Constitution included features that were placed there explicitly to protect the small minority of very wealthy slave-holders and Western land speculators, features which still serve their purposes for today's millionaires and billionaires.  Those propertied nearly exclusively white men, the privileged minority who elected the first Congress and the even more elite who framed the so-called Bill of Rights were a very small percentage of the population that was then and ever since been has been ruled by their self-serving (at worst) and short-sighted (at best) choices cemented into place in the almost impossible to reform Constitution.  That it's unthinkable to criticize any of it, even the idol of The Bill of Rights, is so ironic in these days of anything goes "speech" and "press" and so revealing of how badly it is in need of a thorough and effective criticism and reform.

That was made worse by the even more select group of Supreme Court members who usurped powers never granted in the Constitution, the better to protect the privileges of the privileged.  That they were not immediately thwarted in that - though there was ample objection to that from Jefferson and Madison and, later Lincoln - and they still retain that usurped power is proof that there is something very basically wrong with the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court is the source of some of the most seriously dangerous non-legislated law there is, such as the creation of "corporate person-hood."

That the Supreme Court, once in a great while, make a show of ruling on behalf of those who are subjected to the exercise of that privilege does little to lessen their constant role in protecting the wealthy and privileged against the good of the majority.  The more I look into the history of the Supreme Court the more suspicious I am that those lauded "landmark" rulings don't often carry an unmentioned goal that will further enhance the privileges of the privileged, especially in much of their First Amendment rulings. If there had not been so much audacity in the lauded First Amendment rulings of the Warren Court, I doubt the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts would have dared make some of the ones they have on free speech" and "religious rights" (don't forget the First Amendment doesn't only cover "speech" and "press") and in support of the gun industry (and perhaps their side in a civil war, fascism) from the equally stupidly written Second Amendment. I think the Warren years' "liberals" did what they did largely without realizing what they were handing to future fascists in black robes, so much mis-placed faith did they have in post-WWII era "progress" such as fuels the heady insouciance of the civil liberties industry.

It is also held to be disallowed speech to criticize the damnable Supreme Court, the entirely undemocratic branch of government that has thwarted real equality and real democracy, which supports my point about how we have been gulled into thinking these kinds of things are not to be said under "free speech" absolutism.

So, no. I am not in the least troubled by being a Christian LGBTQ+ person who is a critic of Christianity (as practiced), Darwinism and science, in general, a person a who acknowledges that under "The Bill of Rights" Native Americans were murdered en masse and their lands stolen, Black People were held in slavery and then, after de jure emancipation, held in everything from subjugation to de facto slavery  under interpretations of the Constitution by the Supreme Court, eugenics made the law of the land (I believe I'm correct that ruling was never overruled, as, in fact Dred Scott never has been). Women are in no way equal and now have had their bodies nationalized by Republican-fascists on the Supreme Court and in many of the several states.  LGBTQ+ People never securely had even the most basic guarantees of equality. I was in my seventh decade before my right to hold a job, marry, to rent or buy a place to live, etc. in the majority of states that protected discrimination and not us, was recognized by the Supreme Court.  The very same court held we still have no right to access public accommodations on an equal basis and the fascist majority is making noise about reversing the decisions that allowed us equality of an insultingly limited kind.  

So, no, I don't think the United States Constitution is more than it was originally intended to be,  a way for those with privileges to protect and enhance their privileges, rigged to allow a conservative minority to override the will of a less conservative majority in perpetuity. Originally that one was in no small part so abolitionism even as a majority opinion could not end slavery through legislation.  

The same Constitution, the same damned Bill of Rights prevents the vast majority of Americans banning assault rifles and so stopping the carnage, THE SUPREME COURT PERMITTED LYNCHING OF YOUNG CHILDREN IN THEIR SCHOOLS.  The thing is a millstone around the neck of equality, democracy and the achievement of a peaceful, decent life in the United States.

As I said, I have had to face that "socialism" has been discredited through its association with some of the most evil governments in history and with some especially awful entities which never gained much political power. That is especially true when socialism is framed in secularism and pseudo-science.  And that even genuine, professedly egalitarian, democratic socialism is a poor substitute for the radical political economics and morality of the economic justice of the Mosaic Law and an even worse substitute for the Gospel of Jesus which is rather ultimately radical in that regard.  

I am far more radical as a Christian than I ever was as a secular socialist and far less inclined to think violence works or is justifiable though sometimes it's forced on us.  If I'd remained just a left-wing socialist I might never have had the insight that People are more important than the ideas they might have, that ideas that hurt People and other living things are in no way entitled to the protection that ideas that promote equality and a decent life are, that there is no right to lie and there is a moral duty to tell the truth, that the appealing sounding slogans of American civil liberties and the secular left are best viewed skeptically.  Doing unto others what we would like them to do to us is the most reliable law to put into practice and it is found nowhere in the Constitution, indeed, its opposite is there and has been since "the founding fathers" put it there for their own advantage.

In what is posted as her last interview with French TV Hannah Arendt talked about the peculiarity of the United States that a European has such a hard time getting.  That there is no American ethnicity, apart from Native Americans, that almost everyone who lives here originated from elsewhere.  She said that the only thing that defined Americans is their consent to the Constitution.  That might be something an intellectual, a fine philosopher would think but I doubt that one in a thousand Americans has ever really consented to the Constitution at any point in their lives. There may have been a time I would make an exception for those who had joined the Armed Forces or been a member of the Federal Government who take oaths to uphold and protect the Constitution.  I started being skeptical of that during the Nixon administration and in the Trump crime spree, figures like him, Bill Barr, General Flynn, and,especially, many of the lawyers who displayed such notable cowardice during the hearings on Trump's shakedown of the Ukranian President, I would not make such an unreliable assumption, now.

I think one of the great dangers of the American Constitution is that it means only what a majority of five or more unelected "justices" on the current Supreme Court says it means, which means it actually has no meaning.  The rulings of the Supreme Court, unreviewable by any elected authority and almost impossible to overturn by the only legislative means of doing so, through amendment, have produced some of the worst law in our history. The interpretations wrung out of the First Amendment by the Court since the 1960s are what produced Trump, what allowed billionaires including Putin to ratfuck American democracy.  The same billionaires and millionaires have gamed the Constitution to use the traditional American mental illness, our indigenous fascist element of white supremacy, to really put any pretense of democracy or even republican governance at risk and the Supreme Court, dominated by Republican-fascists and racists, is doubling down on that. The old "civil libertarian" lines and policies are worse than impotent, they are what was gamed by them to get us here.  That's why white supremacists, Republican-facists, Nazis are the biggest fattest fan-boys and gals of "The First Amendment."  If the civil libertarians were at all right, they'd hate it the most.

 The Republican-fascist House doesn't hold "hearings" they hold "smearings."

JoAnn Melina Lopez Preaches for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

 

On this Fifth Sunday of Lent, our readings point us to God’s life-giving love and the hope of Easter. But Lent is not over yet. We are confronted by a grieving Martha who says to Jesus today and to us “there is a stench.” A stench that comes from the reality of suffering and death in our world.  

We know that lives are being threatened by the forces of fear, racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, exploitation, and so many other death-dealing powers in this world which destroy lives and rupture our relationships. The pain and suffering is staggering, and it is not just theoretical, happening out there on the news – for too many people, suffering and death are felt deeply personally, tearing apart families and futures, just like it does for Martha, Mary and indeed for Lazarus in today’s Gospel.  

The grieving sisters go to meet Jesus and cry out to him with their grief and pain, they share the reality of their suffering and disappointment with their beloved friend. I love how Martha courageously enters into a dialogue with Jesus. She is a person of deep faith, who trusts and believes in that promise of resurrection life that God proclaimed through the Prophet Ezekiel as we heard in our first reading. Martha has a horizon of hope that holds on to the possibility of restoration for her brother in the future, someday, but that ‘feels out of reach to her in her grief now.  Jesus responds to Martha’s hope in a powerful and profound way – proclaiming “I am the resurrection and the life.” Jesus reveals in his words and his life-giving action the Good News of our faith: that God’s dream of new abundant life for us, is breaking into our world through Christ. Our horizon of hope in God’s love is BOTH for the future that we cannot quite imagine yet, and ALSO for the here and now.

There are times when the forces of destruction, death, and dehumanization are so strong, that we cannot see the path forward, and all we can do is cry out to God. Sometimes our only comfort when confronted by the crushing power of oppression, violence, and alienation is remembering that Jesus loves us and weeps with us outside the tombs.

I have had my own moments where I could not imagine past the tomb – when I had no choice but to say goodbye to life as I knew it.  When every door to my future seemed closed. Confronted by relationships that could not be reconciled. Injustices that seemed insurmountable. Grief that broke my heart. Moments that felt like dying. Perhaps you have too. I also know, going through these moments, that God is bringing life in new and transforming ways to us, each and every day – in ways we may not quite expect, or have ever imagined. Through new opportunities. Communities of support. The transformation of my heart. Through creative, joyful, prophetic action. Through resilience and resistance movements that challenge the powers that be. God is bringing life to birth, restoring and renewing our world. Do we see it? God is calling us to partner in rolling away the stones and untying the bonds of injustice. Do we hear it?

This resurrection hope in the life-giving power of God is not just something for us to say we believe, but it must be encountered and experienced – and it only comes to us who are at the tomb. We must be willing to acknowledge our suffering, and the suffering of the world, and open ourselves up to God's Spirit at work. It is not enough for us to shake our heads at injustice, tweet out thoughts and prayers, and then change the channel and keep our peace, hoping that someday Jesus will work it all out. Our faith demands our transformation, and our courageous and prayerful action. As Christians we have to disrupt the whole system of unnatural death which is bearing down upon the most marginalized, poor, and vulnerable. We have to act prophetically against the forces of death in our families, workplaces, community. Life has to break in through our economic choices, our advocacy, our votes, our relationships, and yes, through our prayers. We have to embody the truth that St. Paul shares in our second reading: that the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is with us, animating the Church. God is drawing near. We believe, yes, that eventually, in the fullness of God’s time all oppression will cease, and death will be no more. Until that time we must be instruments of God’s life, enfleshing hope and proclaiming today that death cannot have the last word.  

The truth is that here and now, Jesus is on the way to the tombs of the ones he calls beloved, and he is asking us if we know the way and if we will go with him. Do we grieve with those who grieve, do we live in solidarity with those who are despised, disposable, and put to death in our world? Do we cry out to God for help? Do we know the stench of the tomb, like Martha and Mary did, because we are siblings of those who suffer?  

For those of you who feel like you’re trapped in the tombs of life – imprisoned by the death-dealing forces of our world that deny your dignity, if you feel alone and afraid, hold on to hope because the voice of Love is calling you by name, saying “Come Out!” The voice of Love is howling for your freedom: “Let them go!”

May all of us, as we prepare for Holy Week, tangibly encounter the life-giving Love of God, may we become true Spirit-filled disciples like Martha and Mary. May we journey with Jesus to the tomb – willing to grieve, willing to tackle the stench, willing to be transformed together. Let us believe  in God’s power, trusting we will find God at work in us as we roll away the stones.