All of Africa heard, “I can’t breathe”, and feels it.  From across the pond, mankind’s coming up alongside you.  They know what we need.  That knee is coming off our neck. 

The baptism we have avoided

Societies love to appear intelligent and sensitive but there are no more schizophrenic communities than those depending on law and order to ensure success or correct injustices.  From the adulterous Israel (ancient and modern) to China the big red dragon, we avoid the hard pulling.  Even when  God said “Save Rahab” they put her outside the camp.   America  is the queen of ’em all.  Humanity, outside of the religious and pllotoclak emite  just happens to be a law – a standard –  all by themselves.  The world needs a baptism into humanity’s primary interests.  Do you know how many people think you are not human?

The circumcision we denied

The humanity and labour of Black and brown people is in the success of the American empire and the back of any bus is not where we want to be.  Some people do not mind being second class citizens and others even take pride in the scraps they call employment, security and happiness.  Our roots are in us wherever we go, and the blackness of any skin is a token that one’s ancestors did not hide from the sun. It is popular still to despise root and branch of identity but there is no excuse for denying or trying to change the destiny and dignity that is ours.  Americans do not like Europe because it was the birthplace of the worse (by some reckoning) and still current outbteaknof inhumanity. America has  been doing for 200 years what the Nazis did for 5.  We denied Marcus, Malcolm and Martin.  Thank God, Jesse and Al are carrying the torch without apology.  A  circumcised heart does not put up with injustice.  How many flies do you allow to sit on your food?

Evangelical deception cornered

A cone of silence marks the trail of big bosses, big churches and big armies.   Every now and then into the silence comes the roar of thunder exposing for all to see the deceit behind die and go to heaven religion.   Phony as a gas powered cellphone!  They cannot speak of justice.   Only the Black ones have the courage to say from the pulpit with Biblical context and authorization “That isn’t Jesus”.  Much of the breaking news in evangelical Christianity today isn’t even Moses.  At least they could be saying “Love the alien” and “Eradicate poverty “. But no, healing and prosperity are the new church lottery and a whole new set of lies are being prepared to explain why the world needs right now a racist criminal bigot to stand in for the righteous Republican party. Of course they cannot speak truth or justice into the quagmire of today’s civic life. What can anyone learn from the global picture of the treatment of Palestinians, First Nations, and women and children? The big boys are cornered.

That knee is coming off our neck

The visionary young people have this. It is God’s design.

A nation that treasures free speech and political discourse should ask its leaders to wear polygraphs 24-7. In the middle of protests and a pandemic we hear every mayor, police chief, and governor saying that the police are “fine people” and violent playbook is still in use as if police officers are the silliest people on the planet. Thank God for cellphone video. We are wiping the maniacal grin off the faces of lynchers, preachers and politicians. Every word and act will witness against a injustice, callous violence and brutality

Is there iniquity in Gilead? Surely they are worthless. In Gilgal they sacrifice bulls, Yes, their altars are like the stone heaps beside the furrows of the field.

Hosea 12:11

“I can’t breathe” is not a cry for help.  It is a cry for life.

Breathing out more cruelty instead of an answer to America’s deadly wound the bigot in the executive mansion demonstrates the idolatry that comes with cops and the military as the shield against irrelevance and decadence.  In 200 years from the exile of Judah and Israel the powers that ruled the world came and went.  We do not have time for race-baiting videos, for shallow amen-seeking sermons, or patriotic rubbish about God and country.  The response we steer away from is the one that can save every person from oppression and injustice.  America needs a makeover and its first responders cannot be part of the rescue team.

Shameful response to a dying man

If we use the analogy that human aging is a journey to death that begins at birth we might say that nations too are born to die.  They do not become shining cities on hills.  Compared to Solomon’s Jerusalem today’s Jerusalem is a heap and a parable. The founders of modern nations did not think much about their nations needing rebirth.   They thought that good law (especially statutes that divide people) would guarantee success and longevity. Not even Israel, with the most detailed set of laws, has shown any progress towards a maturity that anyone would want to emulate.   So we should not be surprised to find that only the oppressed have been calling for their nations to begin a makeover.  When police do not recognize that their actions are causing death their superiors need to be called in for questioning.

Choked by violence

Every mayor wants to say that the police in his or her city are good officers but we are discovering  that many are not even good citizens.  In plain sight, the police arrest a journalist for doing his job.   The police chief fires four officers for their role in the murder of an unarmed Black man but only one is arrested and charged.  Bad cops are not a few.  0 out of 4 in Minneapolis is not a great show of keeping the peace or serving the community.

Undoing that response – his or ours – is impossible

The response to the gospel after Pentecost fell into two categories: the genuine call on the Lord’s name and the pretense of many (Jews and Gentiles).  We do not see the rejoicing in heaven when one person repents nor do we see the glee of Satan as one more human hardens his resolve to deceive.  There may be another day for you but what if there isn’t.  Let us stop playing the part of the just with our legal and irrelevant traditions.  When a man cries for life I can assure you that God does not give him a promise, raincheck, or loan; he gives him his own life.

Understanding the first responder

WHO can remember the time when black and brown people could not become either policeman or fire fighters in Canada?

There was a time when we thought that we all had to adopt the identity of Abraham’s descendants in order to function as followers of the Way. Being a good Canadian or American is neither here nor there.  James felt so and even after the reports of Holy Spirit baptism were tabled wanted to give the Way a Mosaic face (disguise). Paul, Barnabas and Peter witnessed the Lord’s certification of Gentiles without a word about Moses and circumcision.

The first responders to the gospel were baptized with the promise of receiving the Holy Spirit.   Those who were not were either (a) people who would  have perpetusted the lipservice that means nothing to God or (b) people whose day had not come yet (no root, choked by anxiety, under demonic dominion). The first responders were not idols; they were neither sinless heroes nor humble servants. They were ordinary persons who carried an extraordinary torch handed to them by a man of their times.

First responders of the first class do not carry ancestral or tribal banners. They are dreamers who are willing to be honest about the difference between God and creature, do not hesitate to call a killer a killer, and stand up as savers of life.

6. For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. 7. But like Adam they have transgressed the covenant; There they have dealt treacherously against Me. 8. Gilead is a city of wrongdoers, Tracked with bloody footprints. 9. And as raiders wait for a man, So a band of priests murder on the way to Shechem; Surely they have committed crime.

Hosea 6:6-9

Any doubt that Christianity has taken root in the American psyche just vanished as the bigot in the executive mansion assaults protesters so he can have an asinine and divisive photo-op.  The stuff that goes on in the churches have for a long time been estranged from the truth of the gospel.   In a strange twist of justice America is putting on a show of the technological frontiers and the deep depravity of the Third Reich.  The resumption of space flight and the use of violence to dominate peaceful citizens is complete with the picture of the most criminally-wounded leader (He  has dozens of indictments waiting in the wings when he leaves office in addition to being  impeached and shielded from being thrown out of office by a corrupt and perverse Republican majority in the Senate) in the world.

America is no Jacob-Israel.  Her “very  fine people” will never stand for Jews or anyone to protest the evils that have puffed up America’s pride in her shameful discourse with the devil. 

Yeah, we know, they call anything “gospel” that they think will advance the personal interests of an individual or two.  Helping the sick and poor, imposing select portions of the Mosaic law, a vegan diet, going off in a vision to know what scripture says, supporting Israeli violations of the Palestinian people, bullying people to pay a tithe to an illegitimate priedthood are not “gospel”.  Summary executions and murders by cop or by rabid white supremacists tell the story of America’s fascist plank.  Tiananmen Square moments are certainly being contemplated by administration officials.

They despise and trample

This last week there was John Hagee, broadcasting the utterly insane sideshow of a communion service as an opportunity for power to flow from heaven instead of a simple and dignified memory exercise. It is stunts like this that many Americans go to church for.

You still want me to stand and salute your flag and politics?

Law enforcement underpins civic society and the churches focused on law as supreme lend themselves to the mindset of vigilantism.   They are all ready to stone and lynch their neighbours because the law demands it.

Murder by government got its icons this spring. The American president holding someone’s Bible up while standing in front of a burnt church after tear-gassing a peaceful crowd of protesters and a White police officer camly – hand in his pocket- murdering a Black man with his knee on the victim’s neck.

Kill me for kneeling instead

Do you still think a nation’s greatness depends on

• Its police services
• Its legislation
• Its economic growth?

And when all of you spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when all of you make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

This is not an idle threat.  This kind of behaviour from people whon God has put his finger on is absolutely unacceptable, land there will be consequences.

3) “An ox knows its owner, And a donkey its master’s manger, But Israel does not know, My people do not understand.” 4) Alas, sinful nation, People weighed down with iniquity, Offspring of evildoers, Sons who act corruptly! They have abandoned the Lord, They have despised the Holy One of Israel, They have turned away from Him.

Isaiah 1:3-4

This is not only about leaders (who would have taken the lead in these outrages).  Psalms 106:38 reports that they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan.  The result: the land was polluted with blood.  If we think back to polluted land/earth in early history, we find innocent “blood ” crying out to God for justice.  We see there too the penalty attached to killing innocent people.

Genesis 4:10

He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground.

God cancels the harvest

Genesis 4:11-12a

11) Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12) When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you;

What a hurricane, a fire, or a good downpour cannot do the insects will. Shutting down anything on this planet requires no gigantic upheaval. One lightning strike without a sound or rain can cripple the mighty. The foolish and the proud should pay attention. I am sure that the prayers on God’s priority list are the pleas for justice and the confessions of bigots and silent legislators.

The Republican administration, the Likud government, the evangelical front, and the media manipulators that arevworking to put a vile and corrupt regimes in power need to step up now. The clock is ticking towards a confession or a blackness and gloom the racists or even Old Snake himself could imagine.

Even as the nations watch America tries to come to grips with the murder of an unarmed and handcuffed Black man the police are still brutalizing innocent people in plain sight. 45’s banana republic is here. America is a sinful nation, worse than the ox and the donkey. Let the conversation continue in Congress about the acknowledged crimson and scarlet with a goal for a makeover. The great constitution is useless trash when justice and truth are in demand. Remember the perfect phone call and the firing of people who do their public service jobs well. Justice makes no deals. The Congress will be complicit.

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