“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.

Picture

Of

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Poverty

Pure poop

Pretty things grab our attention and we do not easily forget the beauty. Useless things do too, and we are equally at a loss to drag ourselves away from the fables of the greatness of any state or country. The bigot in the White House knows that nobody but his 33% believes that he has a heart. Where are the voices of a person like Ben Carson, a man of faith who says he has a relationship with God and subscribes to the highest standards of moral excellence? They have not see the crocodile death-rolling day and night in the swamp, threatening civilians with the mlitary, and weeping over the lack of prey.

Law and order is a dead horse

Which pulpit is sounding the alarm this Sunday morning against police brutality? The fact that the framers of the American Constitution designed laws to put spirituality under the rug while they claim to be champions of the inalienable rights of every human being is what has kept Black people impoverished and oppressed. Many will tell you protesting is evil, but their voices have not been heard either in heaven or on earth protesting the bigotry in Israel, the UK, the USA, India, and Pakistan. We have not heard a word from the apostles and prophets of the 21^st century calling out the suppression of human dignity in Tibet, South Sudan, Saudia Arabia, or Nigeria. They would rather distract people with phony miracles – things that happen every day and without request – and terrorize people with the Law of God – a childish and condemnatory foundation.

The pulpits of the 1/3 should be taking their crumbs of pride in colonial and imperial greatness and their heartless slogans about loyalty and patriotism to the outhouse or the White House. It is undoubtedly the deep from which all kinds of evildoing emerge. Law and order from the best tree has not created even brotherly love. Which religion allows women to be raped, shamed, and killed by vigilantees? Which nation state has closed doors to migrants and refugees, restricts the movements of visitors, looks the other way when minorities are assaulted, fails to respond when Mexicans, impoverished citzens and residents are publicly shamed, and killed by vigilantee officers of the law.

Let us, especially those of us who never stood up publicly against racism and bigotry, not presume that we can tell the oppressed of the world to be quiet, stay off the streets, and not raise the shout every day and every night. Curfews and states of emergency for our health sake and to stop the looting are all part of the same corrupt mechanisms that are still creating characters like Boss Hogg (a fictional character whose crookedness is on display in the public service), Lindsey Graham, Billy Graham, Mitch McConnell, Ted (Mc)Cruz, Devon Nunez, Kenneth Copeland, and John Hagee, and conspire to be silent at the horrific murder by a known police officer and three of his colleagues of George Floyd. This is not merely “sad”.

Who is weeping over Mr. Floyd’s murder?

Sad is what happens when your mom dies of old age. Sad is what happens when you slice your finger open in the kitchen. Sad is what happens when the bigot in the White House sits like a puppy beside Russian leader Putin and defends none of America’s distinctive aspiratins and achievements. The murder of Mr. Floyd is not “sad”. What the police and the Department of Justice have been doing is protecting and covering up for the so-called “bad apples” in the police force. One bad apple does not spoil the whole bunch? What about three bad apples in the Executive Branch, the Department of Justice, and the Senate? The tears of the crocodile, its thoughts and prayers are all crumbs that no-one appreciates.

I dare the American preachers and their congregations to lead a sober prayer, not only for peace (peace is the only reason we pray for those in authority), but for a swift end to the Republican notions of impartial justice and the presidential idea of “fine people”.

Tell the crocodile he can stop weeping. We got his game!