We will, with God's help.
19.10.2025 19:49
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We will, with God's help.
"I wonder how many of us are also exhausted from the constant wrestling. Whether it's politics made personal, illness, or something else private, how many of us are exhausted from begging for relief?"
My sermon from today:
Death Will Not Conquer Love: An Easter Reflection for 2025 open.substack.com/pub/toddcena...
It seized a body, and encountered the Lord; it seized the visible, and cowered before the invisible. It consumed earth, but encountered heaven.
The Second Easter Homily of St. John Chrysostom.
Death tried to seize him, but he turned and destroyed it; He descended into Hell and took captivity captive; Death tasted his flesh and cried out in fear. [...]
If Jesus' life, death, and resurrection was only about what happens after I die, then I want no part of it. If, however, it is about transforming my life and the world around me in the here and now, then I'm all about it.
Those possessed by whiteness must recognize the power it holds over them and then look for and act toward a better way. The world is not ours to conquer, it is ours to steward. We are servants above all else.
Drawn from the book How to Have an Enemy by Melissa Florer-Baxter.
There is no easy alliance between the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of God, and all attempts to create an easy alliance between these two kingdoms are misguided and doomed to failure. The kingdom of the world is founded on greed and war—Mammon and Mars.
Macklemore's new song goes hard. Anthems like this, of people raising their voices and using their power to join with the oppressed, will see us through and be a part of raising every valley and tearing down mountains.
A powerful reminder that prayer ought to be honest because:
1. God can handle honest prayers, even the violent ones.
2. Honest prayers help us be honest with ourselves about where we are in life.
3. Honest prayers, once prayed, are given up to God for Him to answer as He sees fit.
Later, in the same chapter: "The prayers offered in the Bible include those by Zechariah, asking God to save us from the hands of all who hate is. The prayers of the Gospels encompass Mary's Song, a call to tear the powerful from their thrones and send the rich away empty."
"The Psalms that call for God's intervention are written as a reminder if the enormity of human suffering within systemic and sustained forms of violence that cannot always be rectified by good work, good intentions, or reasonable dialogue."
-Melissa Florer Baxter in How to Have an Enemy
My Jesus does not need a task-force.
He needs us to:
make sure children are fed and not gunned down in schools
ensure immigrants are welcomed and aid is given to the poor
have empathy for our neighbors and courage to speak truth to power.
#unitedstatesofamerica
Good Lord, deliver us.
(I have no idea if that's the correct response, but it sounds like the Great Litany)
When we, despite all evidence to the contrary, defend excessive force as justified, we join with the crowd and say, "Let his blood be on us and on our children."
White supremacy is alive and well today. And every time we allow it to rear its head, we recrucify the innocent Christ.
When we defend the actions of the officer and place the blame on the victim, saying, "He should have obeyed the orders of the police," we join with the high priests, saying, "We have no King but Caesar!" 🧵
When we, the white mob, celebrate the actions of police that leave a person of color dead without the benefit of due process, we participate with the mob in Jerusalem on Good Friday as we cry, "Crucify Him!" 🧵
We MUST be better than our worse impulses.
But even implying that blame might reside on someone hired for diversity CANNOT happen. Implications like this, if we allow them to continue, will lead us further down the road of demonizing our neighbors, which will, in turn, make it easier to mistreat them. 🧵
The facts of the crash are that two aircraft attempted to inhabit the same airspace at the same time. How both aircraft did so while communicating with ATC is something for the investigators to determine. 🧵
The President indicated that DEI hires at the FAA may have played a factor in the crash? I'm not sure where to begin to enumerate how awful that take is. It's ignorance at best and at worst: badly veiled racism. 🧵
Those who have power never have power enough. And those with power are loathe to lose it.
There's a reason Jesus talked about service as the model for life. Power corrupts us, service heals.
Helth
"Just as Middle-earth could not be saved, only enslaved, by the Ring of Power, so Christianity cannot save the world by political power; it can only be corrupted by it."
--Brian Zahnd in The Wood Between the Worlds.
This chapter is potent in it's critiques and powerful in it's hope.
We can make this world better. But it has to be us, and we have to work together to do it. I love you all. May God bless us on the journey.
That means organizing, protesting, and, more importantly, checking in on our neighbors and vulnerable populations. Make sure those LGBTQ+ siblings, Communities of Color, Immigrants, children, and workers have what they need. And if they don't, make the connections to people who can provide.
If we are going to make this country better for us and our kids, then we will have to do it ourselves. The government won't do it. We need to be the ones who stand up for each other. We need to be the ones willing to stand in the way of injustice. We need to be the ones who will do what is right.
Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but the US isn't going to change if Dems take back Congress in 2 years. I'm not sure they have much desire to check anything that MAGA does because doing so will deprive them of issues to run on.
A short thread: 🧵
Someone needs to Venmo the Refs on behalf of the Commanders at halftime. These penalties are ticky-tacky af, all going against the Commanders.