I traveled to Haiti with members of the AME Church on Monday, August 30, 2010 to participate in a Strategic Planning group.  Bishop Vashti McKenzie asked Rev. Dr. Kenneth Robinson and me to represent the 13th District (Tennessee and Kentucky) in the meeting. There are a lot of powerful images to share in the coming days. In the meantime, the men in the videos below give a perspective of life in one of over 1300 settlement camps for people displaced by the earthquake.

O God, fill me with Your Love!
Fill me until Your love overflows my heart
Fill me until Your love touches others through me
Fill me until I love all unconditionally
Fill me until I have no room left in me for fear
Fill me until thoughts of reprisals are washed away
Fill me until Your Love replaces my loneliness
Fill me until my insecurities are replaced by your sufficiency
Fill me until regret is no more
Fill me until I am bigger, until I am a bigger man

O God, fill me with Your Love!
Fill me with Your Love so I may fully forgive
Fill me until Your Love heals and restores me – body, mind and spirit
So fill me with Your Love that I love myself wholly and completely
Love away my self-doubt
Love away my self-sabotage
Love away my guilt
Love into my belly holy boldness
Love into my heart self-forgiveness
Love into my mind, the mind of Christ

O God, fill me with your Love!
Fill me until I am faithful
Fill me until I am fully grounded in You
Fill me, O God, until You can really trust me
Fill me until all that I am and all that I do is pleasing to You
Fill me, O God, until I give love with every word I speak
Fill me, O God, until my touch ministers Your Love

O God, fill me with Your Love!
Fill me to overflowing
Fill me until I know I lose nothing by loving those who do not love me
Fill me until my heart no longer aches at rejection
Fill me until love flows from me like a river
Fill me until I have genuine compassion and understanding for all
Fill me until my ways are like your ways and my thoughts like Your thoughts
Fill me until your Love in me takes action through me
Fill me until serving You is the joy of my life
Fill me with Your Love until loving You is my life

Fill me until I am, like You, Love…

Because of Jesus, AMEN!

NEEDING ONE (AN)OTHER
Amos 8:1-12; Luke 10:38-42

God shows Amos what, at first blush, appears to be a rewarding vision of abundance. Amos sees a basket of summer fruit. But, this is a basket of summer fruit. This signals an end. Yes, there is fruit, but it is the end of fruit. After Amos see this vision, God says to him, “The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by. [I have passed over them time and time again. I have spared them my judgment. I have lavished them with my mercy. I have given them chance after chance. Now, that season is over. My justice is about to plumb the line.]”

This passage lets us know that, while God neither slumbers nor sleeps, God does get tired.
• God is tired of people with money and power abusing the poor and the powerless.
• God is tired of people sitting up in churches singing their rehearsed music with lush instrumentation and sound systems that would rival the Schermerhorn amped up and measured in decibels so as to drown out the sorrow songs of the poor just outside their door.
• God is tired of people with power flexing and intimidating the others without power.
• God is tired of Christian bullies victimizing and vilifying those of other flocks naming them terrorists while they themselves are doing the terrorizing.
• God is tired of heterosexist church people with their uninformed, untutored and backward readings of the Biblical text used to justify their hatred and bigotry against the other.
• God is tired of the big beating up on the other.
• God is tired of rich powerful people treating others like property, like a commodity for their own use.
• God is tired of church folk using material wealth to equate with God’s blessings as though people with less money, no money are not loved and blessed by God.
• God is tired of the injustices that are destroying the lives of God’s people.
• God is especially wearied by the injustices perpetrated by, supported by, ignored by people who go through the motions in worship, reading scripture but never allowing God’s Word to live off the page and in their hearts.
• God is tired of perfunctory worship practices that by no means intend an encounter with the Holy Other nor the resulting transformation of the heart.
• God is tired of church people who hear this passage Sunday after Sunday: How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?(1 John 3:17) and absolve themselves simply by refusing to see their brothers and sisters in need.
• God is tired of people who exercise their power to ignore, to overlook, to avoid the glance of the other.
• God is tired of people who refuse to see what they are doing to the other.
• God is tired of church folk who, like Martha in the Lukan passage, are devoted to appropriateness. Who are given to doing what it good without doing what is right.
• God is tired of people who busy themselves doing church work while eschewing the weightier matter of being the church – those who may write a check but will not condescend to touch or speak to the other.
• God holds suspect those who will do missions overseas but disdain needy people in North Nashville.

And the Bible says that the Lord Jesus entered a certain village where Martha welcomed him into her home. She was given to hospitality. She was open to the other. She cared about how she entertained this other one. But, it seems, she was fastidious in her preparations for her holy guest. She was excessively attentive to and, even lost in her works for her guest, but she was not fully attuned to – she, in fact was oblivious to the need of the holy moment in which she was situated. She had the Holy One, the Wholly Other in her midst and she was in the kitchen. She was doing what was good, but not what was right. Given time, I could tease out why she resisted intimacy with the Divine One who was right in her own home. But there are those today who work in the Presence of God without worshiping Him. They busy themselves in doing good things so they can remain oblivious to the right thing.

Martha’s sister Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet while Martha was working in the kitchen. Martha asked Jesus to send Mary in to help her. But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen that better part, which will not be taken away from her. Mary had the courage to empty herself of pride and fear, to admit her eternal need and to abandon herself willingly in service to (an)other. No shows, no pretence, no performance, just humility and utter human need laid bare before the One who at once strikes desire and awe in the human heart.

Sisters and Brothers, Martha still wants the Lord to validate her and to rebuke Mary. But there is only one needful thing: to take care of the Other. Not with mere busy, perfunctory work and worship, but by sitting in His Presence to discern His heart and to be transformed by His glory – to be transformed into people who see the Other in others.
We need one (an)other!

• We need one (an)other: Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Christians, Bahai, Sikh those who lay claim to no religious faith
• We need one (an)other: Gay and Straight
• We need one (an)other: rich and poor
• We need one (an)other: Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the Blue Bird Café, Bentley’s and the Nashville Jazz Workshop
• We need one (an)other: Vanderbilt University and Meharry Medical School, Belmont University and Tennessee State University, University and Community College and Technical School
• We need one (an)other: those with diplomas and degrees and those whose education has been in the world’s classroom
• We need one (an)other: Kurdish, Puerto Rican, Mexican, West Indian, Somalian, Russian
• We need one (an)other: White, Brown, Yellow, Beige, Black, Red, and even Green – for, “its not easy being green”
• We need one (an)other
In all these others, we find what we need to heal our brokenness.
In all these others, the Other has placed what we need to once and for all banish our loneliness.
• We need one (an)other.

Prayer: God, transform us in to people who see you in one (an)other. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

I can understand traffic concerns. I can understand noise concerns. Given what we have recently experienced in Nashville, I can most certainly understand the issue of building on a potential flood plain. What deeply disturbs me is the prospect of religious intolerance that seems to be just below the surface of the campaign to stop the building of a mosque in Brentwood. I am a deeply committed Christian, but I am equally committed to the idea of religious freedom, which is enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

I was also surprised to read that the leader of this campaign against the mosque is a member of a denomination whose motto is “Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors.” This kind of opposition to building a house of worship is not an expression of an open heart, and it most certainly is not an expression of an open mind. I do not understand how this kind of religious intolerance promotes the diversity of the Nashville Community whatsoever. It is rather more indicative of the mindset that prevailed in our community several decades ago around the issue of school desegregation. Back then, the answer was to pull students out of the public schools and put them in private academies to keep them away from the undesirables. In this modern manifestation of intolerance, the mantra appears to be “not in my backyard.” One would think that a city of international renown would be more open to the diversity that is ingredient to the world around us.

My dismay was only further enhanced when I read that there are some in the Nashville community who believe that Islam is not a religion but a political ideology. While is it true that Islam does have competing political visions, the same is true of Christianity. I cannot imagine any world religion that does not have an accompanying idea, if not ideas, about how to form, nurture and promote community. Should we exclude Roman Catholic churches from our communities because their Council of Bishops issues statements on political matters and how loyal Catholics should conduct themselves in the polity? Is there any church, for that matter, that does not encourage its members to interact with others in the community in certain ways, which includes how their members may choose to vote on matters of communal import? Clearly, calling Islam a political ideology and not a religion is to overlook all the ways in which religion influences our common life. Furthermore, I find it interesting that the advocates of such a view are not religion scholars themselves, the very people who study such matters and are in the appropriate position to speak on such matters.

In the end, such actions do an immeasurable amount of harm to our community. Likewise, it feeds into the negative mindset that those who believe the United States is conducting a war on Islam hold and propagate. This incident is a stain on our community that will not easily be erased.

Read articles from the Tennessean by clicking below:

Brentwood mosque not alone in defeat

Traffic concerns, neighbors’ anger prompt Muslims to pull mosque plan

Brentwood urged to buy land Muslims had wanted for mosque

I hope the #NashvilleFlood helps us to embrace and celebrate our diversity
I hope the #NashvilleFlood reveals our real strength
I hope the #NashvilleFlood makes Nashville soil richer
I hope the #NashvilleFlood brings people of all religious faiths together
I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away hatred
I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away homophobia
I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away barriers to community
I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away religious bigotry

I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away prejudice
I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away racism
I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away biases
I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away fear of one (an)other
I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away apathy

I hope the #NashvilleFlood teaches us to hold on
I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away divisions
I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away color-ism
I hope the #NashvilleFlood washed away stinginess
I hope the #NashvilleFlood makes us deeply appreciate Nashville
I hope the #NashvilleFlood makes us less dependent on things
I hope the #NashvilleFlood makes us even more grateful
I hope the #NashvilleFlood teaches us the value of simplicity
I hope the #NashvilleFlood shows us that what unites us is greater than what divides us
I hope the #NashvilleFlood teaches us that memories are precious

I hope the #NashvilleFlood teaches us to keep a song in our hearts
I hope the #NashvilleFlood teaches us to share
I hope the #NashvilleFlood teaches us that when one suffers we all suffer
I hope the #NashvilleFlood teaches us to help bear each others burdens
I hope the #NashvilleFlood shows us how to sacrifice for one another
I hope the #NashvilleFlood……

Add your hopes in the comment section below….