Public Reading of Scripture

It's the last day of the Shaw University Divinity School Ministers' Conference.  This morning was my morning on the dais.  I was scheduled to offer the Invocation.  One of our alumni was called away, so I also filled in to read the Scripture Text.

Some of you who know me realize that public reading of scripture is one of my favorite forms of worship leadership.  Having grown up in church, I have been hearing people read aloud from the Bible all my life.  In children's Sunday School classes, it was a challenge, a duty, and sometimes a competition to see who could get through some verses without stumbling over big Bible words.  We excellent readers and pronouncers felt smug toward the ones who couldn't sound out Nebuchadnezzer or Amalekite.

Eventually, it came to be the "gracious" thing to do to allow anyone to "pass" or "prefer" not to read publicly.  We learned that we should not force people to do something they were not comfortable doing, lest they feel humiliated by struggling with the words and sentences.  I never got completely comfortable with that policy, thinking that we ought to show the grace through loving one another enough to encourage everyone to continue to grow and improve in public reading.  That was a kind of internal white church conversation.

At Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church, I came to see that there was another kind of conversation about public reading of scripture to which I had not been privileged.  I don't know the story as a participant, although I have had some opportunities to study in books or listen to testimony about that different world from the one in which I was raised.  What I did learn was that the social function of public reading of scripture at Mt. Level carried with it a communal memory of injustice:  the injustice of being denied the sacred text and the training to be a reader of it.

So at Mt. Level, when a person stands to read the scripture publicly, it is not the same kind of pressure to perform flawlessly to prove one's pedigree that might have fed our competitive spirits in Sunday School where I grew up.  It takes on more of a shared consciousness of liberation struggle, as people whom outsiders might not expect to read sophisticated texts join hearts of encouragement to read and hear the sacred writ.  Almost any time a young person or child reads publicly, there is an outpouring of congratulations and encouragement for achieving this important task.  Now the feeling about children's public reading is not so different than what I grew up with, but the expression is more overt through words of praise and applause.  Getting an education is not something to take for granted, and gaining the skill to handle sacred things is a reason for gratitude to God who made a way where there was no way.

As a seminarian at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, I gained another insight into public reading of scripture.  Certainly, I had experienced different styles of reading as I grew up.  Some people read in a monotone, giving little emphasis while making sure to get all the words correct.  Others put on a "church voice" or "preacher voice" and read with a different tone than conversational speech.  It may include certain efforts at emphasis, although as a whole it offers little insight into the particular text, and in a way makes all texts sound the same, each verse and sentence and paragraph adopting the same "officious" or "elevated" tone of voice.  Some readers adopt a sing-song phrasing that gets to be very predictable and at times causes the mind to relax and drift away.  A few readers show evidence of trying to read with contextual understanding, yet most such reading either takes on idiosyncratic interpretive emphasis (such as highlighting a transitional word like "but" or "therefore"), reading excessively slowly, or singling out one or two phrases in a passage for emphasis.

While in California, I was blessed to become part of a congregation that was unusually populated by people who gave serious attention to how scripture should be read publicly.  Among many with gifts, some who stood out were Jerene Broadway, Kyle Smith, and Jane Medema.  One thing I learned from these and others was to look at a text for its particularities:  conversational speech, story-telling, poetic phrasing, and musicality.  I listened as readers varied the speed of their speech cadence, stretched out particular words, raised and lowered the pitch or tone of phrases in unexpected ways rather than in the same way with each line.  I saw that scripture gives clues about the emotive character of its words, so that fear, excitement, anger, or sarcasm may need expression.  Some words may need to be shouted and others whispered.

From that point on, I came to see that worship planners should engage two concerns when calling on people to lead through public reading of scripture.  First, I retain my baptist egalitarianism that tells me everyone who wishes to have opportunity to read scripture publicly should get to do so.  Reading scripture is a practice of all of our lives in discipleship, and no one has to be a professional to share in that practice.  Whether it is read with a more mumbling monotone, a stumbling cadence, or articulated in all its detail, the people of God do the work of God by reading scripture publicly.  Second, churches should identify those with gifts to read with expression and convey the depths of the text and have them read regularly and often.  Moreover, those who understand how to study a text and draw out an oral interpretation of it should offer training to others so that more members of the congregation can offer gifted leadership in public reading of scripture.

I also learned at seminary that many traditions of Christian worship read multiple texts in worship.  I grew up hearing the scripture read as a preparation for the sermon.  Whatever text the preacher planned to use was the one we heard.  Then I found out that some churches read an Old Testament Lesson, a Psalm, a New Testament Lesson (or Epistle), and a Gospel Lesson every Sunday.  Of course, in our small-town Texas Baptist self-assurance, we were not aware of the Lectionary and such things.  I remember my fellow-seminarian Dan Ratliff saying to me that for all of our baptist talk about being Bible-based, we mostly let people say their own words in worship.  He helped me see that in this multiple-text liturgical approach, we could give God's Word a chance to speak more often, more diversely, and more extensively than our anti-liturgical pattern had led us into.

All of which leads me to say that I was overjoyed to get to read from Acts 8:26-39 today and try to make the text come alive.  I always know the English teachers and speech teachers out in the congregation because of the way their eyes light up.  One woman greeted me after the service to say, "You read that scripture just like I would have told you to read it!"  So I knew I was talking to someone who thinks about how to interpret texts orally.  If this is the text we claim can tell us the story of our lives and guide us in the way we should go, then there is a value in letting the words operate in our mouths and ears with the same liveliness of the conversations we carry on with one another.  They are sacred texts, but that does not mean they must sound like drudgery.

So anytime you want to ask me to read the scripture publicly, don't be surprised that I say, "Yes."

Pentecost and Education Day at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church

Numbers 11:24-30 (NRSV)

24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent.  25 Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.

26 Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp.  27 And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”  28 And Joshua, son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!”  29 But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”  30 And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

Getting an education, going to school, is like having a job.  It has its good days and its bad days.  It has its steady tasks and its deadlines.  It has issues of getting along with supervisors and peers.  It requires an everyday dedication that at worst becomes drudgery and at best reveals new blessings from day to day.

In one way then, completing a course of study or finishing a degree is like finishing a task on the job.  Deadlines have been met.  The work has been approved. Catch your breath.  Okay, what’s next?

But in another way, finishing a course of study or a degree is a major crossroads in life.  It is both a consummation and a watershed.  It is an ending and a beginning.  It is a time of looking back and looking forward.

For this reason, we gather as a congregation to celebrate Education Day.  As God’s people, we gather today to consecrate the accomplishments and achievements of all who strive to better themselves through education.  As the body of Christ, we gather bearing sacramental witness to the work of the Holy Spirit who pours out grace upon grace into our community of faith. 

This Education Day is therefore both a joyous and a solemn occasion.  It is a joyous day of looking back as we remember the blessings of friendships, the fascination of new knowledge learned, the satisfaction of a tasks completed successfully, and the affectionate pride of our loved ones.  It is a solemn day of looking back when we remember the sacrifices required of us and others to reach this accomplishment, when we recall the many times when the line between success and failure was as thin as a hair’s breadth, when we relive the moments when the first try was not good enough, and when we meditate on the grace required to hold us up through the challenges we faced.

It is also a joyous and solemn day of looking forward.  It is joyous to revel in the knowledge that fifth grade or middle school or high school or a bachelor’s degree or a graduate degree is done and we never have to do that again.  It is joyous for many who have been waiting while studying, looking ahead to the opportunity of work or further education that can only come when this degree or course of study is complete.  We are joyful when we realize the possibilities for serving God that have become greater because of what we have learned and now know. 

It is also a solemn occasion of looking forward.  One segment of life is complete, and whatever comes next will have a whole new set of challenges.  It is solemn for those who move forward to jobs or further education, knowing the opportunity will still require striving and struggle.  It is solemn to look ahead and see that God’s purposes for our lives draw ever nearer and require greater faith and discipline than we have yet demonstrated in our lives.

Education Day, thus, is a day for celebrating the joy and reflecting on the solemnity we meet at the current crossroads of our lives.

You may not realize that this Education Day has also fallen on one of the high holy days of the Christian year.  By habit, Baptists are keenly aware of Christmas and Easter, but we often do not hold in mind the third great festival of the church, Pentecost.  On Pentecost we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit with power to enliven and commission the church to be the body of Christ in the world, receiving the task of living out the very purposes of God for all creation.  On Pentecost, we receive the calling to break down the barriers of race, class, nationality, language, and any other superficial distinctions, and we become the family of God, a holy nation, a peculiar people who up until Jesus called us together were not a people.  We become a family, not by blood relations but by a new creation, united with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection as a new race of humanity from every tribe and nation, people and language.

As the festival of the Holy Spirit and the church, Pentecost has much to tell us about how to celebrate Education Day.  On Education Day, we don’t want to merely acknowledge accomplishments from a secular realm of life, say a prayer over them, and then let our education and worship part ways for the remainder of our lives.  As I said earlier, we celebrate Education Day as a consecration of the work we have done in school, not for ourselves, but for the good of all of God’s people and for the glory of God who made us able to learn, grow, and achieve.  In that way, the diploma or degree takes on sacramental significance.  Just as Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and humanity, so we mark our educational achievements as steps toward taking onto ourselves the full stature of Christ, bearing his image as a new creation.

The Old Testament lesson for this Pentecost Sunday speaks to our reason for celebrating Education Day.  It is a familiar story about Moses and the children of Israel during the time of the Exodus.  Moses, as the leader of a great crowd of people, often found himself overworked and worn out.  Perhaps Moses had the kind of personality that sometimes led him to think only he could do things right.  If you want a job done right, he might have said to himself, do it yourself.  Or maybe, and this hits closer to home for me, Moses tended to put off getting things planned and finished.  Dragging everything down to the last minute meant that when the crunch time hit, it was too late to get the help that he needed.  We don’t fully know the cause of Moses’ problem as described in Numbers, but we do know how his God recommended that he solve the problem.

God told Moses that he was not the only one who could do the important tasks needed to lead the people.  He was not the only one who could discern the will of God and speak a word from the Lord.  So God told Moses to select seventy elders from among the people to share the burdens of leadership.  Spread out the work, God told Moses, and don’t be surprised that there are many more gifted people out here ready to lead.

Well Moses was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and he eagerly did what God told him to do.  As Numbers puts it, God “took some of the spirit that was on Moses” and spread it out by putting some on each of the seventy elders.  It is a kind of crude image in a way, but it gets the point across.  If we imagine that Moses had power from God smeared around all over him, then what was to prevent sopping up some of that and smearing it around on a bunch of other folks? 

So there we have it.  Moses and God transferred some of the leadership responsibilities to others, and the story tells us that all of the seventy elders began to prophesy, just as Moses had been prophesying.  Now we don’t use the word prophesy very well in our time.  We tend to narrow its meaning to be the same as predicting the future.  But Numbers is not telling us that the seventy elders formed a psychic hotline and started predicting the future.  No, prophesy means first of all to deliver a message from God.  These elders became leaders who spoke the truth of God and guided the people in solving their problems and getting their lives moving the right direction.  These elders became servants of God to serve the common good.  They began to focus their life’s work around making everyone’s lives better.  With all of these elders serving the common good, less of that work fell on Moses.  And since it was no longer just one man’s job, probably a whole lot more got done.

One of the questions that came to my mind in reading this story has to do with the number of elders.  Now we know that symbolically, the number twelve is very important for understanding the people of Israel.  The twelve tribes are a constant organizing principle, and so we might have expected God to tell Moses to choose twelve elders, one for each tribe.  Instead, God told him to choose seventy.  Seventy is not even a multiple of twelve.  That would have been seventy-two, making six elders per tribe.  But the number is not seventy-two, it is just seventy.

If we analyze the number seventy, we can see some possible reasons for choosing that number.  The most obvious thing to see is that it is a multiple of seven.  With seven days of creation and Sabbath, a seven year cycle of debt remission and letting the land rest, a seven day week, and for many other reasons, seven is also a highly significant number.  It is a number that expresses completeness.  It is a number that implies a cycle of restorative justice.  It is a number reminding us never to get too carried away with our schemes and activities without stopping to devote ourselves to God and renew our covenant relationship.

So choosing seventy has within it a symbolism of completion, of divine remembrance, and of just social existence.  But Moses did not choose only seven elders, but seventy.  Now seventy is a round number, and round numbers have a biblical symbolism of many and plenty.  If seven is symbolic of completion, seventy symbolized complete and more, plenty to accomplish the task.  So what we see in Moses’ selection of seventy elders is choosing a number adequate to do a very big job.

Sometimes in church we get a couple of people together and just try to get by, do the minimum to say we have fulfilled our responsibility.  In this case, Moses is choosing enough to get the job done effectively and get the job done right.  This plan from God for Moses does not operate in an economy of scarcity, fearful that if Moses does not have most of the power, then these other leaders will edge him out or steal his turf.  It is not about jealousy and control.  This selection of elders is about what is good for the people.  And unless Moses wants to be a candle burned out by next week, it is also going to be good for him.

So on Education Day, we acknowledge with Moses that the work of God is far too great for Dr. Turner to do it all himself.  The work of God is far to vast for a few people to hoard all the power of God’s Spirit as if it were their personal possession.  On Education Day, and on Pentecost, we recognize that the Holy Spirit has come with power.  God has poured out the Spirit on all flesh, on the young and the old, on the women and the men, on the slave and the free, on the Jew and the Gentile.  By striving for knowledge and working to complete a course of study or a degree, we offer ourselves as servants of God, as vessels of the Spirit’s power.  Today, on Education Day, we gather to consecrate this commitment to serve God and to share in the coming of God’s Spirit with power on each of you who have offered yourselves as a living sacrifice to God.  You today stand in the position of the seventy elders of Israel.  The Spirit is calling on you to use your gifts to prophesy, to speak a word from the Lord, and to serve the good of all the people.

Now there is another interesting detail in this story of the seventy elders that we do not want to miss.  Joshua got very disturbed about one thing that happened.  He was a young man with a lot to learn.  As the story unfolded, a couple of the elders chosen to lead did not manage to make the official meeting at which they would be set aside for service.  We don’t know why Eldad and Medad did not make it to the big house . . . I mean the tent where they were supposed to gather.  Maybe they got preoccupied with work they were already doing.  [From the pew, Dr. Turner inserted, “Maybe they overslept.”]  Maybe someone told them it was a mistake that their names got on the list, and they should just go on home and not try to be uppity.  Maybe they never got the message that they were supposed to go to the meeting.  Maybe a family crisis came up, and they decided to give up their dream in order to support the family.  We don’t know why they did not show up.

However, when the meeting was held, and the elders were set aside for their task, the power of the spirit came upon all seventy of the elders.  That means that when the other sixty eight who showed up for the meeting started to prophesy, Eldad and Medad started prophesying, too, back in the hood.  It was such a big deal that a youngster got all excited and ran to the tent of meeting to tell what was going on.  Joshua heard the news and started worrying that Eldad and Medad were getting out of line.  He burst out to Moses saying, “This has got to be shut down.  We can’t have stray people prophesying here and there and acting like they are in our select, elite group.  There are rules and precedents to follow!”

I suspect Joshua was pretty surprised by Moses’ reply.  The Bible says Moses was the meekest man on earth, and here is one of the occasions when we can see what that means.  Moses did not need to be the head man in charge of everything.  He was happy to see the work of God done, no matter who was doing it.  He told Joshua that as far as old Moses is concerned, he wished everyone would become a prophet of God. 

Whoa, Moses!  Thank you God for setting Moses’ mind on You.  On the day of selecting the seventy elders, Moses has caught a glimpse of Pentecost.  He is looking for and longing for the day when God’s Spirit is poured out on all flesh.

Moreover, this day of setting aside seventy elders to lead and speak a word from the Lord also looks ahead to a day when Jesus gathered his followers and sent out seventy missionaries to all the towns and villages to tell them the good news of the Kingdom of God.  As it was when Jesus’ sent the seventy, the God of Jesus Christ is in the business of calling all of us out to take up the task of living and loving and bringing about the beloved community.  These elders could no longer live merely for themselves, but they now would live for the good of the entire community.  Eldad and Medad, back in the hood, would live for God and for the good of the whole community.  No more looking out only for number one.  Now they must look out for the way that we can all become one.

Some of you, in completing this season of school work, may remember bitter moments when you were told you were too dumb to finish school.  Maybe someone told you your clothes were too plain, your teeth too crooked, your hair too nappy, your skin too dark or too light, your speech too country, your voice too squeaky, your people too poor, your neighborhood to run down.  Maybe it was even someone with the status of Joshua who stood in your way and made you feel like you should not even try. 

But like Eldad and Medad, if you are here today, you have found the courage and strength to put that dispiritedness behind you.  You have risen over that adversity, using it as a stepping stone to remember that God has called not only this preacher and the teachers and the ministers and the deacons, but God has called you.  Maybe nobody wanted you to know that you could come to Moses’ meeting.  Maybe somebody got in your way.  But praise be to God that the Spirit is poured out on all flesh.  If God is calling you, nobody can stop the power of God from filling you with all that you need to do what God has for you to do.

On the Feast of Pentecost, we unite ourselves with the Holy Spirit who gives gifts to all.  The Apostle Paul, who sometimes reminds folks that he was a latecomer to his work, maybe like Eldad and Medad, wrote to the churches that we are one body with many gifts.  The Spirit gives each one a gift, and each gift is needed for the good of the whole community.  If you don’t cultivate your gift, grow it, and allow it to flourish, all of us will be diminished.  God’s Spirit is poured out on all of us, and our educational milestones of maturity are part of the process of learning to exercise our gifts for the good of all.

The Gospel Lesson for today comes from John, chapter 7.  In that passage, Jesus says to the crowds in Jerusalem that the day will come when the Spirit will work with power in the lives of all believers.  He says, “Out of the believer’s heart will flow rivers of living water.”  This is the work that the Holy Spirit is doing in all of us, and in all of you whom we recognize on this Education Day.  God is at work to will and to do in you what has not yet been seen or imagined.  The transformation of your life underway through the work of the Spirit will make you into a wellspring.  The gift of the Spirit will be the water of life for all those whom God sends your way.  Whether back in the hood with Eldad and Medad, or at the big meeting with the rest of the elders, you will be a vessel of the very life of God. 

Receive this work of the Holy Spirit.  Lift up your hearts to God.  You stand here today as a sacrament of the work of the Holy Spirit.  You are gifted.  Hasten to use the gifts you have received.  Amen.

Lott Carey Youth

This calm and clear morning on campus I found young people and their leaders gathering in small groups, walking from one location to another. The 55th Annual Lott Carey Youth Seminar is in mid-stride. The theme is "Empowering Youth to Impact the World." Along with mission opportunities, good preaching, recreation and fun, and devotionals, the seminar this year has allied with the ONE Campaign, the Genocide Intervention Network, and the NAACP to help young people understand the relationship between their following Jesus and their care for the people of the world.

Although the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention is one of the smaller Baptist conventions, it's link to Shaw and our common history is very important. Named for Lott Carey, the first African American missionary to Africa, specifically to Liberia, this convention works to engage its member churches in a global vision of the gospel. Lott Carey was a former slave from theWilliamsburg area in Virginia.

Under the leadership of Rev. Dr. David Emmanuel Goatley, this convention has expanded its work and enlarged the opportunities for ministers and laypeople to engage in mission work. Moreover, this highly intelligent and devoted leader has played an important role among Baptists of all regions and ethnicity as the President of the North American Baptist Fellowship.

As I looked at the young people and their leaders on campus today, I was encouraged to hold fast to what I have never stopped believing: there is yet much work for Shaw University to do, and there are many partners and allies who are committed to making that happen. I know that is true of the faculty with whom I have conversations. Along with the Lott Carey and leaders and youth, we can see a better future for the poor in our neighborhoods, for African peoples, for war-torn lands in need of peace, for U. S. communities in need of reconciliation, for people everywhere who have not had access to education, and for Shaw University as a part of pursuing those tasks.

Bailout 11: Market Morality Won't Just Vanish

The assumption of much public policy making is that getting the money in the right place or setting up the right program will solve problems. Of course, these things can and do make a difference. However, as Cornel West argued long ago, changing the conditions of extreme poverty will not go away just by setting up programs. Nor will they go away by telling the people caught up in poverty to change their behavior. Culture and social structures are interlinked. That is why he wrote about "market morality." When social thinking becomes colonized and dominated by doctrinaire market theories, then other forms of moral vision and community begin to be eclipsed by individual self-interest. That is why West called for a "politics of conversion:" the change has to be deep and it has to be systemic.

Henry A. Giroux and Susan Searls Giroux have picked up this argument in relation to the current bailout of the economy. They recognize that new views of the economy are gaining a hearing, but they also point out that the general population has been schooled in free market thinking and its market morality. A change that renews the commitment to the common good, a belief in government's role to do good for citizens, and moral limits on individual freedom will require a process of education.

Politics is not simply about the production and protection of economic formations; it is also about the production of individuals, desires, identifications, values and modes of understanding for inhabiting the ideological and institutional forms that make up a social order. At the very least, any attempt to both understand the current crisis and what it would mean to produce a new kind of subject willing to invest in and struggle for a democratic society needs to raise another set of questions in addition to those currently posed.

Moral formation of another sort is required. Are there any communities of alternative formation that can point the direction toward a more humane vision of economic life? Churches too often have allowed the economics of the world to negate the economic vision of the Bible. We need churches to stand for an economic life in which "there are no needy among you" (Deuteronomy 15:4; Acts 4:34).

A Confession and a Tribute

Last Monday a wonderful event occurred. Everly, my wife, successfully defended her dissertation after many years of hard work. My excitement in the days leading to Monday brought back memories of 1993 when I was approaching my own dissertation defense. The general anxiety, the inability to keep focus on some tasks, the specific worries about whether important details were incorrect or forgotten—as I observed these behaviors in her I remembered them in my own history.

One part of her story is very different from mine. While Everly held high-responsibility executive jobs during the entire seven years of her doctoral work, I spent most of my seven years with the opportunity to focus as a full-time student, with only a couple of stints in part-time jobs. Making it possible for me to be a full-time student, Everly was giving me the luxury of uncluttered time and thought to work on my courses and research. The joyous opportunity to spend with my young children as the primary caregiver was also part of the deal, and that all three were under the age of seven when I completed the dissertation provides some of the explanation why I spent seven years doing doctoral work.

On the other hand, Everly worked full time, did her motherly duties, and managed essential household chores at the same time as she took night courses, wrote papers, conducted a major research study, and eventually wrote a dissertation. Frankly, she got a whole lot less support from me than I got from her during the process of completing a doctoral degree.

I’m not trying to beat myself up. I just want to think about the incongruity between my ideal of what kind of husband I would be and my actual practice of husbanding. When Everly made her entry into doctoral studies, she did not make any sustained proposal about becoming a full-time student. If she seriously entertained that option, I was either oblivious, or she did not consider it viable. As a teacher at a small private college, I have never had the larger paycheck in the family. As an executive leader in education, Everly has been the primary breadwinner. She has borne that responsibility with courage and honor, and I appreciate the opportunities our family has had because of how hard she has worked. Moreover, the work that she was doing was the actual context of her research. There were advantages of continuing in her professional appointments, to be weighed against the advantages of full attention to research and study.

Still, I find myself wondering if I should have made a persuasive case for her to consider letting me bear the financial load and take on some education loans so that she could focus on school. I wonder whether something about the gender politics deeply embedded in our generation left that door mostly closed to us. Or maybe when the time came, I just did not listen to the calling to carry my part of the load. So I confess my disappointment in myself for not working harder to make sure she could have taken that path. At this point in the story, those words are pretty empty.

The other confession is that I did not find it in my character to bear more of the load of managing essential household tasks while she carried the weight of an executive job and doctoral studies. I’m not as great a self-motivator as I would hope to be. I am easily distracted, and sometimes plain lazy. I wonder how old I will have to be before I display mature self-discipline.

Looking at her achievement in the midst of so many demands draws out great admiration and pride. I don’t mean the bad kind of pride, the vice that comes before a fall and names one of the seven deadly sins. I mean the kind of pride that takes note of something good, worthy, honorable, and admirable that is close to home, that does not see achievements as small things, that recognizes the effort and sacrifice that go into accomplishing something good, that sees a good thing for what it is. Her research is deeply rooted in a life of work to make schools better and to make the lives of students better through them. And it is making a difference, step by step, although there is an occasional step back along with the steps forward.

It is something like what I have often thought, sometimes written, and regularly taught concerning the church. Churches struggle to be what they are called to be, and in limited, often temporary ways they may give us a glimpse of the Reign of God, the embodiment of the love of God in human communities. They do so in particular ways, sometimes fostering reconciliation, other times overcoming loneliness and alienation, occasionally promoting well-being and justice through housing, nutrition, education, jobs, recovery from addiction or imprisonment, and many other ways.

Everly’s work has in sometimes dramatic and sometimes incremental ways opened cracks and chasms in the walls that shut off opportunities to learn and flourish. Students, teachers, and whole schools have seen the fruit of her labor. It is divine work, which honors and blesses the image of God in humanity’s children.

Bailout 4: How to Use $700 Billion

$700 billion dollars for what? All of a sudden, George Bush thinks there is another $700 billion dollars available to spend. This is the guy whose advisers told him the Iraq war would finance itself, or at most cost about $50 billion. The bill for that debacle is fast approaching $600 billion after five years. What's another $700 billion going down into an abyss?

Of course, these same people say there is no money to fully fund No Child Left Behind, closer to $20 billion per year. There is no money to provide health care for the uninsured (not even for uninsured children through SCHIP), which $700 billion would cover for six or seven years. There is no money to support the Millenium Development Goals which the World Bank says could be funded with $40 to $60 billion per year spread among all the contributors. For Christians familiar with the Micah Challenge, this last example is a part of the shared agenda of churches in many nations.

A few comments from this week's discussions at the United Nations General Assembly seem appropriate here ("No Bailout for the World's Poorest").

Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockman of Nicaragua, the newly-elected president of the General Assembly, warned that the current financial crisis will have "very serious consequences" that will impede the significant progress, "if indeed any progress is made", towards the targets established by the MDGs, "which are themselves insufficient".

"It is always the poor who pay the price for the unbridled greed and irresponsibility of the powerful," he said, taking a passing shot at the staggering 700-billion-dollar bailout proposed by the administration of President George W. Bush to save the high-stakes investment banks of New York from bankruptcy and collapse.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told delegates that "money doesn't seem to be a problem, when the problem is money".

"Let us look for a moment at what is happening on Wall Street and in financial markets around the world. There, unsound investment threatens the homes and jobs of the middle class," he added.

There is something fundamentally wrong, he argued, "when money seems to be abundant, but funds for investment in people seem so short in supply".

Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding told the General Assembly that the crisis currently rocking the world's financial markets reflects the inadequacy of the regulatory structures that are essential to the effective functioning of any market.

But it is more than that. It represents the failure on the part of the international financial system to facilitate the flow of resources into areas where they can produce real wealth -- not paper wealth, he added.