It's a Great Life, If You Don't Weaken

The Original Flag of the State of Oklahoma
Oscar Ameringer, Oklahoma social activist

(I gave these remarks as a part of the worship service at Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City. Every Sunday, one of the lay people give a brief message as a part of the "Prayers of the People" segment of the service. These were given the Sunday following the election in which Republican took over nearly all functions of the state government in Oklahoma.)

Prayers of the People 11-6-10

Some people, knowing who I am and what I am usually up to, have asked me about the election this week and why I think what happened did happen. My reaction is that our fears of each other won out over our love of justice for all. In other words, we are mighty afraid that someone is getting more than our fair share of the pie, and so we think that there should be no pie at all.

The next question I’m often asked is, “What in the world are we going to do now?” I’m tempted to say, “Well, Oregon is looking very good right now.” But to run now I think is rather weak. And as Oscar once said, “It’s a great life. . . if you don’t weaken.”

Oscar? Oscar who? (You ask rhetorically.) Well, Oscar Ameringer of course, Oklahoma Socialist. And yes, Oscar Ameringer, who nearly became mayor of Oklahoma City, was a real Socialist, unlike the Pseudo-Socialists you meet so often these days.

According to a biography written by my good friend and fellow union member, John Thompson, Oscar Ameringer came to Oklahoma from his native Germany right at the time of its statehood and helped to form one of the largest Socialist movements in American history. Ameringer fought for rights of the disadvantaged. He helped found the Oklahoma Renters Union to promote the rights of sharecroppers, and twenty-five years later his writings inspired the creation of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. In 1910 he led the fight against voting tests that disenfranchised African American voters. The opposition he and most Socialists had to World War I was used as a pretext for the American government to largely destroy the Socialist Party in Oklahoma and the rest of our nation, Ameringer died in 1943 in Oklahoma City.
Ameringer once noted that, “Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.”, a statement that runs as true today as it did then.

Oscar lived in tough times, in many ways tougher than what we face now. And I think his advice to us would run something along these lines:

It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.
Keep on fighting. Keep on speakin’
Let your truth shine like a beacon.
Cause it’s a great life if you

My Sunday Worship Leader Remarks

Each Sunday at the 10:45am service, one lay person serves as "Worship Leader." One of the duties of the Worship Leader is to give some brief remarks prior to the offering. This is called the "Prayers of the People," and it gives lay members an opportunity to talk about whatever is on their minds. Here is the text of my remarks:

Typically, we celebrate December 25th as the birth date of Jesus. Many scholars suggest that Jesus likely was born in late March or early April, the time shepherds “abide” in the fields to help ewes giving birth.

I was born in March. Perhaps Jesus and I share a common birth date. Had this date been used for Christmas I would have greatly dismayed as a child. We all pitied the kid whose birthday came near enough to Christmas to get combination birthday-Christmas gifts.

We are not sure how December 25 became the date celebrating Jesus’ nativity. Perhaps it was an attempt to convert a popular pagan celebration. Perhaps to was due to the fact that 4 days after winter solstice the daylight hours begin to get noticeably longer. Some have suggested that the fact that date is 9 months after the Jewish Passover celebration had something to do with the choice.

I think there is something to this last idea. After all, putting Christmas in March or Christmas in April would mean that we would celebrate his birth at the same time we honor his death. This way, the church now gets two big days to pack the pews.

Seriously, I think it noteworthy that we celebrate the birth of Jesus at a time when all seems dead in our world. And we honor his death at the time when the world is starting to come alive. I think this is another paradox of our faith that we have been noting throughout this Advent season. God is always acting in ways contrary to our expectations: giving us grace where grace is not deserved, extending hope when all seems hopeless.

So let us live within God’s grace that gives life all that is dead within us. And let us live in hope as we work to bring life to a dying world.

And let us display this hope we have in a very practical way by making out our pledge cards and placing them in the offering plate. May the ushers come and receive our hopeful pledges and offerings at this time.

My Worship Leader Remarks at Mayflower Church

"A Candle in Hope" by Juntos

I have not been posting in quite a while. Frankly, for some reason I did not feel much like writing, but I hope now to begin once again. Here are the remarks I made at Mayflower Congregational Church on Christmas Sunday as the lay Worship Leader.

For those of us living in Oklahoma who believe passionately in social justice, 2008 has been “the best of times” and “the worst of times,” a real “Dickens” of a time. Sorry, but I’ve been saving that pun for a while now.

At this time, how appropriate it is that we gather here on the winter solstice when our part of the world goes through its longest darkness. We gather to celebrate the birth of Hope, which first came during one of the very darkest of times. In a time of terror and fear, a man of questionable birth brought us Hope and taught us to live lives of Hope by revealing to us the Life of Grace: God’s enabling power which helps us to realize our true potential.

And that’s what I love about you. You live such gracious lives. You recognize that you have received Grace. And having received Grace, you know you must show grace to others by helping them to enjoy all the wonderful possibilities that God wants all of us to realize in her creation.
You make Hope live in our world by being God’s Agents of Grace

Thank you for living graciously. For without people like you, we would be facing a “season of Darkness” without the prospect of “the spring of hope."

Credo

Church Steeple, Mayflower Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
This Easter Sunday, I was the Worship Leader at my church, Mayflower Congregational UCC. Among the duties of the Worship Leader is to deliver some personal remarks during a segment of the service called "Prayers of the People." I decided to offer my personal faith statement or Credo.

Some weeks ago, Rev. Meyers called for a renewal in the Christian church “comparable with that of the Reformation.” Consider this my own modest, very modest, contribution to that reformation. Don’t worry, I don’t have anything like "Ninty-Five Theses", just a brief testimony of my faith.

I believe in God because it seems to me that there must exist a Freedom that allows all other freedoms to exist, a source of Love that makes all love authentic. I don’t know if God is a person, but because I respond best to people, I regard God as a person. This makes my responsibilities towards God personal.

I do not believe that Jesus is God. I think that we can take a cue from our Muslim friends who affirm that there is but one God. I believe that Jesus was a man sent by God to show us what God is like and how we should live as children of God. Now, I may be wrong about this, and if I get chance to meet Jesus some time, some place, I’ll offer him my sincerest apologies. But I have a feeling that he would say something like, “That’s okay. That wasn’t the important thing anyway.” For it seems to me that too many people worry more about who Jesus was than they do what he taught about how we should live. Many say they want to be like Jesus, but not a lot of us seem to want to live like him.

And as far as I have been able to figure it out, the way we are supposed to live involves living lives of righteousness on a personal level and lives promoting justice on a social level. I do believe in good and evil. I believe that I have a moral responsibility to live in a right relationship to God and God’s universe. One family motto my wife and I have goes, "Life is a work in progress. (We hope!)" Righteousness is my personal responsibility, and I have an equal moral responsibility to Justice, to end or at least mitigate social sins, those evils that deny others their right to human dignity, evils like greed, intolerance, and racism. This is what I pray for when I repeat that part of the Lord’s Prayer calling for God’s rule on earth as it is in Heaven. I pray also for the courage to act on my convictions.

So there you have my Credo, not as dramatic as Martin Luther’s statement before the Diet of Worms. (I first heard that name when I was a child, and I’ve always loved it.) But this is the best I’ve been able to come up with so far, until I make more progress. I hope