Dear Mr. President,
It’s January 2019. We are completely through the
holidays and our government is shut down. Happy New Year to no one.
You are exhausting. The members of your diminishing
base are rude and irreverent. Everything
you touch is poisoned and dying. Two years in your role and you have done nothing
to make America anything but a suffering embarrassment.
The Republican Party in congress have shown not only
how desperate and dirty they are for votes in two years, but also how spineless
and cruel they are to the American people. What a crowd.
You’ve lost thousands of immigrant children. Others
have been wretchedly abused. You smash families. You judge transgender soldiers
who fight for freedom. You are trying to take away women’s rights. You are
hollow and bleak.
I’m a preacher. I’ve was told once by a professor to
preach the Good News every Sunday when I set foot in the pulpit. You make my work
hard.
But I don’t follow you. I adhere to nothing you
pretend to believe because you believe in nothing but your lies and deceit and
chaos.
I personally follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. I’m
sure you only know his name as a swear word.
Other people claim to follow him, but I’ve watched and
listened to the same people who profess to love and follow Jesus attack
immigrants, mock the only true natives of our country, and spew hatred for anyone
who isn’t white and ignorantly conservative. Their hatred and fear bring
darkness wherever they open their putrid mouths.
How do I preach Good News?
How do I keep my anger in check when I see faithful
federal workers going to food banks to feed their families, instead of being
able go to the grocery store with their well-earned paychecks?
How do I care for the “least of these” when you and
your followers tear them apart piece by piece?
How do I protect the world and nature while you do everything
possible to destroy our God-given creation?
You and your crony-filled administration and your
thickheaded right-wing media make every day a bad news day.
But the day of reckoning is coming. Call it karma.
Call it retribution. Call it victory for righteousness.
You are death to life. But death never wins. Life
overcomes death.
You are darkness in the light. I know the Light of the
World. Darkness cannot keep the Light away.
You are brine in fresh water. But I know the true Living
Water.
You scatter those who need the most care. I know the
Good Shepherd.
You starve those who are so very hungry. I know the
Bread of Life.
My work of Good News is not just done in the pulpit.
That would be too easy. The work of preaching Good News is more about doing than
speaking.
If I believe in the Light, then I must share light with
those living in darkness.
If I believe in the reviving Living Water, I must
quench the thirst of those who are so very parched.
If I believe in gathering and uplifting those who have
been scattered and lost, then I must find them and reclaim them in the name of
the Good Shepherd.
The hungry must be fed, no matter what.
We don’t have to be Christians to do these things. But
we must be decent. We must be generous. We must focus on others who are
invisible in this world. We must empathetically pay attention to what is going
on around us.
That might be where you and your followers get tripped
up. Sad.
Ultra-conservatism doesn’t have a place in this
country. We are country of human beings with human rights. We are a country of
hopes. We are dreamers.
As you and your followers attempt to take away rights
and hopes and dreams, the rest of us will resist and persist and be relentless
in restoring goodness, righteousness and peace to our ailing land.
You know nothing of these things. The vocabulary of
kindness confuses you.
You and those who speak your language will eventually be
taken away to a place where you can’t hurt people anymore, and finally we will mend.
We will heal.
And that is some very good news.
Pastor Barb
