The MAGA Pet Cookbook

Like many of you, we watched the debate Tuesday night.  We had a group of friends over, ate a lot of pizza and a very good salad.  And drank a little beer and coffee.

Several of our guests almost injured themselves when convulsed with fits of uncontrollable laughter at one of the Former Guy’s assertions – the outrageous lie that immigrants in one Ohio town were eating people’s pets.  Perpetrating a lie first told by J.D Vance.  I almost fell out of my seat and spilled my beer.

How is it that so many gullible folks believe such patent nonsense?  Of course, none of this is true.[1]

I told Jai that I might gin up a MAGA cookbook for cats, dogs and parakeets.  It would go straight to the top of Amazon’s charts.

Yes, the dog may have eaten your homework, but no immigrant has eaten your dog.  Or cat.  Or parakeet.

Tongue in cheek, I fault our teachers for failing to teach critical thinking.  What are we educating our students for?  Jai responded that in her kindergarten classes she does teach behavior and consequences.  And year after year, almost all her kindergartners and first graders were reading to state standards.

My best teachers have taught me how to discern nonsense from reality.  Mostly, they have succeeded.  A worthy goal of all education, the power of discernment.  Good teaching is also about vocation.

All three lessons and the Psalm this Sunday have to deal with teaching.  This from Isaiah:

“The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.  Morning by morning [the Lord] wakens—wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.”[2]

Teaching is a fraught responsibility we learn from the Epistle of James – as any seasoned teacher knows.

“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.  For all of us make many mistakes…”[3]

All of us who are parents have taught, whether or not we have a state credential.  And, for one, I’ve made some glorious mistakes, which I hope haven’t resulted in too many therapy bills for my boys.

Paulo Freire, in his Pedagogy of Hope, asserts that the goal of teaching ought to be to enable us to live more fulfilling, more liberated lives in community with our fellow brothers and sister.  The goal is to empower us to become more aware of what oppresses, limits, and degrades.[4]

Pedagogy as understood by Paulo Freire opens up horizons.  “History is time filled with possibility.”  Exactly what Jesus’ parables do. These simple stories open up a multiplicity of possibilities.  They open the soul to its fuller, more complete potential – liberation.

Freire uses the term, La concientización – conscientiousness arising.  It’s about developing clarity on one’s existential situation – what one truly needs, what binds and what would liberate.  This should be the goal of any worthwhile education.  Yes, facts, numeracy and critical thinking are good.  But to what end?  Only that they are tools for those who are enlightened to their true situation.[5]

Concientización prompted by the Spirit opens the eyes of both oppressed and oppressor.  “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”  This from a former captain of a slave ship.

Genuine teaching prepares us to understand why we are here and what we are meant to do and be.  “Then he began to teach them…”  He opened their eyes.

The lesson of the day was about the cruciform way of life.  Concerning himself and those who would follow after, “…the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by elders, the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” 

Far too extreme for Peter who begins to rebuke him.  But Jesus, in turn, rebukes Peter for getting the mission all wrong.  “Get behind me Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

This lesson can be summarized in the prayer we close the service with every Sunday.  A prayer that in part reads,

“Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

And when it comes to those who have sacrificed their prerogatives and self-interests in service of a greater cause, there’s no thought about “what was in it for them.”

As John Lewis counseled, “This is the way another generation did it, and you too can follow that path, studying the way of peace, love and nonviolence, and finding a way to get in the way.  Finding a way to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.”

It’s the willingness to risk scorn and doubt.

Those intrepid “greens,” attempting to alert an unbelieving public to the dangers of environmental degradation and global warming were shunted aside in political considerations.

Some, under the pressure caved to the opprobrium of the skeptics, softening the rhetoric to call it “climate change,” when in reality it’s a massive, systemic dose of “global warming.”

Too many have become captive to an oppressive cultural narrative that leads to self-censorship.  Softening and thus preventing a true analysis of our situation.  The other day, Christopher taught me the academic term for the force of this cultural expectation, “hegemonic narrative” — the domineering story.  Adhere to it or be shunted aside, or worse in some autocratic nations, be jailed or disappeared.  It’s the velvet glove, and sometimes iron fist, of dehumanization.

Euphemisms act to prevent a true understanding of the situation.  “Collateral damage” disguises the reality of the mangled bodies and grief caused by indiscriminate bombing of schools, hospitals and refugee camps in Gaza.  They act to soften the reality of what we are doing.

The other week the U.S. was in high dudgeon over one American killed by an Israeli soldier on the West Bank, but not much was said of the bombing of a refugee camp that killed 19 and wounded many more.  We certainly did not cut off the flow of weapons and dollars funding these atrocities.  Does an American life really have the same value of so many more Palestinian lives?  Really? 

We once were lost but now are found, were blind but now we see.

Now, these chickens of environmental destruction are coming home to roost.  The eyes of many are finally being opened.

We’ve recently learned of the so called “forever chemicals,” cancer causing substances, that take centuries to degrade.  The New York Times had an article alerting us to the contaminants found in fertilizer made from municipal sewage.  Not only did this stuff contain many nutrients but it also contained chemicals from popcorn bags to firefighting gear and nonstick pans.[6]

“In some cases, the chemicals are suspected of sickening or killing livestock and are turning up in produce.  Farmers are beginning to fear for their own health.”  The state of Maine banned the use of sludge for agricultural purposes after finding contamination on at least 68 of the 100 farms checked.

Millions of tons of this stuff have been spread over millions of acres of farmland at the behest of the federal government as a way of keeping this sludge out of landfills.  Now, remediation is neigh on impossible, the costs astronomical.  Are our eyes opened yet?  Can we see clearly now?

Our vocation is to find some trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.  To wake up, then get in the face of those still asleep as to what we are doing.  Let the Spirit open our eyes that we get a true assessment of our situation.

Global warming certainly has a face in Southern California – fire.  In the past couple of weeks hundreds of thousands of acres have burned, causing the loss of dozens of homes.  And they’re still burning.  Wakey-wakey.  Time to open our eyes and smell the coffee.  And avoid nonsense pretending to be reality.

Jesus sat his disciples down “then he began to teach them…”  He informs us of our true cruciform vocation.  It’s about living a life for others – through which we discover the meaning and purpose of our own lives.

I close with something Joan Baez said:

“You don’t get to choose how you are going to die.  Or when.  You can only decide how you are going to live.  Now.”  Today — that choice is ours.  Now.  Amen.

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[1] Patrick Aftoora Orsagos, Julie Car Smyth, and Elliot Spagat, “An Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in an unwelcome spotlight, Associated Press, September 11, 2024.
2 Isaiah 50:4, NRSV.
3 James 3:1-2a, NRSV.

 

 

[4] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Hope (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014).

[5] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 50^th Anniversary 4^th edition, 2018), 30.

[6]Hiroko Tabuchi, “Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ Turn up on Farms in U.S., New York Times, September 1, 2024.

September 15, 2024
17 Pentecost, Proper 19

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 116:1-8;James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38 “The MAGA Pet Cookbook”