A PARABLE IN PARALLEL TEXT: JESUS AT GENERAL CONFERENCE

Matthew 23:1-4	Jesus, Infinite Episcopal District, Nazareth region.
Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples,	To the members of this great Zion and especially to the delegates,
saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.	The officers and bishops sit in the line of Miles and Vanderhorst.
Therefore whatever they tell you to observe,  that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do.	So you should follow the rules of the Discipline they have published.  Read it and do what they say.   But, don’t act like the people at the general conference because they say, “Follow the rules, but they don’t follow them.”
For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.	For we pass resolutions that saddle local churches with burdensome mandates, but we don’t do a thing to provide them with the means to fulfill those requirements.
Matthew 6:7
And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do.  For they think that they will be heard for their many words.	And when you offer a motion, do not repeat a bunch of clichés and compliments appealing to a leader’s vanity like you’re worshipping a heathen idol ‘cause it sounds like you’re fishing for attention.
Mark 12:38-40
Then He said to them in His teaching, “Beware of the scribes, who desire to go around in long robes, love greetings in the marketplaces,	Watch out for those folks who demand elaborate and highest commendations for themselves every time they appear
the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts,	And who feel entitled to the most prominent positions
who devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation.	But they exploit the most vulnerable churches and the least powerful groups in the church while making a pretense of holiness.  They will receive greater condemnation.
Luke 11:42-48
42 “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass by justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.	Oh, you leaders!  Don’t you see how broken you are?  You raise and pay and administer the money with meticulous efficiency, but you don’t do right by all your folks; you don’t love them like you love yourself.  Yes, you should collect and disburse the budget, but you should do that AND give your people justice and love as well.
43 Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the [m]best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.	Come on, don’t you see?! You are addicted to accolades.
44 Woe to you, [n]scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like graves which are not seen, and the men who walk over them are not aware of them.”	And not just THEM.  You other leaders, too.  You act inconsistent with your professed ethics and morality.  Your ruthless politicking is like an overgrown cemetery with no tombstones.  If this weren’t called a church meeting observers wouldn’t know the work had anything to do with Jesus.
45 Then one of the lawyers answered and said to Him, “Teacher, by saying these things You reproach us also.	“Mr. Chairman, point of order!” cried one of the delegates.  “The way his complaint is worded, it would accuse ALL of us, not just bishops and general officers.”
46 And He said, “Woe to you also, lawyers! For you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.	Response:  That is correct.  You don’t see how broken you are either. You vote to sustain the boot that will be placed on your neck without providing a way to pay for the boot.”
. 47 Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.	Don’t you get it.  You/ We are digging the church’s grave, a church that generations were killing before millennials were born.
48 In fact, you bear witness that you approve the deeds of your fathers; for they indeed killed them, and you build their tombs.	In fact, you/ we are accomplices in the death of the church. We receive the reports and recommendations of its poisoning with “highest commendations.”
Luke 11: 52-54
52 “Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered.”	And to you/ us who know the Discipline forwards and backwards, you/we who have “dedicated my life to this church,” we who KNOW the way things are done in the church:  a bunch of us are going to Hell after a career of keeping people out of Heaven.
53 And as He said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to assail Him vehemently, and to cross-examine Him about many things,	And when Jesus finished his statement, the chair was inundated with rebuttals screamed out from the floor and the stage.  On his way to his seat, other delegates confronted him, “Who did he think he was?  What did he mean by . . . ?  Why would he say that in front of everybody . . . .?  Aren’t you worried about annual conference?”
54 lying in wait for Him, and seeking to catch Him in something He might say, that they might accuse Him	But it was the quiet ones who were the real threat.  The louds ones yelled about him being taken down.  The quiet ones planned to do it.

WHEN MOSES' WIFE PULLED A KNIFE AND CUSSED HIM OUT

Blogging Exodus 4:18-26

¹⁸ So Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said to him, “Please let me go and return to my brethren who are in Egypt, and see whether they are still alive.”

And Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace.”

¹⁹ Now the Lord said to Moses in Midian, “Go, return to Egypt; for all the men who sought your life are dead.”

²⁰ Then Moses took his wife and his sons and set them on a donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand.

. . . ²⁴ And it came to pass on the way, at the encampment, that the Lord met him and sought to kill him. ²⁵ Then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at Moses’ feet, and said, “Surely you are a husband of blood to me!” ²⁶ So He let him go. Then she said, “You are a husband of blood!”—because of the circumcision.

On the way from Midian to Egypt, Moses' wife performed an emergency circumcision of their son. 

Son.  Singular.  

Moses and Zipporah had two sons and both of them were with them on the road to Egypt, which means that one of the boys was circumcised and one wasn’t.  And that may explain why God was so upset with Moses that   it came to pass on the way, at the encampment, that the Lord met him and sought to kill him (Exodus 4:24). 

Circumcising one child showed that Moses knew the Abrahamic rule of circumcision, knew that God wanted the men committed to faith in Him to bear that physical symbol, knew and applied that knowledge.

But only halfway. 

Moses compromised with the anti-circumcising culture of greater Midian.  He acquiesced to the oldest of heresies: “It doesn’t take all that.” 

God thought otherwise. 

I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth (Revelations 3: 15-16).

  The Lord had tapped Moses to confront 4 centuries of tradition, social norms, and economic policy, and break them.  Moses was assigned a task that required total  commitment and the idea of Moses negotiating some kid of half-way freedom from Pharaoh was so sickening to God that it came to pass on the way, at the encampment, that the Lord met him and sought to kill him.

Fortunately for Moses, he'd married a strong and spiritually discerning woman.  

Zipporah saw Moses sick without cause, or facing a vision of a vengeful angel, or whatever form the Divine threat to his life manifested, and she intuited both the cause and solution for her husband’s terminal condition.  Then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at Moses’ feet, and her husband recovered.

Unfortunately for Moses, he had married a strong and spiritually discerning woman. 

Here was her baby (no matter his age) on the side of the road, wounded, in the kind of pain no male ever wants to be in, by her own necessary hand, and it WAS ALL MOSES' FAULT!  Likely still holding the bloody blade, Zipporah  angrily presented the priest of her household with the proof of circumcision.  She cast it at Moses’ feet, and said,“Surely you are a husband of blood to me!”  In British slang, she said, “Bloody husband!”  In Mississippi Black slang, she cussed him out.

 And after the Lord released Moses from the attentions of the death angel, she cussed him out again.

So He [the Lord] let him go. Then she said, “You are a husband of blood!”—because of the circumcision.

MOSES had been trained by her father the priest of Midian. MOSES had been educated in the best schools of Egypt.  MOSES had seen the burning bush and heard the voice of God. MOSES was the spiritual one.  But SHE had to recognize the move of God AND do the thing with the razor sharp knife on her baby’s wee-wee. 

So yeah.  Zipporah was cussin’ mad.

To be clear, Christians SHOULD NOT CUSS. 

But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth (Colossians 3:8).

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear (Ephesians 4:29).

Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving (Ephesians 5:4).

But, Exodus 4 reminds us that you can be saved, sanctified, filled with the Holy Ghost, and on a mission for God; but every now and then somebody still makes you (want to) cuss.

So, the morals of the story are:

1.  You must be FULLY committed to your God-given purpose because God is deathly serious about your calling.

And 2. Do what you’re supposed to do cause if somebody else has to do your job, you might get cussed out.

 --Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama. He writes a blog called A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

FATHER, ABRAHAM

A Father's Day Follow-up Blog

Instead of audio from our Father's Day sermon, I'm sharing thought from the message in this unusually long post.  Enjoy.

Abraham was a father.  Abraham was all kinds of fathers, well 5 kinds. 

1.  Abraham was an uncle who was like a father.

Haran begot Lot. And Haran died before his father Terah in his native land, in Ur of the Chaldeans. . . Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan (Genesis 11: 27, 28; 12:5).

After Lot’s dad and grandad died in the city for which Lot’s father was named (or the city named for Lot’s father),  Abraham took his nephew into his household.  When God called them  to complete the journey their father Terah had begun (Genesis 11:31), the patriarch brought his nephew along.

Abraham loved Lot.  He gave Lot herds and flocks and land out of what he gained in Egypt and Canaan.  When the young man and his staff started to chafe under Abraham’s rules and closeness, Abraham offered him first choice of the available pastures and his blessing.  When warring kings kidnapped Lot, Uncle Abraham immediately launched a rescue mission and in the aftermath of the mission, when the other kings tried to acquire Lot and his people as slaves, Abraham refused to sell them out even though it cost him his share of  the spoils of the battle (Genesis 14).    When Lot became an adult, Abraham referred to him as  his “brother” (Genesis 14:14), but he provided for and protected him as a father would a son.

When the Lord told Abraham of His plan to destroy Sodom, Gomorrah, and the other cities of the valley Abraham must have thought of his nephew living in Sodom because Uncle Abraham negotiated with God for the salvation of the wicked city.  Though there weren’t even 10 righteous men in all of Sodom, the faith of Lot’s uncle and surrogate father saved Lot and his family from dying with the sinful citizens of Sodom.

And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had dwelt (Genesis 19:29).

A father is an agent of spiritual covering for his children.   When a man steps into the space left vacant by a father who died or walked away, that man, like Uncle Abraham, can administer spiritual covering to his surrogate children. 

You may never replace your nephew’s/ neice’s/ grandchild’s/ little cousin’s/ foster child’s biological father because losing a parent is a lot of pain to process.   Young adult Lot’s rebellion against Abraham might have reflected the lingering grief of and anger of a child whose father and mother “died on him” while he was still young.   Nevertheless the man who stands in the gap as a father figure can, like Uncle Abraham, cover their surrogate child in prayer with the same faith that covers their own biological children.

2.  Abraham was a mentor who was like a father. 

Eliezer worked for Abraham.  He became Abraham’s steward, his right-hand man, but Eliezer wasn’t just a trusted employee.  Eliezer was for all intents and purposes, a member of Abraham’s family.   No.  More than that.  

Before Abraham’s first biological child was born, Abraham had named Eliezer as his legal heir. 

But Abram said, “Lord God, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?”  (Genesis 15:2)

Eliezer was like a son to Abraham. 

When you mentor youth in your community and young professionals in your industry, you have a chance to not only share knowledge but to pour out love.   When you mentor you can and should, like Mr. Abraham, see your proteges as heirs of your legacy.   

When Ishmael and Isaac were born, Abraham changed his will to direct the inheritance to his son; but Eliezer never lost his place of trust and significance in the house of Abraham.   Through all the drama that arose in the family, Eliezer remained loyal, and when the time came, it was (apparently) Eliezer whom God guided to the woman who would marry Isaac and become the literal mother of Israel (Genesis 24).

Abraham was over 147 years old when Eliezer brought Rebekah out of Syria and into Isaac’s arms.  It may be a long time before the young ones you mentor, teach, train, advocate for, and love are in  a position to help you.  It’s likely that you’ll never have to call on them for aid.  But, by mentoring a younger generation, you develop a pool of future leaders who can bless you and who will bless the world. 

3. Abraham let becoming an ex-husband make him an ex-father.

Because Sarah couldn’t get pregnant, Abraham took a 2^nd wife, an employee named Hagar. 

 So Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael  (Genesis 16: 15).

Abraham loved Ishmael.  He didn’t even want another son.  When the Lord appeared to remind Abraham that the promised descendants were still to come through Sarah, Abraham said to God, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!” (Genesis 16: 18)

But when Isaac was born, Sarah demanded that Abraham divorce Hagar and disown Ishmael.  Therefore she said to Abraham, “Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, namely with Isaac” (Genesis 21:10).

Abraham didn’t want to lose Ishmael, but God allowed the breakup, promising to take care of Ishmael and make a nation of the son of the bondwoman, because he is your seed” (Genesis 21:11-13).   God’s response indicated that though Abraham’s and Hagar’s marriage needed to end,   Ishmael was still under God’s favor and, thus, Abraham and Ishmael could stay connected without threatening the covenant God would execute through Isaac.  

In other words, Abraham had to divorce his 2^nd wife but not his eldest son.   But based on what’s in scripture, Ishmael didn’t see his father again until his funeral. 

Millenia later, the descendants of Ishmael founded a new religion and called it Islam.  Central to the Muslim faith is a narrative of the life of Father Abraham in which Ishmael is the promised child and  the Jews, as descendants of Isaac, are usurpers of Ishmael’s rightful place. 

Because Daddy Abraham let baby mama drama estrange him from his eldest son, Osama Bin Laden funded the 9/11 attacks.  Because Daddy Abraham allowed the break-up of his marriage to Hagar to be the breakdown of his role in his son’s life, the term “radical Islamist terrorist” is part of our common vocabulary. 

Sometimes, the dissolution of a marriage or relationship is so bitter that one  party keeps the child away from the other.  Sometimes that separation is warranted.  Most of the times I’ve seen, the separation isn’t. If you CAN’T see your child, neither God nor I fault you.

But if you just DON’T see your child ---- bro, you’re wrong.   You’re as wrong as Abraham.  Maybe more wrong because at least Abraham had a Divine guarantee that his son would be all right.   Ishmael lived 137 years and became the patriarch of 12 nations of his own (Genesis 25:13-18), but thousands of years later the pain of Dad’s abandonment still afflicts those of Ishmael’s blood.

As far as it is in your power, don’t let the differences between you and your ex prevent you from seeing, teaching, rearing, and loving the children you and they share.  It’s so much harder when you two aren’t together, but the extra effort may save the world a lot of trouble in the long run.

Every father has a legacy through his children.  That legacy may be good or evil.  Abraham’s legacy with Ishmael is negative.

But his legacy with Isaac is positive.   Not perfect, but positive.

4.  Abraham became a faith-full father.

When his relationship with Ishmael fell apart, Abraham focused all of his paternal affection on Isaac.  He loved Isaac like he was his only son (Genesis 22: 2).  Abraham loved Isaac so much that you had to wonder if he loved Isaac more than he loved God.  So, God devised an extreme test.  He told Abraham,“Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Genesis 22:2).

Abraham obediently took his son to the sacred site, but before he and Isaac went up to the altar, Daddy Abraham told the rest of their party, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you” (Genesis 22:5).

Abraham’s whole heart was tied up in Isaac:  all of his hopes, all sense of purpose for his labors, and struggles, and losses resided in the life of the only son he had left.  But Abraham’s FAITH was tied up in God.  Abraham believed that the Lord had not brought Isaac this far to leave him.  Abraham believed that God would fulfill all the promises He’d made, and God had promised to make a great nation out of Isaac’s descendants.  Abraham believed that even if he gave his son to God, God would give him back.  This was Abraham’s legacy of faith. 

(Note:  If YOU take your child out to sacrifice them to God, you’re going to a highly secure  psychiatric hospital and your child is going into foster care.  In fact, if you believe you’re hearing God tell you to sacrifice your child, call the department of mental health and after you explain and give your address ask them to transfer you to DHR.)

As a father, Abraham failed in several spectacularly tragic ways.  But with Isaac, Abraham successfully combined a bottomless store of fatherly love with unerring faith in his God into

such a deep and immovable foundation that the family’s religious faith survived being surrounded by pagans and polytheists.  It survived famine and the betrayal of brothers.  It survived immersion in Egyptian culture and centuries of discrimination and slavery.  The faith bequeathed by Abraham survived wilderness and war and exile and the attempts at eradication by the greatest empires of man. 

Abraham’s love and faith were so genuine and absolute that after seriously intending to stab and burn Isaac on a sacrificial altar, father and son still had a strong relationship.  Think about how deep your father-son connection has to be to walk out of that incident together, continue living in the same camp, and trust your father to arrange your marriage.

LOVE and FAITH.

Love your children with all you have.  Be good to them.  Be good for them.  And trust God.  In thought, word, deed, and demeanor be the greatest example of faith in God that your children could ever experience.  Be a loving father full of faith so that no matter what happens to you or between you all, your children will KNOW beyond a shadow of any doubt that Daddy loves them and God is real.

But DON’T offer your kid as a human sacrifice.

But the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!”

So he said, “Here I am.”

And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him (Genesis 22:11-12).

5.  Abraham was a human father.  He failed, but he kept trying to do better.    

Abraham didn’t like being alone.  After Sarah died and Isaac started their own family, Abraham again took a wife, and her name was Keturah (Genesis 25:1). 

Yes, he was somewhere north of 147 years old at the time.  And yes, they had children: six boys (Genesis 25:2-4).

But the time Abraham’s and Keturah’s boys came of age, Isaac was established as the primary heir to Abraham’s lands and connections.  Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac (Genesis 25:5).  But, old Daddy Abraham didn’t make the same mistake he’d made with Ishmael.   He didn’t leave them with nothing.  He gave them enough wealth to set themselves up out of town.   Abraham gave gifts to the sons of the concubines which Abraham had; and while he was still living he sent them eastward, away from Isaac his son, to the country of the east (Genesis 25:6).    Abraham tried to balance the favor/ favoritism toward Isaac with fatherly love and fairness to his youngest children. 

One of Abraham’s and Keturah’s sons founded the Midianite nation.  The Midianites eventually fell into general idolatry and tried to spiritually sabotage Israel in the wilderness (Numbers 25).  However, some of the children of Midian remembered the faith that Father Abraham had taught them.  One of them was a shepherd-priest named Jethro, or Reuel. 

Jethro did for Moses what Abraham had done for Eliezer and Lot.  (Exodus 2; 4; 18).     Jethro took Moses in, mentored him in the faith of Abraham and the ways of a good shepherd.  He made Moses part of his family (Exodus 2:15), supported Moses in his calling (Exodus 4:18), celebrated Moses’ success and with his wife and children, and shared wise advice (Exodus 18).

Through 500-plus years, Abraham’s faith endured among the descendants of his 3^rd wife.  Even Ishmael’s descendants, after centuries of apostasy, remembered Abraham and returned, in Islam, to reverence for the Old Testament. 

Abraham was a great and imperfect man, a human and, therefore, flawed father.  But he tried and kept trying.  It paid off.

Eliezer did well.  Ishmael did well. Isaac did well.  Midian did well.  Even after the craziness that happened to Lot after Sodom (Genesis 19:30-38), his descendants Ruth (book of Ruth) and Naamah (1 Kings 14:21) joined the royal and messianic lineage of Abraham. 

HOPE, FAITH, LOVE.

No matter what kinds of father you are, you will be an imperfect one.   Recognize your failures but never stop trying to do better.

Love your children and your adopted children and your community proteges and your children by your ex and your children by your baby’s mother and your stepkids and your other kids.  However you are made their father, love them.   Love them and trust God.  

Believe that the Lord has power, grace, and favor enough for all your sons and daughters.  

Teach your children to believe.  Fill all of them with a sense of hope, with the knowledge that no matter how their family is built or broken, God has a plan for them, a plan for good and not for evil, to give them a future and a hope.

--Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama. He writes a blog called A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

THE MONSTERS WE LOVE

We hate monsters, but we love OUR monsters.

Eric Rudolph was a serial killer who murdered innocent people with bombs.  His mama still loved him. 

Stalin was genocidal, but  Andrew Jackson was a strong leader?

Jeffrey Dahmer killed and ate people.  His parents still loved him.  

Think of Thomas Jefferson the slave owner and Nat Turner the rebel slave.  Hear in your own head how you condemn one and make excuses for the other, the one with whom you identify?    

Liberal-leaning commentators attack Ivanka Trump because they despise her father’s policies and personality.  But before and since Daddy Trump was elected, Ivanka championed several liberal causes.  Now, they call on Ivanka to denounce her father and distance herself from his administration.   Comedian and talk-show host Samantha Bee recently called Ivanka a “feckless c**t” because she refused to turn on Donald.

That’s not going to happen.

You’re not asking a woman to denounce a misogynistic man.  You’re asking a little girl to abandon her daddy.  You’re not asking a professed liberal to stand against a conservative administration, you’re asking a daughter to turn against her father in the moment of his greates accomplishment. 

President Trump may be a racist, self-worshipping monster; but he is Ivanka’s racist, self-worshipping monster.         

This, scripture affirms that the sin of partiality is the root of our tendency to injustice and hypocrisy.  We hate the sins we hate, but we love the sinners we love.

  Joseph, son of Israel, exploited a national tragedy to bankrupt and enslave the entire working class population of Egypt while protecting and enriching the Egyptian elites and his biological family.  Of those three groups, the only one who had not betrayed and abused Joseph was the working class population of Egypt (Genesis 47: 13-26).

Jepthah the Gileadite (Judges 11-12) was one of the great Judges of Israel.  He saved Israel from the oppression of Ammonite raiders.  He also committed the ultimate religious heresy: he murdered his own daughter as a human sacrifice to God despite all the explicit commands in the Bible not to ever perform human sacrifices.  

Samson (Judges 13-16) had the powers of a superhero, powers which he used to impress Philistine women and  win bets against Philistine men.  The deliverance he gave to his own people was the accidental result of his (literal) dying request for blind vengeance.   

David (2 Samuel 11) betrayed the most honorable and loyal warrior in his most elite division.  His highest ranking general knew it.  His royal ministers, the members of Uriah’s household, and most of Jerusalem knew it.  (Come on now.  Factor in the time to discover Bathsheba was pregnant, send word for Uriah, get Uriah back from the front lines, send him back to the front lines, kill him there, get word back,  have a mourning period, and hold the wedding, which traditionally lasted a week.  Bathsheba was showing before the honeymoon.)

Absalom, David’s favorite child, killed his own brother; burned down his David’s best friend’s field (2 Samuel 14), overthrew his father in a coup, slept with/ raped his father’s wives, and tried repeatedly to have his dad murdered (2 Samuel 15-18).  David never condemned Absalom, and he forbade his forces to harm him despite his crimes.  When General Joab, David’s oldest friend defied that order, David held a grudge  so deep that on his deathbed he ordered Joab's assassination (1 Kings 2:5-6).

Aaron, Moses’ older brother, made the golden calf and led the children of Israel in its idolatrous worship, all while Moses was on the mountain receiving the 10 Commandments (Exodus 32).  When Moses came down, he ordered the Levites to “kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor,”  but Moses didn’t let anyone touch Aaron.  Aaron got to keep his life and his status; less than a year later he was consecrated as high priest.

Joseph, Jephtah, Samson, David, Aaron, and others who did worse are revered as heroes of the faith.   Except for David, there’s no record that any of these men every repented or even felt convicted over their atrocities.   

They did great good in their lives, but they also committed great evil, but we ignore their monstrous sins because of the good they did for their faith, for OUR faith. 

We hate monsters, but we love OUR monsters, and that is the kudzu root of all kinds of evil. 

We cannot have justice until we can judge our friends and our enemies with the exact same measure of wrath and mercy. 

You shall have the same law for the stranger and for one from your own country; for I am the Lord your God.  (Leviticus 24:22).

We will not be a just nation or a righteous church until we commend our political rivals and condemn our social allies in equal measure based on what they did, not what (we think) they stand for.

You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor (Leviticus 19: 15).

We can’t honestly call ourselves ethical, or good, or godly until we treat all monsters the same.

For there is no partiality with God (Romans 2:11).

History and Scripture agree that such has never been the case in human civilization.  We may not see real justice until Jesus personally comes back, but society’s historic failings don’t exempt you and I as God’s people from the commands to do justice and love mercy equally for all alleged sinners.

Look around and look within and be honest about the kinds of monsters you love, the affiliations and self-designations that get a pass from you and the ones that receive immediate condemnation.  Work on that.  Wrestle with yourself.   I’ll do the same.   That’s the only way to overcome the most vicious monster in the room, the monster we love more than all others: the one who looks back at each of us from the mirror.   

 --Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama. He writes a blog called A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064