Rev. Karleen A Jung

07/20/2024

Ten Commandments, FINAL.

I'm not sure the legislature in Louisiana fully thought through the intent of the Decalogue in its legislative action. It counters the predatory proclivities of our society. It focuses on the most vulnerable in society who are to be protected from exploitation by the more powerful. It is a vision of the neighborhood in which ALL parties enjoy full freedom and have the benefits of a viable economy.

We can only hope that this legislative action in Louisiana will create such an alternative society that defies predatory action, exploitation, and racial measures of equity.

We can only hope. And pray.

07/20/2024

Ten Commandments, Part 6.

In the ninth commandment, we see the term "neighbor" for the first time. This prohibition imagines a society of upright neighbors who have no desire or inclination to leverage another neighbor, whether in court or market transactions. Thus, it intends to protect society and its members from distortion and false representation. This reason for truth-telling is that the neighbor and neighborhood are enhanced. It's a powerful protection against propaganda and misleading advertising that offers a world organized against neighborliness for manipulation and exploitation.

The tenth and final commandment mentions "neighbor" three times. This connects it with the intention of Exodus 20.2, parking the God of the Exodus with the neighbor in covenant. It calls to mind Jesus' summary of the Decalogue in Matthew 22: Love the Lord your God...and your neighbor as yourself. The way we love our neighbor is in life-giving and sustainable ways. This prohibition of coveting most likely intends to protect vulnerable neighbors from predatory neighbors who have the means and leverage to exploit.

The God of the Exodus is the patron and protector of the vulnerable. And has been so since the Exodus emancipation.

07/20/2024

Ten Commandments, Part 5.

The seventh commandment on adultery firmly places s*xual activity in the fabric of viable, sustained human relationships. It insists that s*xuality belongs in such relationships and so PRECLUDES the reduction of any s*xual partner to that of a usable object. Physical interaction is legitimate ONLY in ongoing relational connections. In other words, anything OTHER than s*x between two consenting adults is adultery (and not to mention a crime).

There is a long understanding that "stealing" in the eighth commandment comes from an old prohibition of kidnapping (Deut 24) - an idiom for "stealing a life." In other words, this is a prohibition against reducing any human life to a commercial object, such as in the form of enslavement, s*x-trafficking, or making a human person a participant in exploitative labor. It is likely possible that the protection may extend to that of someone's property from a greedy government or a predatory economy. It's a theft of personhood and all that encompasses it.

07/20/2024

Ten Commandments, Part 4. (BTW, there are two different numbering systems for the Ten Commandments. Just an FYI.)

In the sixth commandment, the traditional translation "Thou shalt not kill" has been changed in the NRSV to "Thou shalt not murder," making room for so-called legitimate killings such as war or capital punishment. The commandment, however, intends no such exceptions, insisting that all human life is precious. This includes social offenders and "inconvenient" persons who disturb our preferred social arrangements. It's more inclusive that we are willing to affirm. It also challenges our easy quid pro quo of "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth..." It may have also included protection for unborn children, which of course leaves us the hard work of adjudicating when a fetus is to be reckoned as a "child." In any case, however, Jesus clearly asserts that the old "law of retaliation" is invalidated in the new world he initiates (Mt. 5.38-42).

07/20/2024

Ten Commandments, Part 3.

The observance of the Sabbath reiterates the Exodus emancipation. It's also connected to the year of release referenced in Deuteronomy 15 and the jubilee year in Leviticus 25. In the year of release, debts are canceled for poor people. The Jubilee year provides for the return of property to those who have lost it through economics.

The commandment concerning "mother and father" makes honoring and protecting aging people a prerequisite of socio-economic wellbeing. The predatory economic system of our society aims at private wealth at the expense of vulnerable, non-productive people. It admires a stark individualism where vulnerable, non-productive people are disregarded. This commandment is a guard against the dismissal of those who are no longer productive among us.

07/20/2024

Ten Commandments, Part 2.

They forbid the worship of idols. In other words, false articulations and embodiments of God. The idols that plague us and our culture include all of the "isms" of race, class, gender and nation. God is "jealous" and won't allow any such "ism" to claim our loyalty or our energy, so that practices of racism, s*xism, classism, or nationalism are brought under severe judgment. It's this God of freedom who insists on fidelity to this articulation or embodiment of God.

Thus, God's command cannot be utilized to support ANY ideology, such as "God and nation" or "God and whiteness" or "God and maleness" or "God and wealth." Any effort to attach God to any such "ism" is dismissed by the prohibition of the second commandment.

07/20/2024

Let's talk about the Ten Commandments. Part 1. (See other parts in future posts.) I'm grateful to the writings of theologian Walter Brueggemann and others.

The God who speaks them is the same one who has delivered Israel to freedom - God has heard the desperate cries of the slaves that evoked the emancipatory exodus that overthrew the slave state of the Egyptian pharaoh. It shows us that the memory of this exodus is the seedbed of EVERY revolutionary, emancipatory movement in the history of humanity. This places God on the side of liberation, who is opposed to every exploitative system of brutality. This, of course, includes the long-running oppression of non-whites in our nation.

So, the Ten Commandments (or Decalogue) is a CHARTER for revolutionary social change that overthrows every hierarchical system of politics and economics.

There is NO god who can displace this God or tone down the urgency of such emancipation.

05/19/2024

Today's message on the creativity of God - in time for the wild work of the Spirit on Pentecost!

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a viol...

04/28/2024

How are we altered through relationship? How are we changed to be the people God desires? Explore this with me (and the congregations I serve) over the next few weeks.

Have you ever read a book and the ending - well, the ending messed up the rest of the book? Perhaps the ending felt unresolved. Or it left y...

04/20/2024

Lots of action happening around the waterfront today, including lmpd saddling up to patrol during Thunder. It's the two-week kickoff to the running of 150th Kentucky Derby.

04/15/2024

What a lovely memory!

03/22/2024

In this Sunday's reading, the disciples are confused. Have you ever felt like everybody else understood something you didn’t? What did you do? Did you pretend that you understood what was happening? Did you ask questions? Did you keep quiet?

As I've gotten older (and my son has, too) and I converse with him and his friends, it often seems as if there's a hidden code or understanding that passes between them that I just don't get. When I ask them to explain, they laugh!

What's that about? Is it that I'm getting older and not as cool or hip as I once (thought I) was? Hmmmm....

Similar experiences anyone?