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Readings from Joshua and Micah. Listen for the word of God. The Lord said to Joshua this day , I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel so that they may know that I

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will be with you as I was with Moses, you are the one who shall command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant. When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan,

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you shall stand still in the Jordan. Joshua then said to the Israelites draw near and hear the words of the Lord, your God. Joshua said by this, you shall know that among you is the

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living God who without fail will drive out from before you. The Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hes , the PRS, the gas sites, the Amorites , the je sites, the ark of the covenant

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of the Lord of all the Earth is going to pass before you into the Jordan. When the souls of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the Lord come to rest in the waters of

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the Jordan. The waters of the Jordan flowing from love shall cut off. They shall stand in a single heap for Micah thus says, the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray who cry peace

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when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths. Therefore , it shall be night to you without vision and darkness to you without revelation. But as for me

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, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the Lord and with justice and might to declare the Jacob his transgression and Israel his sin. Hear this you rulers of the House of Jacob and Chiefs

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of the House of Israel who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong. Therefore, because of you, Zion shall be plowed as a field. Jerusalem shall become

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a heap of ruins in the mountain of the temple , a wooded height. The word of the Lord in his acceptance speech to the prestigious Peruvian Academy of the Spanish language theologian Gusto Gusto Gustavo Gutierrez offers a

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brilliant reinterpretation of the Tower of Babel and Pentecost narratives . God's scattering of the people into different languages is often interpreted as a curse reversed at Pentecost. When through the spirit, people of diverse tongues all speak

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the same language. Gutierrez with an eye to Empire and the imposition of Spanish upon the indigenous peoples of Peru. We read the tower narrative from the underside . He notes the tower and city are built so

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the people can make a name for themselves. He thinks of the dangerous, forced hard labor of those who build zigs pyramids, castles and fortresses. He notes at Pentecost, all peoples do not speak the

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same language but through the spirit, all people understand the gospel that is Jesus call to social, cultural , economic and spiritual liberation each in their own tongue . He recognizes God's scattering of the tower workers into

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different languages as a blessing that liberates, impoverished multitudes laboring for those striving after Empire, Pentecost two blossoms amidst the depths of empire. An impoverished pregnant girl on the verge of giving birth. One among multitudes

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across the Roman Empire forced to travel so an emperor can inventory his resources. A genocide of infants and toddlers, a babe on a desperate flight through the Sinai across the border to Egypt. A boy growing

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up among a colonized people in an age of crushing inequity, a man filled with the spirit proclaiming love to Empire that is proclaiming social cultural, economic and spiritual liberation and forgiveness for all to Empire with such

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brilliance, passion and effect that Empire kills him with a brutal form of execution used for insurrectionists to terrify subjugated peoples into submission. What is stunning is this that what is pure born from subjugation, exploitation,

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genocide is not hatred, thirst for vengeance or a fight for one's own empire, Pentecost, weakening to the spirit of love for all. This is the core realization of one of the most important intellectuals of

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the 20th century. The Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas Leo , a French soldier captured by Rommel's forces in an early battle was a Nazi labor camp prisoner for five years. He went into the war, a secular

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intellectual. But amidst the horror, suffering and killing in the camps, he was awakened to the spirit of love for all. He helps us understand how paradoxically we are never more awake to. And certain

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of the reality of a love which seizes us for others than when we undergo its violation. Levinas realizes that contrary to modern secular philosophy, ultimate reality is not a brute flux. And the primordial state of

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nature is not an individualistic war of all against all . Because agape God in so far as God is love by which we are taken hostage by passionate concern for every face that moral reality is indeed real,

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a real force in our world. So that in so far as we do not harden our hearts, we are diverse peoples who are one before God seized by Agape United in Shalom in Corona. That is

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the primordial reality about which we are never more certain than when we are rendered speechless in horror. Over his smile. Levino realizes the reality of Shalom anchored in agape is more primordial than any human divisions in

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agape. He is seized by passionate concern even for the faces of his captors, his enemies. He is 1/20 century Jew who like a first century Jew calls us to love our enemies. This is not

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naive love. Rado is not a pacifist. He was a soldier even as we love our enemies in so far as they are enemies of the good and are striving to violate other faces. We may need

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to act violently even use deadly force against them, but only for the sake of preventing unjust violation of other faces, only to the degree absolutely necessary. And always with the horror of being forced to violate

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a beloved face soldiers who have killed justifiably but are haunted by the faces of those they have killed. Will understand what the war Lovano means. When he says that of course, you can end a life

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, but you can never kill the face. This names moral reality and moral injury. We afflict upon ourselves whenever we harm others and it grounds rules of war, not in modernity, enlightened self interest,

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which is so easily trumped by immediate interest or a thirst for vengeance. But in the reality of Aga Bay violence, only in defense of what is clearly articulated as good for all, only to the degree

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necessary. Always with named regret, always with horror over being forced to violate beloved faces. We need not go from babble to Pentecost to find the spirit of love emerging from experience of empire. The very

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next passage after Babel in Genesis, as we transition from the primeval history to the story of God's chosen people is the call to someone from one of those people scattered from Babel, a Chaldean from er Abram

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who is chosen to leave his people, a guard against Empire, grounded in blood to migrate to a distant land, a guard against Empire grounded in the land. With the promise that God will make Him

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a great nation so that he will be a blessing so that through Him, all peoples on earth will be blessed. This contrast between the tower builders and Abraham provides a tight contrast between apostate empire and faithful

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nation where the tower builders strove to make themselves great over and against all others. God agape will make Abraham into a nation great because it is good for all peoples empire strives to secure itself against all others

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for its own benefit. God's chosen will be a great nation in so far as they are for the good of all nations. Truly great nations are rooted in Agape. Empire is rooted in an existential state

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of nature. War of all against all orientation. Empire is not about size or power desire for empire can lurk in the heart of individuals or the dispossessed . So history is looted with examples of oppressed of

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one age, become oppressors of another. At the same time, great powers could be rooted in Agape could understand that a truly great nation is good strives after good for all peoples. This is where our

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Mica text confronts our Joshua text where the Jewish prophets repeatedly confront prophets who are false because they would make Israel not a blessing to all people but an empire . Joshua has written after the fact to lend unqualified

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divine sanction to the conquest of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites and the Je sites. Is this a faithful living out of God's call to be agape's chosen to be a blessing to all peoples?

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No says Micah, this is the way of Empire , the dog eat dog war of all against all and it will end in ruin. Let's not pretend my guy is not talking to us. 200 years

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ago, the bluff. This chapel stands on was on the eastern edge of the Comanche Empire. We in the United States need to think not of the Hittites, Amorites and the jeu sites, but of

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the Comanche, the Soothe Creek Hona, so Cherokee and Apache. And today in our globalized setting of the Philippines, Bangladesh, Syria, Pakistan, Honduras , Guatemala, Nigeria, and Haiti. And we

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need to ask ourselves, are we striving to be one of the truly great nations among Agape's chosen a blessing to all peoples using violence only in defense of what is clearly articulated as good for all, only

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to the degree necessary. Always with named regret, always with horror over being forced to violate beloved faces or are we Empire fighting for our own benefit? A source of suffering, wailing and lament. Gustavo

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Gutierrez was realistic. He did not romanticize and he was a reformer, not a revolutionary. He learned from the devastating failures of the Marxist revolutions, he knows no one spoke Spanish in Peru 600 years ago

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. And now the colonial language and culture permeates Peru . But he says there is no turning back history and there are no pristine origins. 200 years before the Comanche Empire was defeated by American soldiers in the

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US. Quest for a continental empire. The Comanche themselves emerged from the Arapahoe and swept down through the southern plains, conquering other peoples in their own quest after Empire. It's pretty much the story. Since

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Homo Sapiens fought Neanderthals, we all live on Blood Spanish language and culture is here to stay and now it should be celebrated. Gutierrez affirms to the Peruvian Academy as long as it is not imperialistic, as

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long as it embraces the spirit of Mica, the spirit of Pentecost. Gutierrez calls upon us to explicitly paint clear beautiful utopian visions of who we might be as diverse peoples united by love, specific visions of

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Peru of the United States of Nigeria, Israel and Pakistan of the Americas, the Middle East and the South China Sea, even of a global community. And he calls us to strive to realize these utopian

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visions in our national and international laws and policies. At the same time, he rejects revolutionary violence and pace, transforming societies takes time. The key to its insurer is to ensure we are guided by utopian

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visions and are always moving urgently in the right is all this naive, unrealistic, dangerously clueless about the Real World for, for years. I lived near New York City. My wife's from Long Island and

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her father worked in the city. My sister and her family live there. Cindy's brothers live there too . When I watched the Towers Fall, I could remember the last time I had worked on my notebook

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computer in the Borders, books, books, coffee shop on the ground floor. On 911, we couldn't make contact with our family members, two of whom were supposed to be exiting the Twin Towers subway

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station at the time of the attack, Cindy's dad and one brother were out of their office and apartment for months, but happened to have missed their train into the city that day. Her other brothers saw

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the second plane and collapsed from the roof of his building, but he was physically safe. The back deck and yard of my sister's home were an inch deep with ash, but they were 911 was a

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heinous indiscriminate attack upon civilian men and Children. It only deserved condemnation. It was personal. Yet in the weeks after 911, I was among the minority who spoke against vengeance who marched against the US going

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to war in Iraq, who opposed Guantanamo Bay, who wanted us to abide strictly by the Geneva conventions who wanted to ask and understand why a Saudi Arabian studying economics in Germany would lead an attack on famous

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symbols of global capitalism in the military, industrial complex . We were not pacifists, we supported carefully targeted attacks against the terrorists, but we wanted to be guided by clearly articulated utopian visions. We wanted to

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use violence only to the degree absolutely necessary, always with named regret and only in defense of what was clearly articulated as good. For all we were portrayed as naive, unrealistic, clueless about the real world

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and unpatriotic. What prevailed was a spirit of vengeance . A massively disproportionate response. More than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of us soldiers dead, thousands more physically or emotionally scarred for

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life. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead. A generation of Iraqi Children growing up in war zones, the rise of ISIS the fall and return of the Taliban all for what gain some who beat the drums

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of war did have utopian democratic ideals. But unlike Gutierrez, they did not learn from the failures of the Marxist revolutions. They thought their ideals could be imposed to revolutionary violence and they succeeded in creating only

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devastation and chaos. It is infuriating to think that those supposedly superior. We understand the real world hardline response. Folks played right into those terrorist hands. Could those terrorists have imagined in their wildest dreams,

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the massive destruction, destabilization and loss they would succeed in provoking us to the so called realists with their Neo Darwinian Hobbs and philosophy and real politic were and are wrong philosophically and politically. But all around the

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world. Russia, South China Sea Middle East, Africa, the United States and the Americas in neo liberal globalizing institutions. Everywhere we look, empire is ascended. We are facing population crises, depletion and

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depo despoil of natural resources. An epical level extinction event and climate change is rushing at us as a force multiplier. An empire is everywhere ascended. Micah says we are on a road to a heap of

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ruins. Peoples of faith and fidelity to agape bring hard won wisdom as wizened as the prophets. But we are caricatured, marginalized, dismissed voices crying in