The Sacred Art of Awareness

Before we start, I invite you to grab a piece of paper and something to write with. Jot don whatever words, phrases, or ideas come to mind as we go along.

Psalm 19
1 The heavens are telling the glory of God;
   and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours forth speech,
   and night to night declares knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words;
   their voice is not heard;
4 yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
   and their words to the end of the world.

In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun,
5 which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,
   and like a strong man runs its course with joy.
6 Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
   and its circuit to the end of them;
   and nothing is hidden from its heat.

7 The law of the Lord is perfect,
   reviving the soul;
the decrees of the Lord are sure,
   making wise the simple;
8 the precepts of the Lord are right,
   rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear,
   enlightening the eyes;
9 the fear of the Lord is pure,
   enduring for ever;
the ordinances of the Lord are true
   and righteous altogether.
10 More to be desired are they than gold,
   even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey,
   and drippings of the honeycomb.

11 Moreover by them is your servant warned;
   in keeping them there is great reward.
12 But who can detect their errors?
   Clear me from hidden faults.
13 Keep back your servant also from the insolent;
   do not let them have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless,
   and innocent of great transgression.

14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

When was the last time you experienced awe? Wonder? What was that like?

Perhaps write down a single word or a few…

Perhaps it was in magnificent sunsets, powerful rainstorms, a cocooned caterpillar writhing loose into a butterfly?

This week I found myself in awe of someone who would choose to enter with grace into a conversation that seems loaded with landmines - which could sound a lot like just general respect, but feels different in that it completely escapes my comprehending.

Looking around me now I notice the wonder of houseplants living and dying - turning light and air into life for them and for me, breaking down and turning back to earth which will nurture the next one.

My own hands, a marvel of delicate bones and powerful joints, covered in ever-smaller lines of intimate detail with distinct intricate patterns.

How are you being drawn into awe? Wonder? What is it like for you?

And thinking about it now, do you notice God in any way connected to that experience? In what way?

The Psalmist looks around at creation, at the ordinary things that surround us – ordinary only by their commonness and notices them as extraordinary in their essence, their being – evidence and proclamation of a wondrous God.

I wonder if awe is all that different from awareness, paying attention, noticing.

And through noticing…recognizing holiness, the connection to and reflection of the divine, even and especially in the common - creation itself in communion with Christ, a witness to redemption. 

From this base of mystical in-dwelling relationship between Creator and creation, the poet gives shape to God’s law. This in its various forms is described as perfect, sure, right, clear, pure, and true. In some ways this seems a comfort and some ways a source of confusion when little in our world seems to be perfect, sure, right, clear, pure, or true.

And to be honest, I have a lot of baggage around the words of law and command, decrees and ordinances, in the ways they have been wielded as weapons of control and self-righteousness. But these misuses are harmful particularly because they deny and diminish relationship - that divine connection and integration that is noticeable when we look closely.

Christian mystic, Hidegard Von Bingen, lived in tumultuous times too – feudal Germany of the Middles Ages when classist tensions and power struggles pervaded politics and the church, which shaped all of society and were declared not only blessed but ordained by God. At age 7, her family brought her to live with and learn from a monastery of Benedictine nuns where she followed the sacred rhythms of prayer, work, study, and reflection. At an early age she began to see clear but other-worldly visions of God, although self-doubt kept her from sharing this with others until encouraged by trusted friends and colleagues and convicted by the consistent voice of God. She writes that she often heard the repeated refrain “speak and write what you see and hear.” Speak and write what you see and hear. Her visions became respected and trusted, not unlike the dreams of Joseph, in ways that shaped the powerful.

These visions were not revelations born of ease. In fact, Saint Hildegard often spoke about being ill and the ongoing pain of her life.  Other mystics from whom many draw inspiration, from Saint Teresa of Avila to Saint Teresa of Calcutta, also write about experiencing constant affliction. Hildegard reflects that the sensitivity of her sickness is not something that she overcame but that opened her to an awareness of the Spirit and brought her to express its work in preaching, publishing, composing, and in the sciences. Beyond ecstatic visions, she saw creation itself as brilliant with divine life that reveals the God who cannot be seen.

She composed what is considered the earliest morality play known in the church and set it to music, from which we draw these words of vision:

“Praises ought to be given to the heavenly creator with the unceasing voice of heart and mouth. For the creator gives grace not only to those standing and erect by also to those sliding and falling out of their very high seats.

Thereupon, you see, O people, the sky got very bright. This stands for the joy of the heavenly city. And I heard all the previously mentioned virtues sing in a wondrous manner to the various types of music. They persisted strongly in the way of truth as they sand the various praises of the city of celestial joy. They persisted strongly as they called those with complaints back to praising with joy.  This signifies that you hear a pleasant and sweet musical performance sounding forth from the chosen ones with wondrous joy as they sing about all the wonderful things of God which have been prophesied to you. This is just like the air containing and sustaining all those things which are under heaven.

This musical performance exists in the heavenly city and perseveres in God with pleasant devotion. It also exists in the complaints of those whom the old serpent has tried to destroy, but whom divine virtue nevertheless has led through to the company of blessed joy.  The blessed joy contains those mysteries which the human mind cannot know while on earth. The virtues persisted in exhorting and encouraging themselves so that they might fight back the snares of the devil and help people gain salvation. But these virtues do overcome the snares of the devil so that the faithful may pass over at last from sin through to celestial reward through repentance.

This means that the virtues resist in the minds of the faithful the various faults by which they have been wearied by the devil. And with these having been overcome with the strongest strength, the people who had fallen into sin are then turned back to divine nourishment. This happens when they march through and bewail their earlier deeds and then contemplate ad provide for their later deeds.”

She envisions the sky, the air, and the sounds of music as holding the holy gifts of joy and nourishment, and mystery that draw us near to God and redemption.

Applying this lens back to psalm and the divine dance between holiness of creation and the law of God, the meaning is opened. The rule of God becomes less hierarchical, but more akin to the rule of life which shaped monastic communities, pointing them back to a grounding and an aspiration that is rooted first and foremost in relationship. The law of God is reflected in the order of creation which gives meaning and movement to our lives. Perhaps that which may be loaded language for us – decrees and commands, might be better understood as establishing healthy boundaries and practicing life-giving patterns.

…Patterns like noticing the holy in our midst and becoming aware of God’s reflection in the images and experiences of each day.

Thursday night I got this sudden invitation from some friends to join their online concert that evening. Every summer they serve as artists in residence for a week of Family Camp at a Lutheran Camp in the Black Hills of South Dakota. And although, we would not likely have made the journey to this program Dakotas this summer even without the pandemic, we were finally able to share in this thing we’ve heard them rave about for years. Marley and I paused the episode of Babysitter’s Club to join in. We sang along and clapped our hands and stopped our feet.

I didn’t recognize the moment as holy at the time, at least not consciously or explicitly, but I knew, I felt… it was set apart. Reflecting on it now, I’m aware of it as holy not because songs about Jesus are innately closer to God (because we also sang…very loudly… Time After Time and Ring of Fire)…but it was reflective of God’s glory in its ability to disrupt my go go go habits for something silly and joyful for its own sake, sacred in its power to connect a community across all kinds of barriers. And I stand in awe.

The Psalm and the Mystic teach us to open ourselves to notice, to pay attention, to become aware of the holy around us, to look for God and God’s work in our lives and our world.

Every time we begin worship as +KINDRED, we say that this is a time when we look for the face of Christ in those gathered together. This isn’t just a platitude, but a practice and a proclamation.

God is with us and shapes our being. The Spirit stirs us to recognize and respond.  Redemption is not just for me in isolation, but we through community.

Unlike the removed nature of the Desert Mothers we looked at last week, Hildegard’s Mystic life is marked by several public preaching tours, growing community, writing to bishops and popes, kings, and emperors. Her awe-some visions of the divine bring her into an ever-widening circle of relationships.

This week I invite you to be on the lookout for God and to write and speak what you see and hear. Make notes, keep a journal, reflect each day on where and when you noticed a reflection of the holy. You have permission to name as sacred those perhaps ordinary things which reflect holiness for you. This may be most difficult but also most necessary in these times where we maybe feel cut off from the holy.

As we awaken to the awareness of God among us, may the words of our mouth and the mediations of our heart give glory to God. Amen.

On Longing + Discernment

Psalm 42

To the leader. A Maskil of the Korahites.
1 As a deer longs for flowing streams,
   so my soul longs for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God,
   for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
   the face of God?
3 My tears have been my food
   day and night,
while people say to me continually,
   ‘Where is your God?’

4 These things I remember,
   as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng,
   and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
   a multitude keeping festival.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
   and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise them,
   my help 6and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;
   therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
   from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
   at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
   have gone over me.
8 By day the LORD commands steadfast love,
   and at night God’s  song is with me,
   a prayer to the God of my life.
9 I say to God, my rock,
   ‘Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully
   because the enemy oppresses me?’
10 As with a deadly wound in my body,
   my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually,
   ‘Where is your God?’

11 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
   and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise them,
   my help and my God.

Here we begin our series on Christian Mystics and we’re highlighting the women in this tradition because their voices are too often missed and we miss something of the story of our people, of God’s presence and promise through them when they are absent. We’ll dive further into the identity and practices of particular mystics and how they might bless our own faith, but first, to be clear, let me say that this is not a lecture series and I’m not a history professor. As much as such details can enrich our understanding, during this time I hope and pray that we are shaped by a study WITH the mystics rather than a study OF the mystics. That said, one key practice across their stories is the practice of silence and stillness. And so, from time to time, I will leave moments of open space in our sermons that do not need to be filled, but invite you to practice sitting in those moments, allowing them to linger, and see what happens.  I won’t throw you off the deep end without warning, but I invite you to go slowly, give yourself time for longer pauses, leave space for big questions for reflection to percolate. I want to give you the gift of stillness that often escapes us. Maybe you’ll want to keep a little journal or paper and pencil for writing by your side.  But we always say we’re going slow down, we have apps to remind us to take deep breaths, and somehow we seem to keep blowing through those reminders.

These practices don’t come naturally to me either.  One time I met up with this woman who works as a life coach, and she just listened to me for a while and asked me good questions. I really liked her and felt like we were getting to know one another better and then she remarked, “I noticed when you talk sometimes it seems you hardly stop to breath….Do you find it hard to stop in general?” Lady, I just met you.  But also, like, who told you!?! Even and perhaps especially during this time of relative isolation, for me, it has been particularly difficult to find space for quiet, stillness, or solitude and I feel my soul struggling because of it.

So we’re going to try it and see how it goes.  And if you, like me, have rambunctious kiddos or critters that might make these things harder to honor for a time…come back and engage this after they’ve gone to sleep. The truth is that sometimes navigating it all at once feels too distracting, but sometimes we lean into distraction because it helps us escape something hard or uncomfortable. I trust you know yourself best. So take a breath, be open to this being what it is with grace, and let’s see how God uses the space.

Our first big question for takes a note from the Psalmist. And so I wonder…

What do you long for? Not what you think you SHOULD long for, but what do you, right now, actually long for?

....

Push past the longings that lay on the surface, “I long for a world with fewer mosquitoes,” “I long for the final season of Schitt’s Creek to be released on Netflix”…

What do you long for? …

The past? With processions and festivals and singing with friends and worship in the ways we’ve known before? The future? With hoped-for stability and renewal.  Sometimes I didn’t realize I was longing for something until the possibility is off the table.  Going to school, sitting in a quiet café with a cup of coffee, hugging my favorite queens at the bar, getting that medical bill paid off, that birthday we had hoped we could celebrate differently. For rest, real rest for a weary soul.

Yes, we long for all these things, but what lies beneath them?

What does your SOUL really yearn for? …

Connection? Meaning? Purpose? Direction? Comfort? Justice? Wholeness? Belonging? Survival?

The Psalmist longs for the closeness of God’s very self.  I’m not saying that “God” is the only or best answer to “what do you long for” as if this were a trick question, because I think these other things we name in our hearts as longings are also reflections, experiences, and signposts to God’s very self.

The psalmist gives voice to a yearning so deep, only the language of poetry will do.

In moments that are uncertain, overwhelming, confusing, draining…

When we see disturbing news from Portland of protesters being snatched by their own government, the loss of Civil Rights titans like Representative John Lewis and Rev. C.T. Vivian, schools and staffs making their announcements and adjustments out of what seem like lose-lose predicaments…

I find myself drawn to the poets and artists and the art of nature itself, music and murals - those people and things that find ways to express what eludes capture, that speak to and through my senses when my mind feels inept. Perhaps you noticed this in the poetic words of liturgy we’re using this season – syllables and syntax that doesn’t fit into regular prose as these lines seek less to explain and more to evoke.

Similarly, a Christian Mystic is one who is opened to God in ways that elude easy retelling. After all, mystic is not far from mystery. They relay experiences and/or an awareness of God that envelope the sinews and senses with power and subtlety so that the finite tools of communication can only desperately point to something much bigger. They are often found next to the practices of simplicity, stillness, silence, solitude that aim to cultivate a divine awareness, but it is more than a practice or even a way of thinking, it is a way of being - one that brings us to know God, ourselves, and the world in intimate ways that defy quantifying, commodifying, or systematizing faith. A mystic faith is not its own brand of fundamentalism, nor is it a heady academic ideal. It defies categorization in its singular center on God and God’s movement.

Perhaps this is a kind of faith we long for, but it is hard to even imagine let alone prioritize and pursue when modern culture and even our own animal instincts drives us toward the very opposite – consistency, certainty, security.  Perhaps a mystic can be understood as someone who makes their faith home IN uncertainty and instead of striving to escape it, embraces its unique gifts.

Amma Syncletica lived in the 4th century in Egypt, not long after Christian persecution shifted into state religion, and the idea of church as a building was only just emerging. She was a well-educated woman from a family with some means, but ultimately she left the city and wealth of Alexandria, along with her sister who was blind, and together they set out to live in the wilderness with the quiet and solitude and uncertainty of the desert and dedicated her life to a drawing closer to God.  Sometimes such seismic shifts come out of a longing to know God more fully, sometimes they arrive as a response to God, and sometimes the longing surprises us entirely.

 “Amma”, by the way, is actually not her name.  It’s a title that means “mother.” Author Mary C.Earle writes that “the ammas, or spiritual mothers, were women who offered wise counsel to others and who that counsel, became ‘lovers of souls.’” So while this way of being includes a degree of separation, it always returns in balance to connection, community, and generosity. Mother Syncletica’s wrote down the wisdom revealed to her to share in community and some of these writings have been passed down throughout the generations.

She writes: “In the beginning there is struggle and a lot of work for those who come near to God. But after that there is indescribable joy. It is just like building a fire: at first it is smoky and your eyes water, but later you get the desired result. Thus we must kindle the divine fire within ourselves with tears and effort.”

This sounds much like the kind of “good trouble” Rep. John Lewis so often pointed to, a way toward true communion which will certainly be disruptive and even dangerous, but is grounded in divine promise. The Psalmist speaks of tears and disquiet, woundedness and mourning as they call for God’s closeness, but also proclaims the refrain: “Hope in God; for I shall again praise them,  my help and my God.”

The desert is a dangerous place, people don’t go into the desert unless they have to. And yet, many wonderful and important things also happen in the desert. Leaving the known and the established and the expectations is troubling. And yet, holy wisdom dwells here too. It is that wisdom and intimacy from, in, and with God….not only in remote wilderness but throughout daily life…that seems so mystical. Jesus had some pretty mystical experiences from doves appearing and a voice from the heavens calling them beloved, then into the desert to wrestle with some big questions that would shape the calling to come.

Photo by Rachel Lynette French

After I graduated seminary, I found myself with an extended period of unemployment to await my first call as a Pastor. I won’t romanticize it, it sucked, and I was not happy with a system that seems to require this. I took both my anger and my longing for God’s will into the wilderness on a solo pilgrimage. I knew that whatever my first call would be, it would be a whirlwind. And so I set my intention to use this time of solitude and silence (whether I had truly chosen it or not) to listen for God’s voice so that I might know it better, and be better attuned to its sounds in the midst of ministry. Now, some days I definitely chose to listen to Beyonce rather than silence, but on the whole there was ample space to hear, to feel, and to sit with whatever that brought.

Amma Syncletica wrote, “we must direct our souls with discernment.”

Mary C. Earle speaks of Syncletica’s intention not as escapism but discerning wisdom, to “avoid a life crowded with so many cares and concerns that the capacity to choose well is forgotten or weakened.”

So rather than seeking discernment in reflection after the fact, we mark it now as our beginning place.

Discernment is more than making a decision; it is the means by which we approach decision-making. Discernment is less about knowing and more about navigating; it’s about trajectory rather than a target.

What is before you that needs discernment, that you seek God’s will for in your life and that of those you love? I invite you to hold that in your heart, practice a minute of silence and stillness, and await God’s presence in this space. Get comfortable, stretch, relax your forehead, feel your heart pumping in rhythm, slowing down. Listen for the voice that speaks every particle of creation into being.       

……  

What did you hear? What did you notice? What did you feel?

…….

This brief moment is certainly not where discernment ends or where God stops. Continue in your longing, in your yearning for God’s presence and wisdom. I invite you to practice and connect with others.  Practice stillness, silence and solitude each day this week.  Start with 5 minutes and see if you can add a minute each day.  And remember that Syncletica was not alone either. Invite someone to join you in this practice, and commit to sharing with one another what the experience is like for you.  Who is someone you trust to think and pray and wonder faithfully with you? Maybe from +KINDRED, maybe someone else.  You can also join me for midweek prayer which I’ll lead this week on Facebook Live at 5PM on Wednesday, where I’ll be reading more from Mary C. Earle’s reflections on Amma Syncletica and discernment.

As you listen and lean into this mystical way, do so with Hope in God; for we shall again praise them, our help and our God. Amen.

Deborah: the liberating judge

This is the third week in our Summer Sermon Series, Picture of a Prophet(ess) where we dive into the stories of Hannah, Esther, Deborah, and Miriam.

Week three brought us to the story of Deborah, a liberating judge who serves as a lightning rod for the people’s connection to their God and this relatively fresh covenant life they’re still trying navigate. She shows that there is still a connection to God’s voice even if it seems to be growing faint and they must strain to hear it. You can read the Sacred Story for this week here.

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This week in my Pastor’s bible study group, someone shared that they grew up in a fairly conservative Christian home and weren’t allowed to read novels like Harry Potter, so they read the Bible instead. Their parents must have missed the book of Judges…and plenty other stories in scripture. It’s messy – literally and figuratively. But I suppose that’s life too. Still...

When I come across scripture like this…that seems to split me in two…and/or send me rushing to a tidy bow that will explain it away…

Like: “This ancient time was simply one of violence and this is just how they saw the world.”

Or, “yeah, you mess with God’s people and you’ll get what’s coming to you.” 

“Am I really this excited about gruesome triumph?” (nods head enthusiastically)

Or even better, “If I just never talk about Judges, can we all pretend like it isn’t there?” And I can keep the well-worked images of God and people that I have in my head.

When I read scripture and I find myself doing this, this push to resolve…I wonder, what is the story doing here among our sacred text anyway? WHY do we tell it for so long? Why do we keep singing this song of Deborah and Barak and Jael?

In the opening number of the musical Hadestown, which tells the messy story of an old Greek epic, they sing:

It’s an old song….

It’s an old tale from way back when

It’s an old song 

and we’re gonna sing it again…

Deborah, under her palm tree.

Deborah serves as Judge for the people of Israel. She is one of the earliest Judges after Joshua brings them from the wilderness outside Egypt to the land of Canaan where they were promised flowing milk and honey. From Joshua to Othniel, to Ehud, and now Deborah. While their role includes settling disputes, this Judgeship is not just a courtroom function. This is more like our county judgeships in Texas, an executive leader, THE point person for the people and their well-being as a people. Even more than that, she is the commander-in-chief. She is warrior. And she is woman. And this shapes the way she leads – by nature and by patriarchal precedence. Instead of the more formal setting of male counterparts, Deborah sits under a palm tree, in the wide open public. It’s a proactive measure to prevent anyone from undermining her with claims of impropriety.  This way no one can accuse her of abusing her power in private and neither can they take advantage of privacy to harm or manipulate her.

Deborah is also a Prophetess, a lightning rod for the people’s connection to their God and this relatively fresh covenant life they’re still trying navigate. She shows that there is still a connection to God’s voice even if it seems to be growing faint and they must strain to hear it. Like Hannah the discerning mother, and Esther the courageous queen…this prophet who precedes them, seeks and proclaims God’s call for the life of the people in community, particularly as they struggle and venture away from its centering truth, as they continue to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord…again. In the language of Godly Play, this experience is spoken of as when someone draws so close to God and God draws so close to them, that they know what God would have them do.

Deborah is all these things – judge, leader, woman, warrior, prophet…in no particular order. I often think of the prophets as those who walk alongside power, but she embodies her own political, military, economic, social, and theological power.  She has agency. She doesn’t wait for help to come from somewhere else, she acts on the assurance that help is promised and mobilizes for the help her people need to be free from years and years of cruel oppression.

In a sacred library that rarely even gives women the dignity of a name, sometimes I have to stop and marvel at all this… and the way all these aspects of her identity are tied together and integral to her being. Perhaps having navigated such a vast identity is what makes her such a good collaborator – someone who can utilize and notice the strength of different people moving in different ways to serve the larger work of liberation. Some she helped organize and some were beyond her, and yet in the end she sings of their being part of the same divine work.

And just when I’m feeling really good about where this could go…A well of questions and concerns rises within me.

900 iron chariots, an entire army, its general and a silent tent peg - that’s a lot of blood, even in the name of freedom. Part of me cheers for Jael, who wittingly uses the submissive and dismissive assumptions of oppressive patriarchy against itself. And part of me bristles with a sense of underhanded betrayal and gruesome tragedy. But I notice that this same sense of internal struggle doesn’t rise up within me in the same way when I think about David and Goliath, or Moses closing the Red Sea on the Egyptians, or the many other biblical stories before and after of God using the underdog to liberate and dismantle oppressive might…particularly in conventionally male and militaristic terms.

It disturbs me to think about all the times when violence has been declared just and holy in ways large and small. It begs the question of if and when violence may be considered necessary. 

Is it possible for some violence to be the lesser evil of a greater violence, or to go even so far as to call it good? Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrestled with this as a Lutheran Pastor dedicated to consistently, powerfully, and publicly opposing Nazi ideology and white supremacy and ultimately was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

Sarah Jobe, a contemporary Pastor and prison chaplain, has written about how this story can be a balm to women unfairly serving time for killing their cruelly oppressive abusers. As this weekend marks a national holiday of independence won through war, we must reckon with the interlocking pieces of unjust oppression, violence, and liberation. Is it a riot or a revolution for the soul of a nation? Our perspective often depends on whether we’re living under constant fear of overwhelming iron chariots or trying to hide under the rug.

While this victory for the Hebrew people is a triumph in overcoming, it is also incomplete as long as violence persists as the necessary means of liberation. The perpetual cycle of harm remains a symptom of greater brokenness. The rest of the book of Judges is a series of escalations that just dig the hole deeper and deeper until there’s a kind of rock bottom. In the process of overthrowing their oppressors, they become indistinguishable from their oppressors. I don’t know how to draw the line exactly of when it’s justified or not, but I do know it’s not what God has promised us the world can be. The people will eventually come out of this era asking for a King, and they get some decent ones. But what God’s people mainly need isn’t a king who can rescue them from their political enemies, but a king who can rescue them from themselves.

Jesus is crucified as “King of the Jews”, he stares down the worst of our violence and hatred and oppression on the cross, and refuses to play by the same rules that got us there.  God breaks the wheel of injustice and violence (not because Old Testament god is mean and violent and New Testament god is nice….because, trust me, God’s people were still and are still stuck in the same cycles of power and harm…).

 In Jesus, God enters into the cycle so deeply that it is disrupted and uprooted from its eternal machinations. Jesus has their own run-in with the Canaanites…a woman pleading for her daughter’s healing. Jesus, being fully human as well as divine, tries to brush her away and uses racially hateful language by calling her a dog.  In her confrontation, Jesus must recognize her sacred humanity over all the messages that have taught disdain and dismissal.

As it turns out, in God’s kingdom there’s plenty room for the Canaanites. More accurately, there is room for even Jesus to change and learn and grow in his thinking about Canaanites as enemies unworthy of care and move toward recognizing the Canaanite woman’s place at the table of faith.

God proclaims, “Enough!” and no one, no empire, can stop this ultimate liberation. Liberation does not arrive quickly or cleanly, but it does arrive. The story of the prophet judge Deborah is heroic and tragic, inspiring and cautionary. We cry out to be saved from oppression but also from ourselves.

It’s an old song, It’s a sad song, it’s a sad tale, it’s a tragedy, but we sing it anyway…

Cause here’s the thing…

To know how it ends and still begin to sing it again

As if it might turn out this time…

It could make you see how the world could be

In spite of the way that it is

Can you see it? Can you hear it? Can you feel it?

Is it coming?

Is it coming this way?

It’s a sad song, it’s an old song, but we keep singing even so.

Amen

Powerful Vulnerability

This is the second week in our Sermon Series: Picture of a Prophet(ess) where we dive into the stories of Hannah, Esther, Deborah, and Miriam. This week we explored the story of Esther, a courageous queen who calls for liberation from oppressive systems that are antithetical to the way of God. You can read the Sacred Story for this week here.

Before we dive into the text, let me set the scene:

In chapter 1, we meet the ruler of the Persian Empire who is called King Ahasuerus but historically is mostly likely Xerxes I. The empire is so mighty and rich that he throws a party for 180 days, just to revel in it with the elites. That’s 6 months. That’s as if we’d spent all of 2020 so far at an epic party instead of the...whatever this has been. After that, the King throws a banquet for 7 days for everybody else. After much drinking, the king summons the queen, Vashti, to dance before the party in her Crown Jewels...and he probably means JUST the Crown Jewels if you know what I mean. And she says...um, no. 

So now that the King’s ultimate authority has essentially been called into question, he calls in all his advisors to decide what to do to restore his image as a super-awesome-all-powerful guy. And do you know what they worry about? They worry that other wives will find out they can say no to their husbands and the word will spread and THEN where would they be.  So Vashti is slated for replacement. 

Let’s begin. 

Esther 2:1-15; 4:1-5, 13-17

2 After these things, when the anger of King Ahasuerus had abated, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what had been decreed against her. 2 Then the king’s servants who attended him said, ‘Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king. 3 And let the king appoint commissioners in all the provinces of his kingdom to gather all the beautiful young virgins to the harem in the citadel of Susa under the custody of Hegai, the king’s eunuch, who is in charge of the women; let their cosmetic treatments be given them. 4 And let the girl who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti.’ This pleased the king, and he did so.

5 Now there was a Jew in the citadel of Susa whose name was Mordecai son of Jair son of Shimei son of Kish, a Benjaminite. 6 Kish had been carried away from Jerusalem among the captives carried away with King Jeconiah of Judah, whom King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had carried away. 7 Mordecai had brought up Hadassah, that is Esther, his cousin, for she had neither father nor mother; the girl was fair and beautiful, and when her father and her mother died, Mordecai adopted her as his own daughter. 8 So when the king’s order and his edict were proclaimed, and when many young women were gathered in the citadel of Susa in the custody of Hegai, Esther also was taken into the king’s palace and put in the custody of Hegai, who had charge of the women. 9 The girl pleased him and won his favor, and he quickly provided her with her cosmetic treatments and her portion of food, and with seven chosen maids from the king’s palace, and advanced her and her maids to the best place in the harem. 10 Esther did not reveal her people or kindred, for Mordecai had charged her not to tell. 11 Every day Mordecai would walk around in front of the court of the harem, to learn how Esther was and how she fared.

12 The turn came for each girl to go into King Ahasuerus, after being twelve months under the regulations for the women, since this was the regular period of their cosmetic treatment, six months with oil of myrrh and six months with perfumes and cosmetics for women. 13 When the girl went in to the king she was given whatever she asked for to take with her from the harem to the king’s palace. 14 In the evening she went in; then in the morning she came back to the second harem in the custody of Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch, who was in charge of the concubines; she did not go into the king again unless the king delighted in her and she was summoned by name.

15 When the turn came for Esther daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had adopted her as his own daughter, to go into the king, she asked for nothing except what Hegai the king’s eunuch, who had charge of the women, advised. Now Esther was admired by all who saw her.

I’ll recap what happens next:

Esther becomes queen but keeps her ethnic and religious identity as a Jew secret. Her uncle overhears a plot to assassinate the king, tells Esther, who tells the king and credits Mordecai and the usurpers are dispatched violently. And THEN, the king makes this guy Haman his right-hand guy but Mordecai won’t bow to him because he’s like...I’m Jewish we don’t do that cuz idolatry. This comes to a head in Chapter 3, verse 5-6: “When Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down or do obeisance to him, Haman was infuriated. But he thought it beneath him to lay hands on Mordecai alone. So, having been told who Mordecai’s people were, Haman plotted to destroy all Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus.”

He tells the king in verse 8: “there is a certain people scattered and separated among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws so that it is not appropriate for the king to tolerate them.  If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued for their destruction, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king’s business, so that they may put it into the king’s treasuries.” 

Haman uses the most enduring tools of manipulating empire - the lie of danger in diversity, the fear of losing power, and economic gain. The decree is announced, and the Jewish people sit in terror and mourning at this impending annihilation. “The King and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Susa was thrown into confusion.”

Now back to the text:

4When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went through the city, wailing with a loud and bitter cry; 2he went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one might enter the king’s gate clothed with sackcloth. 3In every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and most of them lay in sackcloth and ashes.

4 When Esther’s maids and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed; she sent garments to clothe Mordecai so that he might take off his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. 5Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what was happening and why. 13Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, ‘Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.’ 15Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, 16‘Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.’ 17Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/queen-esther-icons-of-the-bible.html

This Queen right here, y’all. She is everything. She is an orphan female child who is part of an ethnically marginalized community occupied and colonized by empire who also becomes Queen of that same empire, the world’s superpower in its time. She is the victim of horrifying sexual abuse, even if it happened through “official” means with the trappings of luxury in a palace...but she is also so much more than this. Her story is at once tragic and triumphant, profound and somber, yet darkly humorous in the absurdity of those who work so hard to appear righteous and powerful. There is room for tears and laughter, mourning, and rejoicing. She and her story do not seem so far away. 

This is the moment when it becomes clear how these identities intersect and she must grapple with whether that means collision or integration or all of the above.  In many ways, this is HER work to do, but in many ways, this work has always been so much bigger than her. 

All along the way she has had community beside her - the extended family who raised her and taught her and checked on her when separated and mentored her and still holds her to the accountability of relationship even when it’s hard. The palace eunuchs, enslaved genderqueer folk who used what was ascribed to them as worthlessness and transformed it with their clever resourcefulness into a tool of access to advance, advise, and mobilize her for this moment. The community of faith which equipped her with a sacred connectedness, an eternal scope and the spiritual tools of fasting and reflection and yearning for divine direction and joins her in that practice. At this moment, this community is present through Mordecai as she is reminded that the moment at hand not just a matter of her individual well-being, but of collective and communal identity and care - that even as her position changes, she remains a part of this fabric of community which is affected by and contributes to each strand and the whole.

As a result, she becomes a voice for justice which may never have been if not for the presence and prodding of others. And so when she stands on the precipice, which can be so lonely and terrifying, she might find courage in the cloud of witnesses who have walked with her and continue to do so.

This is what she takes with her into the discerning sacred practice of fasting. And in the space created there for reflection and prayer and presence, this intersection becomes a catalyst for a new prophetic fire.  She emerges to proclaim the promise of resistance and its ultimate power whether or not it is “successful” in implementing immediate change. 

It would be impossible to overstate the courage involved. It is not simple or safe to speak truth to power, even less so when your own power and safety is tied up in it too. Perhaps it is a courage that comes not in spite of but because of the recognition that no matter how high she has risen, in this culture her identity is ultimately considered “other” and “lesser.” That existential weight is one I will never fully know. .

Because as much as I admire this prophetess and long to see myself in a similar role, I also have to grapple with the reality that my identity may sometimes be closer to resembling that of Haman or Xerxes.  Another woman of intersection, Erna Kim Hackett, a biracial indigenous woman pastor of color, wrote a piece several years ago called “WHY I STOPPED TALKING ABOUT RACIAL RECONCILIATION AND STARTED TALKING ABOUT WHITE SUPREMACY” and snippets from her writing have popped up in my social media threads again recently. In addition to the problem of reading scripture with a lens of individualism and personal rather than communal eyes...she writes that “white (and I would add heteronormative) Christianity suffers from a bad case of Disney Princess theology.

As each individual reads Scripture, they see themselves as the princess in every story. They are Esther, never Xerxes, or Haman. They are Peter, but never Judas. They are the woman anointing Jesus, never the Pharisees. They are the Jews escaping slavery, never Egypt. For the citizens of the most powerful country in the world, who enslaved both Native and Black people, to see itself as Israel and not Egypt when it is studying Scripture, is a perfect example of Disney princess theology. And it means that as people in power, they have no lens for locating themselves rightly in Scripture or society- and it has made them blind and utterly ill-equipped to engage issues of power and injustice.”

It’s a punch in the gut. The Holy Spirit can be like that sometimes. It’s not about shame, that doesn’t get us anywhere. But prophets do confront us with the truth of ourselves and our world. Sometimes it feels like being torn apart or torn open. And no, Haman’s story doesn’t have a pretty ending, but it’s not the ultimate ending. 

Neither is Esther’s bold move that saves her entire people. She is the vessel of help that has incredibly overcome institutionalized power to stop this impending threat to their very existence and it is an incomprehensible and awe-inspiring feat that deserves abounding celebration...but we also know that it still doesn’t grant the Jewish people eternal security from tyrants. For if the King is so fickle as to turn on his trusted right-hand man so drastically, surely the pendulum can swing as quickly and as fiercely in the other direction. Even now...we, too, have seen anti-semitism rise with attacks on synogogues. In recent days, we have seen the LGBTQI community denied healthcare access and more black lives lost to white supremacy and those black trans women at the intersection of it all suffering brutality particularly. 

Photo by Jennifer Bonauer on Unsplash

And yet...we have also seen the riot that followed police brutality at Stonewall turn into a movement which has led our highest court confirming that same LGBTQI community non-discrimination protections. We hear Black Lives Matter echoing in our streets and among policymakers with enduring power and just change that seemed far off, drawing near.

Esther shows us what it is to be simultaneously vulnerable and powerful. It cautions continued vigilance without forgoing the delights of celebration. The Jewish festival of Purim which tells this story with playfulness and rejoicing even in the midst of incomplete justice, shows us what it is to participate in the Gospel of defiant ultimate joy. For a moment, we have a glimpse of what is possible - of a justice and liberation that sweeps up the whole of creation, the oppressor and the oppressed set free from a death-dealing system into new life-giving ways of being together. Throughout the whole of the book of Esther, there is no direct mention of God, and yet….help has come...as it is promised to through God, our help in ages past and hope for years to come. Amen.

A Song of Hope

The Sacred Story for this week comes from 1 Samuel 1:9-2:10 - we’ll engage together with the story of Hannah, the first Prophetess of our Summer Sermon Series on Prophets, and look for our own songs of hope together.

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This week I was watching a video of author Austin Channing Brown speak about her life as a black child and trying to figure out what is race. Even at the age of 8, she was noticing things. She began to notice that language, our words, have different meanings to different people – that we have underlying and often unacknowledged assumptions that shape our communication and our understanding of different things and ultimately impact us in different ways.  Not even big words like justice, but the words that speak of routine life. When I say “we’re going to have macaroni –what do you picture? In my house…it means the blue box…Velveeta if we really want to make a meal out of it and Martha Stewart’s gruyere recipe if it’s a special occasion and I’m feeling boujee. For Austin, macaroni means something very specific and that something is definitely baked in the oven and not on the stovetop.   Yams.  Maybe you imagine a root vegetable that can be prepared EITHER savory or sweet, you’ve got options. But 8-year-old Austin is only expecting something candied.

Our words are weighted, not only with our own assumptions but those of our larger culture and of generations. How we define and imagine what it means to be…

Professional…

Or powerful…

Or a prophet…

When you think of a prophet, who do you picture? What do they look like? What do they sound like?

Being steeped in these sacred stories since my childhood I picture someone wild like John the Baptist, loud like Jeremiah or Amos, confrontational like Moses, one in a powerful public position like Nathan, which apparently also leads me to an image that seems exclusively male.

In the Talmud, a sacred Jewish text of Rabbinical teachings to accompany and interpret the Torah, there are 55 people identified as prophets. 48 of them are male, but 7 of them are female.

Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Abigail, Huldah, Esther, and Hannah.

Actually, the text says that there were many more prophets than even these, but these are particularly recorded because their prophecy holds eternal relevance for generations and/or they note a particular ecstatic encounter with God. It brings to mind the words at the end of the Gospel of John, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

So I began to wonder how I had missed these verses in the  Bible that explicitly speak of prophetesses and what was missing from my understanding of a prophet and thus God’s work in the world as a result. 

Perhaps these missing stories are what allow us to hold onto our one-dimensional picture a prophet primarily as someone screaming on the sidewalk corners carrying a cardboard sign that the end is near, speaking in cryptic riddle language that supposedly predicts the future, and condemning humanity for its sin. To be sure, these caricatures echo some kernel of truth, but just because you’re loud and angry and extreme, doesn’t make you a prophet. 

I was always taught that a prophet is someone who serves as a messenger or mouthpiece of God, like a conduit for the divine voice to the people.  And since God relates to us in covenant and in promise, this message can be critical and harsh when that covenantal relationship is being broken, but that it holds at its heart a reminder of our true identity as beloved people, a community that creates life out of life and an invitation to return to, to remember that truth.

I was always taught that a prophet is someone who serves as a messenger or mouthpiece of God, like a conduit for the divine voice to the people.  And since God relates to us in covenant and in promise, this message can be critical and harsh when that covenantal relationship is being broken, but that it holds at its heart a reminder of our true identity as beloved people, a community that creates life out of life and an invitation to return to, to remember that truth.

But because of the limited scope of prophets that I was presented with…that role of messenger, took shape in my head as looking a particular way. It was explicit and concrete, like literal words regurgitated from God to human. It looked more like an eloquent Toastmasters speech, even in the raw moments behind the scenes of the public face where I know the prophets also wrestled with God often. 

Something about the story of Hannah opens up the idea of this message, this ecstatic experience of God, as something more mystical than all that.  Like the well-known names, here is a prophet that is also calling the people back to their identity and relationship in God and this expansive vision of God’s redemptive work in the world …but also IN communion with Godself, experiencing something intangible but powerful of God’s presence and promise that creates this wider awareness. She is reminding others and she remembers herself. And that’s where the women in particular begin to reveal new holy things to me. 

Like other prophets, Hannah lays her soul bare before God – with all her emotion, naming her anxiety and pain and desperate yearning, bringing all of this into the place of worship and the presence of religious leaders. She has been bullied and shamed, her femininity and her entire value have been a matter of debate within her household, she is tormented and saddened, and she doesn’t tidy it up to be more palatable for others.  At first, Eli the priest responds to this with shame, which would dismiss her voice altogether, but Hannah is assured of her own dignity and her authority to approach God with her whole self and no longer cares about looking foolish in pursuit of God’s presence. Ultimately, it will reveal God in new ways to those who witness it. Yet in this experience of suffering, even as those who love her try to comfort her, she feels utterly alone and forgotten. And so she prays to be remembered by God.

And God DOES remember her. It doesn’t say that God remembers her bargaining, her desperate offering, or her vow.  God remembers HER.

And in her being remembered she has the vision to recognize and to speak to God’s remembrance of her whole community and all of creation. God’s commitment to Hannah, is reflective of God’s commitment to the world as she gives voice to this for the sake of the community. As a prophet, Hannah discerns the significance of her life and gifts and experience for the blessing of others and the movement toward divine justice. Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who stood arm in arm with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, wrote, “Prophecy is not simply the application of timeless standards to particular human situations, but rather an interpretation of a particular moment in history, a divine understanding of a human situation.” Hannah recognizes that this moment and experience which holds incredible significance for her but is also significant beyond her and beyond what she can personally foresee or imagine.  Her blessing is not just that she’s a pass-through from a prophet like Samuel, she has her own sacred voice to raise as well and she shares it with others. Hannah recognizes her place in the larger story and work of God toward transformation, redemption, salvation.

For a time that work is mothering, raising and weaning the child entrusted to her for a time – playing peek-a-boo at bathtime and wiping runny noses. This is her holy work for a season.  She stands firm in the importance of it and her partner, her spouse, Samuel’s father Elakanah, for his part honors her voice and this work and tends to his own holy call within their family. 

Ultimately, God has blessed Hannah to see the interwoven nature of the personal and the communal and so she shares what has been entrusted to her for the sake of God’s work in the community, even her own child, bringing him to serve as a Nazirite, a consecrated role to serve God and the people, to draw them near to one another. 

Which sounds a lot like another woman who is surprised to become a mother and also has her son dedicated at the temple for what will eventually be a different kind of prophetic and priestly work. The two respond with song and it seems that even hundreds of years apart, the tune itself must have been carried in the rhythm of creation. Mary, the mother of Jesus, picks up Hannah’s refrain as they both sing of a world being turned right side up:

Of pointing to God as our ultimate source of value and impact

Of disrupting the ways of power propped up by violence and indignity to usher in a new kind of strength that doesn’t rely on subjugation.

Of a world in which both oppressors and oppressed are liberated and transformed.

Perhaps you too have heard this song on the wind and in the streets. Perhaps you too have come to God, raw and desperate. Perhaps there was something, some twitch or shift, or sigh or dream just beyond your consciousness that brought you back to yourself and reminded you that you are not alone or forgotten and that you are valued with gifts to share. Perhaps you still yearn for such an experience or awareness. 

And this is why we sing - because the song is not ours to keep but to share for the hope of the world.  As much as it moves us in our singing, it also moves mountains when we give voice to it in community with one another. This is why we tell our sacred stories because we turn the page and suddenly see that the story, God’s story, is also about us and the world around us, even as we can’t always quite pin the connection down or see how the thread will play out over time.  The story not only includes us like a passing mention but involves us in its movement forward. God holds us – together to ourselves, to one another, and to God’s enduring promises. Amen. 

A Farewell Sermon: Do Justice, Love Kindness, Walk Humbly

This was Vicar Morgan’s last sermon as +KINDRED’s Pastoral Intern. She has been among us for a year now, preaching, teaching, and worshipping with our community, and we will miss her deeply. We give thanks for her ministry among us and for all that is to come as she awaits and assignment and first call!

The text for this sermon was Micah 6:1-8. It is a word from the Prophet Micah calling for justice and reform in the face of inequity and injustice.

This wasn’t at all what I expected my last Sunday among +KINDRED to look like. After a year of worship, and beach days, and house church, and bread baking - a year of cultivating bold community, working towards justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly together with our God - after all that, I’d hoped to be gathered together one last time in our Sanctuary. Around the tables that have carried our hopes and our hurts, our laughter and our tears, the tables that fostered relationships around the bold promise of God’s love found in the Bread and Cup that sustains us through all things. 

This wasn’t at all what any of us expected our life together as +KINDRED to look like, no matter how much we claim our quirkiness and thrive in our identity as a rag tag bunch just trying to live out the Gospel in our little corner of the world. These times have shifted the way we do things and the way our ministry looks, but we still hold true to who we are as a community of Christ followers committed to loving one another and showing up for each other and those in our wider communities

And that’s one of my favorite things about this community is the way we show up - even when it’s hard and we’re not sure exactly how everything will work out, we show up and we offer what we have with love and faith. We show up to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly together with our God.

At the beginning of the pandemic, waaaayyy back in March, our leaders met tirelessly over Zoom and communicated through emails and phone calls and text messages to find a way forward as a community in the face of COVID. 

Our community coordinator, Shannon, worked to find volunteers for transitioning our community meal into a Grab + Go operation. People like Nanette, Diane, Meredith, and Leah cooked delicious, nutritious meals week after week, with a deep sense of love for neighbor and a commitment to care for our wider community as regular sources of social services closed their doors out of concern for safety amidst the rapid spread of COVID. 

People like Angie and Cat volunteered every week for FIVE. WEEKS. IN. A. ROW. to make sure there were enough hands on deck to get meals assembled and passed out to folks who needed them. Nanette and Shannon doubled down and made masks - SO. MANY. MASKS. - so that our volunteers and the members of +KINDRED we offered meals and blessings to on Sunday afternoons could be safer. 

Countless others continued tithing to +KINDRED in the face of economic uncertainty, and others increased their monthly giving to continue supporting the ministry and work of +KINDRED.

People showed up in all the ways that they could, with faith and love. +KINDRED showed up to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly together with our God.

The Prophet Micah knew a thing or two about showing up in the face of difficulty and injustice. Our Sacred Story today is smack dab in the middle of one of Micah’s Oracles of Judgement against the rulers of Israel and Judah who in the midst of brewing turmoil and a significant economic shift were disregarding the cries of their people who suffered. Wealth that had been invested in the land led to the growth of MASSIVE estates while smaller holdings collapsed, unable to keep up. The rich were getting richer at the expense of small peasant farmers, and the leaders of these nations, the politicians, the business owners, and the priests were turning away from the cries of injustice and counting their pocketbooks.

Micah speaks for the LORD and demands that the rulers of Israel and Judah confess the ways in which they have fallen short of the commandments of the TORAH to love the LORD thy God above all else - above money, power, wealth, above it all.

Micah calls on the people to confess what they have done and the ways they have placed other idols in the place of God and neglected God’s people along the way.

The rulers and leaders begin to panic, asking what it is they can do to appease God, offering sacrifices and grant gifts, and Micah is quick to remind them that God wants none of their performative repentance. Micah reminds them that all God asks of God’s people is to act justly, love kindness, and to walk humbly with the LORD their God.

White people, and white Christians especially have heard this call over the last days and weeks. The call to confess the sin of our white supremacy and work to dismantle the layers of racism that live deep within us and manifest in our everyday actions, even when we THINK we’ve somehow escaped it. Pastor Ashley wrote powerful words after the march in downtown houston this past Tuesday asking the bold question: “How can we readily confess “I am a sinner” even when we don’t feel like we actively pursue sin because we understand it as a condition beyond just an act. But revile at the confession “I am racist” in the face of systemic racism as the condition we are steeped in even if you don’t feel like you act on it…”

She then reminds us that: “The grace of God emboldens us to confess both without fear of being declared bad or irredeemable and [in a way that] opens up space for transformation.”

We are called to confess the ways in which we have sinned and fallen short of the grace of God, and that includes the ways we have actively and passively perpetuated the sins of racism and white supremacy.

This is hard work and we might feel tempted to make grand gestures in attempt to make up for the ways we know we have been complicit in racism, and for the ways that we don’t know yet. We might be tempted towards performative actions with no real impact other than feeding our ego and appeasing our guilt, but just as Micah reminded the priests and leaders of Israel and Judah, what is ACTUALLY required is that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with the LORD together.

We do justice by doing the hard work of recognizing the ways we’ve fallen short and played into the hand of white supremacy and racism.

We love kindness when we listen to and believe Black Indigenous and other People Of Color when they tell us about their experiences of us and others as racist.

We walk humbly when we white people show up and shut up at events and direct actions led by Black Indigenous and other People of Color, and listen over the sound of our white fragility.

We do justice by supporting Black owned businesses, artists, creators, and activists with actual money.

We love kindness by following the leadership of Black activists and doing what they tell us is needed, not what we think is necessary.

We walk humbly by committing to having hard conversations with ourselves and our loved ones, even when it feels like we’re getting no where.

We show up in these and so many other ways for our siblings in Christ, because that is what the LORD requires of us.

People of +KINDRED, I have seen you show up in so many different ways for the work of Ministry that we get to be a part of together and we must commit ourselves to continuing to show up and re-commit ourselves to being actively anti-racist, because we cannot continue to proclaim the Christian faith if we are not actively committed to dismantling the systems of racism and white supremacy that are antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We are in a reckoning moment, facing our own oracle of judgement, but the prophet Micah always followed their oracles of judgement with a word of hope, and that remains true for us.

The word of hope is that we don’t do this work alone. Our community of faith emboldens and reminds us that as we do this work of unlearning and dismantling white supremacy and racism we do so together.

We lean into the words of the prophet Micah working together to: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God together.

+KINDRED, as I leave you after a full year of rich ministry together, I give thanks for all of the ways we have worked to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly together with our God. It has been a privilege and an honor to learn from you all, worship with you all, and love one another as community together.

Though these times are different and harder in ways that none of us could have imagined, I rejoice in the community that has remained in this way - digitally, and via cards, graduation gifts, text messages, and even today in a parade of decorated cars this afternoon in front of the church celebrating my last Sunday as the Vicar of +KINDRED Montrose.

You, dear people of God are so beloved, and I will miss you all so much.

I pray and trust that you will continue in the work I have had the privilege of being a part of for the last year, and I will carry you with me for all of my days. +KINDRED Montrose, the weird little dinner church in the queerest part of Houston will forever be a part of my life and ministry, and to that I say: AMEN. 

What's that sound?

Acts 2:1-4

1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

1 Corinthians 12:1-13

1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. 2 You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. 3 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Let Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. 4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Remember when we were all together in one place? I miss that. There’s just something about being physically near one another. I miss seeing your smiles close up or knowing in your faces that it’s been a hard day and being able to just sit side by side.  I miss your wild gesturing and even the simple noises of shuffling feet and chairs that mean we are alive and dancing this dance together. I miss being able to see the candlelight pass from person to person, hand to hand, filling up the whole place with a warm healing glow. It’s not just about dispelling loneliness, or the relief of having our full breadth of communication available through body language, but there’s an energy…a rush, a static in the air and a firing of neurons through the body when people are together. I heard a radio story talking about creative online concert experiences that acknowledge and create space for the role of the audience to be interacting in the moment because it’s not just the talent of a musician, but the energy of those gathered that makes a live performance what it is. There’s just something about it…something that stirs us up in particular ways, a sensation that is distinct about it, something that happens…

When the day of Pentecost had come…

…Jesus had risen from the grave

…the resurrected Christ had lingered among them for a time – teaching them about their own wondrous capacity and sharing in beachside barbecues.

…their guiding light had changed again as Jesus ascended into heaven, no longer present in the ways of sight and touch as they knew them.

…the world was turning upside down.

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were alone but also together, waiting for the promise of what comes now?

50 Days after Passover, the feast of unleavened bread, comes Pentecost, the festival of weeks, the Jewish holiday of Shavout, a celebration of God’s Gifts – of God’s revelation through the Torah and of harvest fullness. It is a celebration of what comes in the passage of time and miles wandered and the way this creates space for new ways.

Here, in this space, a new sound is heard.  Here, in this space, a new vision appears.  Here, in this space, an old fire casts its light anew.

SOMETHING comes into this space, but it’s not yet clear what to call it. It arrives like a rush of wind so powerful it feels dangerous, yet it is the same wind that hovered over the waters of creation and fills our nostrils with life-giving maternal breath.  This…THING… spreads out, fills the whole space and lingers like static in the air.  The air is so thick with energy it seems to spark a fire whose flames lick at the core of their being and settles there. They erupt with motion and voice that is vast and varied.  They speak from and to diversity, beyond what they understood as possible. Not only are they given powerful voice, but they are heard and understood! even across a diversity of language, homeland, and experience.

And THIS is when that rush of wind and fire is called Holy. This Spirit that fills all things and binds them together with room for differences…this is sacred; it is a telltale mark of the nature and heart of God.

And so it is with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the lively sparks that linger in us. Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, speaking up and being able to do something with what is said. The gifts are wide and shared across community, and yet are rooted in one Holy Spirit. It forces us to depend on one another and allows us to release ourselves from trying to master gifts that are entrusted to others. None of it comes from our own striving or accomplishment anyway, but from God’s very self within us. This Holy Spirit and her gifts do not exist for our own pride or ego, our own personal well-being or advancement, but for the common good.  This common good is unlike the Pax Romana, an illusion of peace and comfort propped up by the suffering of those deemed invaluable; it is deep well-being for the whole.  The gifts of the Spirit are not given TO you, they are given THROUGH you. And they are most needed where our shared body’s well-being is wounded.

“HOW?” is a question we wrestle with late into the night. We yearn for clarity, but often this turns to a pursuit for certainty.

And that’s just not who the Holy Spirit is. There are no words that seem capable of fully capturing her wild nature. The writers of ancient scripture describe her with poetry and simile. She is LIKE a rushing wind.  She is LIKE a tongue of fire. She is LIKE a dove descending from the sky. She is LIKE water that does not run dry. She is LIKE the road to Emmaus - that feeling of our hearts burning within us as scripture comes alive in relationship. Like Proverbs 1:20 proclaims, she is LIKE holy wisdom which shouts in the streets wherever crowds gather.

The Holy Spirit will not be tamed, but She is good.

Just like that particular feeling of being together with others; that special something in the room, that energy that words cannot capture…the nearness of the Holy Spirit and the way we are stirred up, agitated, and activated by her power…escapes our captionable certainty. It is so real yet escapes singular description. Perhaps it is the Spirit rushing around us when we wonder…what was that? I felt SOMETHING, saw SOMETHING, heard SOMETHING. Something is happening, something is stirring within me.  I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know it’s bigger than me.

I wonder…what is our experience of the Holy Spirit like when we’re angry, or tired, or heartbroken? What is the Spirit like when we’ve hit the wall? When we’ve run out of steam? How is the Spirit known and felt and moving when everything seems both wild and yet eerily still. I wonder…what is the Holy Spirit stirring up in you and around you?

I don’t know what that is like for you, but I know that SOMETHING holy is stirring within you. God has promised each of us a share in this sacred life and work. The Spirit has equipped you with gifts to be an active part of our collective wellness. What are you noticing whirling around? Pay attention to it. Notice it, tend to it, stoke it.

On Friday I put on my mask and I went downtown with a friend to gather with organizers from varied communities, united in their plea for justice for George Floyd’s lynching death at the hands of police and so so so many others. There were so many people there. I’ve been to marches and vigils before, but…I’ve never seen anything like this. This was SOMETHING. It was loud. The sound filled up the whole place. The people’s voices were filled with passion and they began to shout in different chants from every corner, speaking from and to a diversity of voices. Even those leading with megaphones struggled to be heard through it all. But then, a 15 year old girl took the mic and quickly the crowds that had gathered around City Hall were silenced by her still small voice. Everyone was paying attention. As she spoke powerfully of fear and holy defiance and justice, my skin prickled and the hair on my arms stood up. It seemed as if even the blood within me was pulsating with the chant of “black lives matter” as it reverberated from the glittering high-rises. SOMETHING holy was being revealed. In the whirlwind of that moment, I can’t recall her specific words, but I will never forget her tone.

The arrival of the Holy Spirit in Acts calls back to the prophet Joel who writes, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people.  Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your elders will have prophetic dreams, and your young people will see visions.” This young girl was prophesying and the Spirit opened my ears and heart to bear witness and listen and we were held together in blessing by God. Even so, it is not this young black woman’s job to bless me or teach me. White folks, we have work to do if we long to know the fullness the Spirit, to be attuned to its humming. It’s time to use our gifts of knowledge to educate ourselves on the insidious sin of racism, even and especially if we think we already know enough…so that we might recognize and respond to it as the Spirit gives us ability. We have articles to read and stories to listen to so that we can testify to what these prophets have revealed to us when we find ourselves in consequential conversations. It will expose things in us we didn’t want to see and won’t always get it right as we learn.  The gift of wisdom is knowing that it’s ok to be wrong sometimes. But we are held to the common good in the Spirit. 

It is hard to preach about the sacredness of breath while another and another black soul has had their breath taken away.  But those of who still have ours must use it even if it shakes. It’s hard to know what to say but anything is better than silence in the face of injustice. I don’t know exactly what to say about the holiness of fire while cities are burning, but it remains a force that can never truly be tamed.

All I know is that the Holy Spirit is still here. Even when we feel stuck, the Spirit is still powerfully moving among us filling up every space. She is still sending us to speak God’s word of life and mobilizing us to care. She is still holding us together, still empowering us to change the world in the name of love. Amen.

A Gritty Love

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

This section of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is sometimes called “The Love Chapter” and has been read at countless weddings. And for good reason, it’s a beautiful text that speaks of a beautiful thing.

Its verses appear in craft stores and home décor with fancy filigree and dainty floral embellishments. This passage always make me think of that scene in Moulin Rouge on the rooftop where Ewan McGregor, in the heat of infatuation, launches into a rapid-fire monologue: “Love is like oxygen! Love is a many splendid thing! Love lifts us up where we belong! All you need is love!” which then literally turns into a song and dance love medley. I remember as a kid, I had a stuffed animal bear from Precious Moments that had a locket around its neck which opened to reveal the words “love BEARS all things.” It seems this poetry has also become a punchline!

All of it speaks of love in such a grand way that feels so far from our reality sometimes that the whole thing seems ridiculous anyway. These poignant lines sometimes seem so omnipresent that it feels cliché.  The way this expansive love is reduced to gooey, doe-eyed, sentimental love feels sickeningly oversweet. And I think that gross feeling too, is for good reason.

While love can certainly connect us to the transcendent, it cannot be disconnected from the gritty stuff of life. Last week we read from this same letter where Paul speaks to these same people about their corroding divisions and their toxic power struggles. This is a community culture that is described as childish in that its people approach the world in a one-dimensional way and they struggle to appreciate or even recognize anything beyond their own self. Confusion and conflict seem to rule the day. So the reality is that these words of love are spoken far from the notion that all is well and everyone is getting along great.

In Chapter 12, Paul has JUST written about the many and various gifts of God dispersed among the community – of speaking in tongues and prophesy, and teaching and understanding, and healing and generosity…

And he KNOWS that instead of seeing this diversity as a gift, they will start fighting about which gift is the most valuable and go right back to their same system of hierarchy that keeps them stuck. Thank God we’re so much better than ancient Corinthians. So he says yes, by all means, pursue and nurture these gifts, BUT…now I will show you the most excellent way. Now I will show you a WAY of being that is above and beyond even all that…

One that speaks less of what we do and more of how and why we do it.

One that speaks of the orientation of our hearts,

One that speaks of faith, hope, and love.

And love…love is what breathes life into all the rest.

Love is what moves our gifts from a place of competition to care. Love tunes our voice from noise into melody. Love transforms our pride and ego into kindness and service. Love is a many splendid thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love.

The Greek language has several words for love and the one used here is agape. It is an intimate self-sacrificing love. It is an unconditional love with no fine print. It is more than feelings; it is love enfleshed – with grit and grace. Ironically enough, agape appears as the theme for a series of New York Life Insurance commercials which solidly proclaims “love takes action.” Agape is love that is more than a word, it is a way of being. This kind of expansive and enacted love isn’t just for romance, but also our relationships of family and friendship, and even with ourselves.

Now….you may look at yourself in this pandemic moment and say…great, now I feel even further from love because all this change and stress does not have me feeling very patient or kind or even hopeful, and the rudeness has hit some real special peaks. And listen…as I sat to reflect on this scripture…my daughter was crying, the smoke alarm was going off, and the dogs were barking. How could this hot mess reflect anything like love? And I honestly don’t know, except for the grace of God.

1st John proclaims that God IS love. Love is the very nature and name of the divine. God’s very identity is love and love is the action in which God is known. Love is God’s means AND ends. Jesus is love in action with breathe and body. And we are created in God’s image. Our very being is a reflection of love.

If God is love and we are created in the image of Love, let’s re-read these verses, exchanging the word “love” for God and then for our own name.

(God) is patient; (God) is kind; (God) is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. They do not insist on their own way; They are not irritable or resentful; 6 They do not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoice in the truth. 7 They bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. 8 (God) never ends.

(name) is patient; (name) is kind; (name) is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. I do not insist on my own way; I am not irritable or resentful; 6 I do not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoice in the truth. 7 I bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. 8 (name) never ends.

Let that sit with you for a minute. Notice how it’s affecting you. You don’t have to feel any kind of way, just notice what’s going on with you. And maybe you can create space later this week to wonder about what it means for you.

I will say this…I have seen this divine love in you all in these days. Love is the bid for attention from those who want to show us the lego tower they’ve built and love is setting down the other task we had envisioned for ourselves to share in this thing that is important to someone else. Love is putting together a playlist for someone about to drive cross country for a family emergency. Love is sharing in someone’s grief, even when we don’t know what to say or do, but just sitting in it together, even in silence.  Love is getting crafty in the kitchen to make something delicious and filling out of odds and ends. Love is delivering care packages of coffee and flowers just because.

Write your own “love is…. “

How would you finish that phrase with what you have seen and experienced?

Love is…..

God is love and you are created in the image of love. This is who God is. This is who YOU are, even when it doesn’t feel that way or seems rather dim.  And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. Amen.

I belong to...

Acts 18:1-4

1 After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 There he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3 and, because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they worked together -- by trade they were tentmakers. 4 Every sabbath he would argue in the synagogue and would try to convince Jews and Greeks.

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

10 Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. 11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. 12 What I mean is that each of you says, "I belong to Paul," or "I belong to Apollos," or "I belong to Cephas," or "I belong to Christ." 13 Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. 18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

I’ve enjoyed discovering new things in the odd space this pandemic has created - new podcasts, new skills, new music, new memes and silly videos that bring out belly laughs, new routes to ride my bike that keep me off crowded trails, new awareness of things that have been close by but now I can notice in detail, new discoveries about all of you as you share more of what is most important to you and what you love to do with this space of time. But then I also find myself leaning on the familiar and revisiting things that feel well-known, things that feel so worn into my being that I don’t even have to think about them – like riding a bike, or breathing, or digging in the garden, or oma’s recipes. It’s a constant dance between taking in all the newness that seems to be flooding in and grounding myself on the tried and true ways that bring me peace and joy – like Disney. Always Disney.

Friday night we watched Mulan, which was pretty formative for my pre-teen tomboy self. I still know every word of Lion King and The Little Mermaid, and I feel pretty passionately that Oliver and Company is one of the most underappreciated classics. Fantasia was the one our school teachers could get away with showing us in class because it’s very clearly musical education. Not that Billy Joel as a street dog in New York City isn’t incredible musical education…

And Fantasia has such a unique sense of whimsy and wonder with hippopotamus ballerinas in ruffle skirts and graceful gators with feathers in their caps; a visual and emotional feast of creation that is both epic and earthy. And, of course, there’s the wordless tale of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice with an iconic Mickey wearing a droopy red robe who is eager to move from observer to practitioner. Plus, it would solve the problem of hauling heavy buckets of wash water all on his own. So when the teacher leaves the room, he tries on for himself the tall and pointy deep blue hat with moon and stars, and waves his arms as he has seen the master do. He must have heard the wondrous words enough times to feel acquainted. He has watched and seen the incredible possibilities. Perhaps he has even mirrored and mimicked the movements of miracles he witnessed...

When the usual guides are gone, and we’re left with the simple elements of wonder, seemingly anxious to come to life through us, what does it look like when we move to hold that wonder for our own?

For Mickey, it starts off well-enough until he slips into sleep and the thoughts and ways of Mickey that lie just below his consciousness, just beyond his awareness…begin to run the show. For the church at Corinth, it’s not so different.

After spending significant time together, discovering the newness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, growing through conversation and mentorship, and laying a foundational rhythm for a new kind of faithful community…Paul travels on and is physically distant from them as they try on the wonder of this Word for themselves. Now they must navigate how the Gospel of resurrection plays out in the rhythms of their own day to day life.

Apparently they discover that there’s a lot that wasn’t explicitly covered in the manual because Paul writes in a way that is obviously a response to questions he’s been sent.  He speaks to their wonder and wrestling with that place between how we are growing and where we still are.  And while I think he gets a little sassy, it’s not shame but encouragement fosters change through the cross.

It is a natural a necessary part of growth and maturity in any matter including spirituality that we should move from theory to practice, to try on the wonder for ourselves and give voice to the Word with our own words. And like anyone learning to ride a bike, it will naturally and necessarily include stumbles and struggles and missing the mark. For the way of the cross makes us look foolish, unpolished, and thus dismissible to those who worship prestige and perfection over process, but to us who are being saved it is where God is most certainly at work.

Paul writes of “being saved,” an active saving, perhaps to remind us that God’s work in us and the world is still ongoing, so do not lose heart.

Among the Corinthians, within one faith community, there have developed divisions and segmentations, the elements of hierarchy and allegiances shaped by and in service to something other than God or the Gospel. It didn’t happen because anyone sat and thought to themselves, “I am going to divide the people of God.” More likely, it is a symptom of the societal residue. It is the result of all that newness of the Gospel colliding with the familiar and ingrained-to-the-point-of-unconscious ways of life within the Roman Empire.

The way of empire is a pyramid where your value and belonging funnels from your patron. You’re only as good as your societal line of succession. Your identity and influence as well as your very livelihood and safety come from your tribe, your clan, your crew, or your gated community and so you strengthen and serve that name above all else, whether or not you realize that what you’ve committed to. It makes you think you’re strengthening your particular community, when doing so really just separates people against one another and strengthens the control of the most powerful.  It’s a system not so different from my high school where freshman and sophomores were “adopted” by upperclassmen, but there were echelons of popularity and social power. The elite circles “belonged” to seniors, and the second tier “belonged” to the juniors.  It was a clearly BS system, but you were considered lucky to belong anywhere at all. It was all very Dazed & Confused but listen, as bad as it sounds; it seemed a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

The world of ancient Corinth is not so different from our modern divisions of tribalism, or partisanship, or ideological purity that define our sense of belonging and in return demand our ultimate and complete allegiance and lambastes any deviation as dangerous, diminishing, and downright treasonous.

I belong to…

the progressives, or the moderates, or the conservatives,

the hipsters, or the traditionalists,

the greatest generation, or the forgotten generation, or the emerging generations

the Catholics, or the protestants, or the evangelicals

Stand for something or fall for anything. Pick a team or be abandoned as factionless.

Perhaps we’re aware of at least some of the ways we are steeped in this way of being.  Perhaps we know it’s there and want it to be different, but can’t seem to shake it. Perhaps it lies just beneath the surface of our notice. But left unacknowledged, unevaluated, and unchecked it will inevitably end up with subconscious Mickey driving the bus until we find ourselves in high water.

This tribalistic sense of belonging is a house of cards so fragile that its boundaries, when challenged, require violent enforcement. It’s the kind that leads people to spit at Asian folks in falsely-perceived retribution.

It’s the kind that ultimately lead a white father and son to be convinced that they have probable cause and sufficient authority to murder Ahmaud Arbery while out for a jog because his  black skin is “other” and so suspicious and so threatening and so his life must be sacrificed on the altar of their supremacy. It’s the kind that makes another black mother plead for months for her loss to be noticed, for her baby to at least see some kind of belated justice. And lest we keep ourselves at a safe distance, we must admit that this is not so different from any of our own neighborhoods where any quick viewing of NextDoor will tell you the same sentiments are at work here, where we have the space to speak and act, even if we’re not sure we’ll do it quite right while we’re learning.

This is the pervasive-and-insidious-to-the-point-of-subconscious lie that empires steep you in – that your status of belonging is fragile, tenuous, and conditional, and if you don’t buy in, and you don’t defend it even at the expense of others, you’re doomed. And when that has controlled everything you’ve ever known, it seeps into everything you do…even church, and often we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

That’s not to say that our connection and relationships with people aren’t deeply important. When Paul first comes to Corinth he stays with Aquilla and Priscilla because they share things in common.  There is sacred solace and holy healing in the way we are held and challenged in mutual relationship. The way I hear folks talk about their drag families or street families or school friends or colleagues or neighbors can surely echo a different kind of belonging and divine care. Our relationships are indeed a part and a reflection of God’s promises for a different way of being and of being loved. Belonging to people, in the intimacy of shared knowing, is much different than belonging to a patron or a camp or and ideology. 

It is part of the larger liberation that Paul speaks to. When the proclamation of “this is just the way the world is” creeps into the driver seat and seems like the most powerful word, we need the Gospel of Jesus to shake us free and remind us that the world is actually still a creation of love and connection and care. We need the liberating truth that above all our hustle and our attempts at manufactured or contingent belonging, we find our rest in our belonging unconditionally to the one who knows us in our fullness. The pieces of ourselves we had to hide in order to fit the facade, are embraced in God’s wide welcome. The ways we thought impossible to escape, God has already overcome.  The redeeming cross of Christ, of perceived weakness, of vulnerability, of intimacy, stands more powerful than blustering empire, and violence, and “every one for themselves”. When we fear we can not shake the ways of empire, fear it simply can not be done, when we feel stuck in that place between how we are growing and where we are…the Gospel reminds us that something different is not only possible, it is probable and, in fact, already risen among us. Amen.

And here’s the only musical meditation that felt right in response.

In The Image of a Beautifully-Tattered Savior

Acts 3:1-10

1 One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o'clock in the afternoon. 2 And a man lame from birth was being carried in. People would lay him daily at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate so that he could ask for alms from those entering the temple. 3 When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked them for alms. 4 Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, "Look at us." 5 And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. 6 But Peter said, "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk." 7 And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. 8 Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. 9 All the people saw him walking and praising God, 10 and they recognized him as the one who used to sit and ask for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

One way that I try to understand scripture is by picturing the story as it plays out. How the people would be moving through the space can tell a lot of story too. 

What emotion or implications all of those details may have…

Where and when and how and with whom this thing takes place…

These assembled pieces tell the story with a richness between the lines that words only point to.

So I’m trying to picture this Beautiful Gate where prayers and pleas are brought close to one another by a narrowing space, this threshold where the sacred and the mundane meet and mingle together.

Architectural and archaeological scholars certainly have sketches of what it may have looked like, but for today I’m less interested in the exactness of the picture as much as I am the idea of it. We can easily imagine a thick stone structure that emits both foreboding strength and intimate carvings carefully crafted for beauty’s sake, part fortress and part sculpture, part function and part form and shape and the way those things make us feel.

In my mind’s eye, I picture the India Gate in New Delhi. Recent pictures reveal this triumphal arch with new clarity and brightness as the air clears from traffic that cannot be. Its stark sandstone face is a simple but also ornate monument… built in the space of peace, but also a testament to thousands who died in war.

Where else do we see beauty in this multifaceted way?

As I think back on just this week…

I picture Emily’s smile as she receives the first hard copies of her first book, beaming and delighting in the reality of a dream, taking in its soft pages and the labor of love and courage that it took to create them.

I picture Shannon’s delicate and vibrant stitching on a small patch of quilt – a process that seems incredibly inefficient which generally drives me bonkers but also echoes of deep care.

I went for a bike ride this weekend and passed by a building I’d never seen before on the East side – this simple but striking art deco façade that looks like it may have once been a gleaming garage, but is all whitewashed and boarded up now. I don’t picture it as a diamond in the rough, but beautiful just as it is -  this surprising mix as it both resists and relinquishes to time.  I’m that person has a macabre sense of beauty anyway with my little collection of taxidermy that I hope comes across as more cabinet of curiosities than bone collector.

Meditating on this juxtaposed beauty I also picture home-sewn protective masks that hide everything of a face except deep brown eyes – a testament to how bizarre these days certainly are, but also made from fabric that is a witness to the beauty of vibrant Mexican embroidery or colorful kente cloth, or the resurrection life of a scrapped pair of pajama pants.

I hear beauty in the holy laments of things we had hoped would be by now, but are not realized – stunning in their heartfelt humanity. This beauty streaks down tired faces as hot tears fall for reasons too big to speak and reasons we don’t understand. It resounds even amidst the heavy silences and the chaotic clamor of these days.

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So I wonder…where have you seen and experienced beauty recently? …..

This resurrection life reframes our blotches and our breakdowns - not as something outside of redemption, but within it. To see and be seen through this lens of resurrection is wondrous and beautiful - not only in ways that are elaborate but also ordinary. Jesus was always doing this – seeing those unnoticed by others, drawing near to those considered too flawed or foreign to approach, lifting their faces so they can see eye to eye, calling them by name out of what others only saw as a formless void. Now the disciples…without the stability of their rabbi’s voice, but also filled and sent with a mysterious and sacred Spirit... resemble and reflect this vision, this re-imagining of beauty.

A person who’s movement has always incorporated others, but also results in their being metaphorically and physically “outside,” a status which the ancient text calls “lame”…lays near the beautiful gate to incite the care of the faithful. Day in and out, for what must seem like always, they have taken on the traditional position and posture of one who seeks mercy. As Peter and John pass by, this person asks for alms, for traditional generosity, the same as they would have asked many others that day and in days past. The disciples look intently at this fellow human being. 

They SEE this one and do not continue on without taking full notice and engaging one another. As was traditional for temple beggars, his head must have been cast downward, eyes turned away for the disciples to specifically say “look at us!” With each other fully in view, this recognition of shared humanity fills the air with expectation.

Peter and John can not be what they are not, and yet they still have something of value to offer. They are honest about what gifts they do and don’t have, and they express that even those things they hold are bigger than their own possession could contain. What they have is not only for them but for the whole world. These things they have and are, are most beautifully realized in their sharing.  And God uses just that to bring about resurrective  transformation. This resurrection animates and mobilizes beyond motion for the sake of motion, but explodes into leaping and exuberant praise. Beyond even that, it echoes into all those around who see and hear and are also moved in wonder and amazement – the same as the women standing before an empty tomb, tell-tale signs of God’s handiwork.

What we have…what we are…in the name and spirit of that carpenter –Rabbi called Jesus who is the Christ and came from that backwoods town of Nazareth…we give…we offer one another as resurrection.

Always easier said than realized. With so much celebration of the extraordinary, what I have often feels increasingly ordinary and sometimes even less than that. And when I compare it to others, it can feel less than or at least than certainly less than the fierce power of my anxiety or anger or what I feel are my less-than-beautiful pieces. Sitting in the shadow of something publicly proclaimed as beautiful sucks when we feel anything but. It’s hard to be seen let alone share when we’re not exactly having a highlight reel moment.

But then here is impetuous-always-getting-ahead-of-himself-and-missing-the-point-rock-of-the-church Peter and beloved-blue-collar-but-gonna-end-up-living-in-a-cave John reminding me that God doesn’t need us to be rich or perfect to be a part of holy work, but just who we are.  And this work is beautiful and holy and just as resurrective even when healing in body or heart doesn’t happen instantaneously or look exactly like this scene from Acts, when it doesn’t look or feel miraculous. Resurrection is still at work even in recurrence, even in relapse, and even certainly in death.

So again I wonder…what is it that God has blessed you to give?

Perhaps it’s the gift of teaching that expands our thinking? Art to inspire? Writing that creates meaning and wonder? A car to drive that mobilizes resources? A caring soul that is well-suited to compassionate phone calls and kind notes? Passion to call up politicians and advocate? Knowledge for health and healing? Green and growing blossoms that remind us of the grounding rhythms of life? Crafting that serves no purpose other than joy? Party-planning that finds creative ways to celebrate? Maybe you ARE one with financial resources to share? Maybe the gift you have you give is staying home even when you’re so over it? Perhaps what you have to share is a simple non-fantastical but sacred story of grace and messy beauty and hope?

Like this sacred story of healing, our very being poured out preaches the resurrection. It’s expansive beauty leans into and enacts the Gospel that everyone has a place at God’s never-ending table. It is proclaimed not only to those that seem directly involved but also among those who witness with wonder and amazement nearby.

Photo by Biel Morro

Each glimpse of resurrection points back to the source – a scarred and beautiful savior. Each one is an echo of Christ’s own love. It ripples through us into the world. And maybe you’re not sure if you have the capacity to be a ripple right now, but they wash over us anyway and continue on far beyond us.

At the center is the beauty of a savior whose image we are created to reflect. A savior defamed and defiled in the eyes of the world, but still precious and powerful in the scope of eternity. A savior that reimages salvation not as an escape but as a return – to something that has always been true of us but doesn’t quite fit in the frames we’ve held. A savior who is resurrected to delicious wholeness, even while there is still a hole in his side. In the name of Jesus, the beautifully-tattered savior of ordinary people and places, lift up your eyes and take note of your body, assured that you are both incredibly beautiful and beloved just as you are, and that who you are and the simple gifts God has given you…are a blessing worthy to be shared. Amen.

A musical mediation for this week:
Our friend Aaron Strumpel sings Beautiful Savior

Waiting and Praying as Easter People

The Sacred Story for the Second Sunday of Easter comes from Acts 1:1-14.

In this season of Easter, we’re called to remember the promises of Easter. We’re called to be Easter people, and we celebrate the promises of the resurrection even in the midst of uncertainty, upheaval, fear, and grief. We speak the truth of a hope and a love so resilient that even death cannot hold it back. We celebrate the resurrection of Christ which boldly proclaims that death will never have the final word, that life and love remain triumphant over even the most devastating circumstances.

We are called to do this in this season of Easter, knowing that things are not what they used to be.

Our world has changed, just as the disciples’ did all those years ago, when they, in shock and yes, still grieving, gathered together with the risen Jesus who ordered them not to leave Jerusalem. They gathered together, holding within them tensions as their grief wrestles with the joy of seeing their risen savior, and their questions and doubt wrestle with the facts they have in front of them. Gathered together and placed on a Stay at Home order, the disciples struggle to understand and rejoice.

They’re gathered together with Jesus, and Jesus speaks to them about waiting for the promises of God - for the moment when they will be baptized with the Holy Spirit and filled with a new kind of understanding and peace.

The disciples wait for these promises, struggling with their present reality while looking towards a hopeful future.

We too wait for promises. We wait for the promise of a return to our former routines, we wait for the promise of effective treatments and the development of vaccines. 

I wonder what else you are waiting for right now.

I wonder, if on these Stay at Home orders, maybe feel like we wait for Jesus himself to arrive and answer our questions. 

Questions like the disciples had: 

“is this the time when you will restore the Kingdom to Israel?” 

“Is this the time when we will experience the fullness of the Kingdom of God?” 

Other questions:

“Is this the time when a miraculous cure will sweep the world?” 

“Is this the time when no one will have to worry about paying rent or buying groceries?”

To have hard questions and doubts and grief, even in the midst of this season of Easter Celebration is not something to be ashamed of. The disciples too, even with Jesus literally in the room with them, experienced celebration and joy muted by grief and uncertainty.

Jesus responds to their questions, by reminding them that God is a promise keeper, and that they need only but to trust in the faithfulness and steadfastness of God shown throughout all time and among all people.

And then Jesus calls the disciples to be witnesses to the message of Easter, and is taken up into the clouds. And the disciples depart in shock, after being reassured by two men, maybe the same angels who were at the tomb, that Jesus would return again. 

They depart and go back to the city of Jerusalem, where they remain on stay at home orders - though their group is certainly larger than 10 people - and in response to God’s call to be a witness to the message of Easter, they devote themselves to prayer, and they continue to wait.

They wait, trusting that the promise of God is soon to come, because they are holding onto the promise of the resurrection. The disciples wait and pray and trust in God’s faithfulness even as they remain under their Stay at Home orders in Jerusalem.

And I don’t know about you, but trusting in God’s steadfastness feels to me like one of the most authentic witnesses to the resurrection that we can have. We don’t have to try and put on a happy face, or worry about the performativity of perfection that this world demands. We don’t have to do or feel anything other than exactly what we find ourselves feeling. Our whole authentic selves are a witness enough to the message of Easter. 

And so, as we wait to gather together again, as we wait for a return to routines, as wait for the return of Jesus and the in breaking of the Kingdom of God, may we trust that our very lives are witness enough to message of Easter. May we look for opportunities to speak the message of Easter, of a quiet, persistent hope, that breaks in even when we are unsure or grieving. As we go on our way later on tonight, carry with you the hope of the resurrection. Take heart.

Take heart and breathe deep the breath of God, and know that in your waiting, God is there also.

An Untidy Resurrection

Mark 16:1-8

1 When the sabbath was over, Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought perfumed oils so that they might go and anoint Jesus. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 They had been saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" 4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young person, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But the youth said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, the One who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7 Now go, tell the disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." 8 So they went out and fled from the tomb bewildered and amazed; but they said nothing to anyone, they were so afraid.

“Women Arrive At The Tomb” by He Qi

The women – Mary the Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, went out into the eerily vacant streets. They walked through the dim light of early morning when all was quiet except that this is when songbirds are most vocal and creation itself begins to stir.

They walked step by step toward the tomb, expecting death. They had prepared and steeled themselves for it, gathered the necessary and practical things for the work at hand – the ritual of anointing, of blessing a love that which was dead and gone.  They set about navigating the chaos of loss by seeking peace and grounding in the familiar rhythms of ritual, even when it’s sad.

Along the way, the reality of the obstacles ahead became more pressing. There were going to be large, weighty barriers in front of them.  There were significant seemingly immovable obstacles ahead and they had no idea how to get around that.

When they arrived at the place where they knew the rubber would meet the road, where they anticipated that even this bittersweet mercy might come to an abrupt end… they were…surprised, confused, disturbed, alarmed, and perhaps even cautiously hopeful for what they found. They were probably already awash with the raw and mixed up emotions of grief and now they’re hit with another wave, another layer to process through their already frazzled and fried systems.  Even if it might be a positive thing, it’s just…a lot…too much. 

Somehow…the impossibly heavy weight had been moved. Not gone, but moved in such a way that its weight could never again keep them from goodness, from love.

As they pressed forward and moved in closer, they saw…

…nothing like they could have ever expected,

…something that was different than they’d ever known,

…something they didn’t fully understand

…yet something that shifted everything toward the realization of the impossible.

But still, it wasn’t clear if things were turning toward impossible danger or impossible hope, and that uncertain space between is indeed terrifying.

And into that thick air of a new day, a young voice speaks,

“I can see you’re freaked out.  I can hear the internal cries stuck in your throat.  Take a breath. Notice that you’re still breathing. The alarm bells have already awoken you; it’s time to hear a different sound.  I know what you’ve been through.  I know the hurt and harm you’ve seen, the trauma that has marked you. I know why you’re here. I know the mysterious cocktail of love and grief that has mobilized you.  I know the buried hope you dare not speak and may even resent. The One who you love, who loves you, who IS love…is not held captive, but is out on the loose. LOVE is not quarantined or confined, but out there with you. Jesus is risen.  See for yourselves. Notice how this empty cavernous place has created space for something new, even if you can’t comprehend what that is yet.  Look at the things around you and see how they point toward resurrection.  And then…get moving too. Tell the others that Jesus is one the move, already ahead of you in the places your heart already knows.  That’s where you’ll see the risen God. That’s where you’ll find yourself beside the indomitable mystery of love unbound.  That’s what the promise has always been.  It was always and will always hold true.”

Other Gospels then turn to overflowing exuberance and with quickened and glad hearts the women run to tell others what they have seen.  In the other Gospels, Jesus shows up clearly, pronounces peace, and they get to embrace him if even for a moment.

But that is not Mark’s story.  Here, the Gospel ends in a mix of fear and bewilderment that has them stuck in stillness and silence.  This is where the words just stop.

In some ways the story feels unfinished.

In some ways it feels unsatisfying.

In some ways this is the most true and relatable Gospel I can imagine.

We want to see, touch, and hear Jesus with clarity. But there is no shining resurrection appearance to speak of – only confusion, fear, and silence.  It seems like the women do the exact opposite of the angel’s words: “do not be alarmed, go and tell.” But they can’t help it; they go away afraid and tell no one.  I wonder if one of them DID feel a spark of joy but felt too guilty to share or celebrate it while others were still struggling.

What is the Good News of resurrection if it doesn’t provide a tidy bow to gather up all our loose ends and frayed edges?

And in this confounding terrible wonder, I see the resurrected Jesus already ahead of me here, patiently waiting to be recognized.

This living love, this Gospel would always defy concise capture but is wildly and widely found in the ways God brings life – not only at conclusions, but even in the midst of confusion. It is a new kind of healing that arrives not just after but even through the chaos. It cannot be stopped, even by empire or isolation, or death, or silence.  The alleluia arises, even if it’s smudged, stained, or broken.

This is a Gospel that breaks the silence even as the sound escapes into freedom in spite of ourselves.  We know that the silence did not last forever or we wouldn’t have this sacred story before us.

The resurrection must have happened sometime in the fertile darkness of night, quiet and in-breaking, and it may take us some time to know it in fullness. 

But still, it raises us up with Christ.

Still…it beckons, leads, and animates us

as we do the impossible thing of simply putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time.

Still…it creates space for transformation -

shaping us, our societies and systems, and all of creation into what we will become from here. 

Still…it sings of immutable love

even and especially for overwhelmed hearts.

This is resurrection…for us, in us, and throughout all things. Today and always. Amen.

Community and Self-Care in the Face of Trauma

Here in the Gulf Coast, we’re no strangers to the stress, fear, and uncertainty that large scale disasters can bring. It’s just that we’re used to those disasters arriving in the form of intense storm systems and other natural disasters. The public health crisis brought on by COVID-19 is a different kind of disaster. Instead of pulling out our 72 Hour Lutheran Disaster Preparedness Kits, we’re setting up makeshift workspaces in our homes, fashioning face coverings and masks out of bandanas or spare bits of fabric, and trying to limit our time out around other people. Parking lots and buildings that are normally full of people are now empty, or at least contain the absolute minimum of essential staff. People unable to work remotely face difficult choices about continuing to go in to work or face lay-offs or furloughs.

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

In some ways though, it still feels the same as those days immediately leading up to and following a natural disaster. There is a thick cloud of uncertainty and collective anxiety about what will happen next. We’re unable to do things that had been regular parts of our daily routine, we’re unable to see friends and loved ones in the same way. Our sense of “normal” has changed.

These days and weeks now (it’s been a full month since we last gathered in person to worship at +KINDRED), have been traumatic. I didn’t realize it myself until I lost myself in a good 30-minute binge of articles and reflections on the mental, emotional, and spiritual impact of this global pandemic. This article from Upworthy laid it out plain and simple for me:

“…many of us likely haven't thought about this experience as "trauma" because it hasn't been one single event. It's a slow emergency of sorts, one we had to prepare for before we saw it for ourselves. And now we're living in a weird state of limbo where nothing feels normal, widespread worry and uncertainty surround us, and yet it's all covered in a thin veneer of calm.

That veneer is deceptive. On the surface, we're just being asked to sit at home and watch TV—what's so traumatic about that? But simplifying it in such a way denies the entire reason we're doing it—to prevent mass death and suffering as much as possible. That's a heavy reality. We've had to upend life as we know it in order to preserve lives in general.

And yet even with our seemingly extreme efforts, we're still watching the numbers climb and seeing the terrible stories. Even if we aren't directly impacted, we're still immersed in it and experiencing trauma vicariously. If we have any sense of empathy, we will have an emotional response—one that we might not recognize since this is like nothing we've experienced before“

What we’re going through is traumatic. It’s going to affect us all in different ways, and the way you feel may vary from day to day - heck even minute to minute!

If you follow us on Facebook, you’ll find a series of posts that ran last week (04/07 - 04/10) addressing the multitude of emotions this pandemic has stirred up within us. Being able to reflect on our experiences and emotions and name what we’re feeling is a valuable tool for processing these events and the way they have changed our world. There’s no “wrong way” to feel when something traumatic happens. Anger, anxiety, fear, depression, and apathy are all valid emotions.

You’ll find the texts from those Facebook posts below. As you reflect on them know that we are praying for you and here to support you during these times. Be well y’all, be well.

Day One: Grief

If you've been feeling...out of it: sad, angry, tired, confused, but you can't seem to put your finger on any one reason...you're not alone.

What you might be feeling is grief.

We know grief to be something that happens when someone dies. But grief can happen in a myriad of ways and for a million different reasons.

Grief is a response to loss.

A way that we can care for one another during this time, is to make space for all the things we're grieving, big and small.

And so, you're invited to write down in a journal, or in the comments below, what you are grieving right now.

We don't have to worry about fixing things for people, right now - in fact, that can be one of the least helpful things to do. For now, it is enough to bear witness to people's grief and pain. It is enough to say: I hear you. That's so hard.

Over the last several weeks many things have been lost. Jobs, reliable incoming, housing, any semblance of a regular schedule, routines, time with friends and loved ones, the opportunity to spend time in shared public spaces with other people. Not to mention those who have contracted the virus and lost their health, or their lives, and those who will lose their loved ones to this virus.

As we ease into Holy Week, a week that is, for many of us, full of embodied and communal traditions we might be feeling this grief in a more profound way. We won't be gathering as we normally do. Feeling these losses is important, even though our instinct might be to ignore them or push them away. You are not alone in your grief.

Day Two: Anxiety

This is a time of heightened anxiety and stress. For some of us, our normal levels of anxiety and stress are feeling off the charts as the news and updates about this virus roll in and the patterns and routines of our lives rapidly devolve and change into some new and disjointed way of being. For others of us, we may be experiencing this kind of stress and anxiety for the first time. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, you’re not alone, and what you’re feeling is normal. People across the nation and world are also feeling this (check out this article from The Atlantic that details the collective anxiety people are feeling and offers some coping mechanisms. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-anxiety/608317/ ). There are plenty of reasons to be anxious and stressed, and while we’re not sure when things will return to “normal” (whatever that even means anymore), we know that it’s exhausting to exist in a constant state of hyper-vigilance and stress, and so we look for ways to care for ourselves.

Some common coping methods and practices for dealing with anxiety are to ground and center oneself. Grounding is a technique used in mental health care to help a person reorient themselves from intense and overwhelming emotions into the present, often allowing out of control anxious thoughts to fade away. Centering is a technique used to help people ground themselves by slowing one’s breath and mind.

Centering is also a type of prayer used by many different faiths and traditions. Centering and breath prayers are old old practices found in the monastic and Celtic traditions among other traditions.

And so, you’re invited into this practice of centering prayer. Theologian, public speaker, and author Sarah Bessey shared her own practices for breath prayer in the article linked below, check it out and see what this experience offers for you. https://sarahbessey.substack.com/p/breath-prayers-for-anxious-times

We’ll be sharing posts like this every day at noon, so if you need a place to check-in and find some resources for caring for yourself and others, we’ve got you covered. Be well, y’all. We’re in this together.

Day Three: Empathy

As we reckon with all of the grief and anxieties that this time of crisis and uncertainty have brought about, we need the support of one another more than ever. Reaching out to people we care about and who care about us is a really great way to care for one another. Talking about the things you’re experiencing and the feelings you’re having is healthy and important. 

Here are a couple of tips for making these conversations with loved ones as helpful and caring as possible. 1. Take the time. Don’t rush the conversation.

2. Offer empathy, not sympathy. (what’s the difference? Watch this short video from Brene Brown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HznVuCVQd10)

3. Pay attention to body language. Make eye contact, don’t be scrolling or checking emails.

4. Refrain from offering solutions.

5. Use open-ended, empathic, or dangling questions.

6. Ask for more.

7. Repeat a phrase or word.

8. Allow for silences.

Taking time to have these intentional and thoughtful conversations can make a world of difference in the way we care for one another.Breathe deep, and listen well, dear ones. We’re all in this together.

Communion in Diaspora

Every time we gather for Dinner Church worship as +KINDRED we say that this is “a community that gathers for a sacred meal, just as Jesus and the first followers did.” As a public health crisis moves our community to remain at home, we embody love for our neighbor by keeping them safe with our physical absence. At the same time, the question lingers in our hearts, “how do we practice our faith, particularly in worship, within these unprecedented circumstances.” It reminds me of a favorite song based on Psalm 137. “The Rivers of Babylon” sings the story of the Jewish people in diaspora, dispersed, captive and cut off from their homeland and their beloved places of worship. Scripture and these lyrics sorrowfully wonder, “how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” They are unsure how it could even possible, but at the same time they are still singing.

In the way of faithful ancestors, we continue to gather as a community of faith in new ways while participating in ancient promises. Even as Dinner Church goes digital, we continue to partake in mystic sweet communion.

It’s not only habit or tradition that leads us to continue this sacred meal, but our very understanding of God and God’s gifts. The reason we bless bread and cup with God’s words of promise and serve them to one another each week is because we regularly need this reminder of grace and life. We are hungry for God’s presence and we need regular refreshment. If it were practical to gather every day, we would do it every day. Because this meal is more than a reminder. It is an actual experience of God’s grace and life in a way that connects us and connects to our bodies as a part of our soul.  This shared nourishment of body and soul is especially vital in these days of loss and isolation.

This meal has always been one that we share within community. In fact, it is what holds us in community through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is itself, from one table, one plate, one cup…the body and blood of Christ broken, poured out, and given to many…a divine mystery of connection and distribution. It is a holy gift that draws from and extends relationship. That community and our relationship is STILL real even as it’s digital and different for a time. We serve one another, but it is not in secret or seclusion, even if we are physically by ourselves. We are still engaged with one another as we share and serve through the wonder of technology.

In sharing this meal, even across screens from wherever we stay with whatever food and drink we have, we reckon with the truth that this blessing has never been about the location or the stuff or the credentials of the one offering these gifts of God.  It has always been God’s gift to us and for us, through Christ and nothing else. This meal is not magical. These words are not incantation. It is not made holy by anything we do, but by who God is. It is a means of God’s grace which we proclaim we can neither add to nor screw up.  Whether it’s plated with homemade sourdough or gas station doritos, whether the drinks are served in the perfect fluted glass or a fading plastic souvenir cup- whatever table gathers us and offers this nourishment of food and drink and everlasting promise…is God’s table. This moment brings us to realize in new and profound ways that it has always been God’s table and that God’s table is endless.

In this meal we celebrate a God who consistently shows up and acts through the ordinary and everyday, the imperfect, even through chaos and what tradition might consider profane or sacrilegious. We have never been able to box Jesus in or lock God out.  The Gospel of John declares that the resurrected Christ still arrives through locked doors among scared disciples. God’s love is unstoppable. This feast of love is a reflection of God’s being – accessible to all. It points to the sacredness of common staples that are available to any and all. Indeed, I wonder if we have not actually done damage to our understanding of the sacrament by distorting it into specialized places and objects so that it appears so foreign from the average person’s table where it was instituted. Yet the meal itself declares that God doesn’t reside among the limits and rarities, but the here and now.

How it is that God loves so freely or comes to us in this simple and profound way that strengthens and fills us up even and especially when we feel weary or empty…has always been a mystery. We wonder how it can even be possible, even as we lean into and upon this life-giving mystery, now as always.

Among friends, gathered around a table, we remember that this is not forever, but that God’s grace is surely sufficient and indeed overflowing.

Love in the Time of Corona

This week’s sacred story comes from Mark 12:28-44, a religious leader asks Jesus about which of God’s commands are most important. Spoiler, it’s love. But then what does that love look like in the world and how does it establish a new normal? Religious leaders pray in loudly public and an impoverished widow puts all her money into the temple tax box. Jesus has a word. Read the full text here.

What is most important? Isn’t that the question of the hour?

Safety? Stuff (not knocking stuff)? Access? Work? Friends? Family? Connection? Health? Education (school or trustworthy news)? Shelter? Food? Faith?

If we have to choose where to focus our energy, where should it go?

There are lots of voices telling us what’s important on an average day, but now it seems particularly loud.  The scribe comes to Jesus to ask, what does GOD have to say is most important?

Jesus’ answer…is love.

Love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And Love your neighbor as yourself.

I’ve heard this paraphrased as Love God, Love Others and that’s not a bad shorthand. But it leaves out a critical clause…love others AS YOURSELF. When God talks about the importance of love, and divine love…love of self is a vital part of this trinity. It’s something I noted with a passing glance before, but was brought more into focus this past year when I read the book “Love Big” by our friend Rozella Haydee-White and it seems particularly pertinent now.

I just say that because it’s really these three commands and they’re all interwoven into one another.  We’re loving God when we love our neighbor and ourselves. When we love our neighbor, it is love toward God’s very self.

And this conversation with Jesus about what’s most important , and how central loves is to all things, allows the one asking the question to recognize that love is more than the routines and even the rituals, more than the things we thought God and the world needed from us for there to be love.

Still, it’s hard, if not impossible to fully wrap our minds around, to process, so at least for a moment…no one dares ask another question.

But there were still questions and without anyone saying a word, Jesus knows them and articulates them even when no one else does.

The questions are essentially: how does this all work? What does this look like, this all-encompassing interwoven reciprocal love? How do all these stories we’ve heard fit together? How does this divine story connect to the story of our people? How does this love arrive exactly?

In true Jesus form, there’s no single one-size-fits-all straightforward answer, available now w/ free shipping for a series of low-low payments (for well-qualified customers, of course). But he DOES talk about what it DOESN’T look like.

Love is not maintaining the appearance of keeping it all together, the illusion of being able to do it all and crush it and call that holy. Love is not about our productions values, putting on a really great show, even a show of faith…

especially…if that show has become disconnected from love, from our hearts and our neighbor

especially…when it results in gouging or stockpiling or building systems on the backs of the vulnerable and then cutting their benefits

…so that those who have little have even less.

While this is indeed a time when we will need to anchor ourselves in generosity and share what God has given us…Jesus watches the impoverished widow put all that she has into the offering box and draws our attention to her.  Jesus is not lifting her up as an example of heroics, but setting in front of us the impact of living without love.  It is exhaustion, a hollow emptiness, and exploitation.

So what does this imperative to love God with our whole selves, and in the same way love our neighbor as ourselves…look like? What does it feel like?

Perhaps that can be our prayer each morning and our reflections each night.

God, show me what divine love looks like today. Jesus, help me see where this divine love was evident and experienced today?

I invite you to consider not only the big obvious grand gestures of love, but also the small spaces in between that might normally slip through unnoticed.  I was reading Brene Brown’s book “Dare to Lead” last week and as she talks about trust and vulnerability and their interconnected nature, she learn that while we might expect trust to be built in the sharing of big life-altering moments, but really the research shows that it is most often made strongest by the smaller things in between…remembering someone’s grandparent’s names, being invited to the digital hangout, receiving even a short note of care or encouragement.

What does this divine love look like?

Perhaps Washing hands,  and NOT gathering or going out if at all possible – and listen, that is a difficult thing when the bills still need to get paid or life at home is not a place of solace, so perhaps love, that divine love of self, also looks like asking for help when we need it. Love is checking on each other and taking time to rest; it’s county judges declaring that there will be no evictions and sheriffs offering compassionate release to non-violent prisoners

As we envision this love, notice how it’s not exclusively romantic or emotional (although those are holy too), but this is also love embodied.

God, show me what divine love looks like today.

Jesus, help me see where this divine love was evident and experienced today. 

I know God will be with us and will respond, and IS responding within all these ways – large and small that love continues to dwell among us. That’s not to put a silver lining or rose-colored glasses on anything.  This love does not need us to put on a good show. This love does not dodge the hard questions or ignore our other feelings, but yet persists.  This community of love still holds and the work of the church continues.

Maybe that love looks like this.

A CHANGE OF PLANS, BUT NOT OF HEART: Community and Covid-19

Last night our Leadership Table met digitally to discern a faithful response to the evolving landscape of Covid-19 and its implications for us as a people of faith.  We took a deep breath, prayed, anchored ourselves in scripture and listened for the Spirit’s guidance. Ultimately, we decided that for the sake of one another, we will no longer gather in person for the time being, but we will still be the church together. We want to care for our neighbors in the best way we can and play our part in making significant changes now in an effort to prevent prolonged crisis later.

That means:

-This Sunday we will not gather in person for DINNER CHURCH but stream a service of worship at 6:15 PM through Facebook Live. (https://www.facebook.com/kindredmontrose/) You don’t have to have an account to watch, but log in to comment with prayers. And if you have it available to you, gather a candle, something to eat and something to drink to participate and from where you are. In this way, we can still celebrate that mystic sweet communion, to nourish us even from afar.
-At our regular meeting time of 5:30PM, we will continue to offer a blessing and a meal to go for those who rely on it. We’ll have flyers with spiritual practices you can engage on your own, how to stay in contact with us, and the latest information on resources, especially for those are experiencing homelessness or financial stress.
We already have all the food, supplies, and volunteers we need for this Sunday, but please let us know if you’d be interested and available for this on a future date.

-our office will stay “open” but our office Manager, Whitney Hall, will be working remotely. The same contact information will still lead you to our staff.

-our building remains open to the many groups and meetings that call 2515 Waugh their home and we’re taking special care to clean and disinfect high-touch areas. We host several 12-step groups among other support networks that would be essential in times of stress and it will be up to those communities to decide how best to serve one another. Look for communication and postings directly from these groups for any changes.

We plan to continue in this rhythm until further notice. Just as the people of God have been dispersed in crisis before, we cling to the resilient hope that carries us through. While we are apart physically, we can still stay connected.

Here’s how we’ll STAY CONNECTED:
-A rotation of our core bread-bakers will continue to bake fresh loaves for market at Central City Co-Op to help keep the city fed and support our network of local farmers.

-We always pause for morning prayer while baking and now we’ll stream this practice. Join us for Morning Prayer through Facebook Live, Wednesdays at 8AM. ((https://www.facebook.com/kindredmontrose/) We’ll be able to check in again mid-week, pray for one another, and dip into the deep well of God’s goodness during these wilderness days.

- other planned gatherings will also shift to digital spaces. House Church on Friday, March 27th will meet through Zoom. Look for a link in days to come.

- Commit to 3. If each of us commits to checking on 3 people in our church community, we can better care for one another through whatever may come. You can decide who they are, just think of any 3 +KINDRED people you can check in on.  Let Pastor Ashley know who that is so we can make sure everyone is connected. If you don’t have their contact info, contact Pastor Ashley to figure out how best to connect. We want to be share the responsibility of caring for one another and make every effort to ensure no one is forgotten.  Give them a call or send them a message to ask them how they’re doing, if there’s anything they need, and commit to pray for one another.  If you or your household is affected directly by the virus, or if you have any need, please share it with Pastor Ashley or Vicar Morgan directly. That continues to include mental, physical, and spiritual needs of all kinds. All of all of us still matters. We still care if you just got accepted into that exciting program and need someone to celebrate with or you just need someone to walk you through some deep breaths.

OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO:
-Pray: for our community, for the sick, the vulnerable, the lonely, the anxious, the caretakers, and the decision-makers

-Stay informed: follow local and national news like Harris County Public Health (https://www.facebook.com/HarrisCountyPublicHealth/ or http://publichealth.harriscountytx.gov/) and the Center for Disease Control (https://www.cdc.gov/ or https://twitter.com/CDCgov). Think critically about a source before sharing information to prevent the spread of dangerous misinformation

- Wash Your Hands: often, with hot water and soap, and for at least 20 second or as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday”

- Don’t touch your face: Keep germs from getting to vulnerable areas for infection.
- Social Distancing. If you absolutely must enter public spaces, stay at a distance of 6 ft from others, outside the range of potential germs.

- Prepare, share, and don’t hoard: whether it’s household cleaning products or food - take just enough for what you need so that there’s enough for everyone.
- Rest: We’re the gulf coast, we’ve been through crisis before and have come out on the other side by taking care of ourselves along the way. We know this is long and steady work and so we must pace ourselves and tend to the work God gives us day by day. We can’t help others if we’re exhausted ourselves.  This is why we all pitch in so we can take turns in this rhythm of work and rest.
-Support: The work of the church continues and we will continue to pay our staff fairly. If you haven’t done so already and you have the means, consider setting up a recurring gift to our community online through Tithe.ly. We are grateful for the many ways that you create this people called +KINDRED and support this way of life, even when it leads to unknown places. Even there, God is with us.

Romans 8:31-39

31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
   we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Peace be with you until we gather again.

-          Pastor Ashley

Amazed and Afraid? Same.

This week’s sacred story comes from Mark 10:32-52 where Jesus asks different people “what do you want me to do for you?” and gets two very different responses. The disciples struggle to “get it", a blind man with an interesting name is given sight and shows us a thing or two about who and how God is. It brings up questions of our own.

Read the full story here.

When we gather for house church once a month and for Wednesday morning bread-baking and prayer, we read scripture and the first question we ask is: what stood out to you from the text?  What springs up from the page? What words or images are sticking to your sides and stirring in your soul? What lingers in your heart?

Two words from the very first verse keep ringing in my ears:  “amazed and afraid.” While they are still “along the way”- not where they were before but not yet where they are going, and actually not entirely understanding of where they are going…they are amazed and afraid.

Those walking with Jesus…toward this big powerful city with its impenetrable walls and impressive temples, the place where headlines are made, where Jesus keeps telling them this road leads – to suffering and death but also resurrection – they are amazed but also afraid.  Those who are traveling alongside Christ have seen him perform marvelous signs, heal impossible illness, lift up those that others push down, and care for the ones living in the corners of society that are abandoned in the name of majority rules...they are amazed and afraid. Finding yourself in the shadow of something that seemed far off or impossible often brings about this experience of both amazement and fear.

When we first dreamt of what kind of community could exist here, before +KINDRED even had a name, all it had was hope. But alongside that was the terrifying truth that a million things could get in the way of that hope being realized. I was both amazed and afraid. Moving to a new place or starting a new job can be thrilling and also daunting. The advancement of technology, medicine, and science is incredible and inspiring AND a bit nerve-wracking.  Being a parent is a constant experience in being both amazed and afraid. Hearing and experiencing from God that I am beloved – both liberated by and bound to this divine family of love - included and essential to the work of redemption for the world, which only offers with certainty a way of disruption and discomfort on the way to resurrection…well…it is amazing and terrifying.

This combination can sometimes bring out my most brave and generous self. It can also bring out my most misguided and manipulative habits.

James and John respond by approaching Jesus , saying, “hey, will you do us a favor?”  You know the kind where you try to get the person to say yes before they even know what it is? Because if they knew in advance you know they might not agree to it?

Jesus responds, “what is it you want me to do for you?” and now the cloak must come off and the cards must be placed on the table. They want to sit on Jesus’ right and left – what are considered the “best” seats in the house, the traditional places of power, those who have the greatest access and influence. But these spots also offer all the perks and prestige that such proximity provides - positions of honor and glory right up front for everyone to see how great they are.

Jesus clarifies once again how God defines glory and what those seats are really like in this very different kind of Kingdom that God is bringing. Jesus double checks if that’s what they are really asking for. They want seats, but Jesus wants them to see.  James and John cannot see that this impending road is not a star-studded destination, but a way of service and sacrifice Its wayposts are not coercion or control but caring and connection. They cannot see that Jesus has come not to lift up a few, but all, especially those unseen and silenced.

James and John are ambitious and it is not their ambition that Jesus has a problem with. But he redirects their ambition to match the Kingdom, as opposed to their own glory. They still don’t understand what this is all about.  They still can’t really wrap their minds around what it means. What they can’t see is the irony is that those seats of honor are already taken and they will belong to two criminals executed alongside Jesus on the cross, one on his right and one on his left. And yet, their journey together continues. Jesus doesn’t cast them out, but keeps them close to continue walking together.

Along the way, at a little pit stop in Jericho, there sits a blind man…a beggar..Bartimaeus – whose name can be literally translated to mean “son of the impure, the defiled” or “son of honor and value.” He is outside the main stream of travelers, sitting at the side, out of the corner of their eye, and he…he shouts for the Son of David, the rightful heir to a particular throne. In a land ruled by another, he shouts a treasonous hope for a new system, one marked by mercy.

As if to prove their lack of understanding, the followers of Jesus try to hush this man. Perhaps they are amazed at his audacity, demanding to be heard and seen, taking up precious time and energy they feel is better spent elsewhere. Perhaps they are thinking – healing is great and all but we simply don’t have the time because we’re on the way to righteousness…as if this is somehow outside of that.  Or…we’re very sorry that you’re struggling, but the application period for healing is closed - there’s a right and proper way to go about this you’ll need to meet our requirements. Or perhaps they are afraid because what he is saying is truly dangerous & seditious. They know the consequence to claiming the authority of anyone other than Caesar. Perhaps their efforts are a fearful sense of “be quiet or you’ll get us all killed.” But like many cries for justice that are told to quiet down, the result is only louder, more insistent, and more disruptive voices.

All this happens at a small stop along the way. I wonder…How often do we overlook the actually important moments of life in favor of what we think should be important? Those brief encounters before worship or in the kitchen afterward, the person we bump into at the grocery store or on the bus, the fast food clerk handing us our order or the busser asking us if we’re done with that plate. It seems that life often gets its greatest significance from the “pit stops” and sometimes the most inconvenient interruption can be transformative and life changing. And if now isn't a good time to seek healing and mercy, then when is?

Jesus stops and calls for connection.  Perhaps it is the very same people who were trying to minimize this man, who are now called to be a part of clearing a way for him, bringing him front and center. Their voices are changed from minimization to amplification, to hope and empowerment. It energizes and animates Bartimaeus, this son of both outsider and honor. The one described as blind can see exactly who Jesus is and understands what hope and mercy really mean.  Perhaps it is he who will show the others.

Jesus asks again, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus does not ask for glory, but mercy.  He asks not for power nor pity, but justice and liberation. He asks for vision in a way that is visionary, giving clearer sight to all those who are witnessing this thing. Jesus declares him healed, whole on account of faith, and tells him to go. Instead, he finds himself caught up in this way forward and follows. Now he has joined this group of travelers heading toward Jerusalem.

I wonder…What keeps us from seeing, from understanding who and how God is? What keeps us from seeing what God is doing in us and our communities to prepare us for death and resurrection?

What is trying to keep us silenced or hidden? Where do we need to have our sight restored?

In the next week or so, the official U. S. Census will begin arriving to most of us by mail. This short survey creates a picture of who counts in this country and informs how our systems, our resources and energy will be organized and accessed.  The information gathered is used to direct our collective programs (like SNAP and CHIP, education and political power). In theory these benefit those often left metaphorically and literally by the roadside, but ironically and tragically they are also often the most undercounted. People who are poor, immigrants, young people, people of color, and LGBTQ folks are the most undercounted populations in the census. There are plenty of seats of power who would prefer that certain voices be silent and poor people kept on the sidelines. There are crowds who want to pretend like you don’t exist. And so, standing up and shouting out to be heard and seen can make us both amazed and afraid, but it puts us in good company.

Perhaps being healed and whole is about our ability to be seen as much as it is our ability to see…not just with our eyes but with our hearts. Perhaps transformation comes not only at the end but along the way. Perhaps our hope comes through the assurance but also the challenge of understanding that those ways of life-giving life that inspire us to keep going… they don’t happen by magic.  They happen because people show up and get involved – showing up not to be seen and glorified but to serve and amplify. God uses people to change the conversation and pursue new ways of being, to call each other forward. Perhaps mercy is to be found not only among the stereotypically powerful, but in the small mercies each day – stopping to carry someone else’s plate or to linger a bit longer and hear that story that someone needs to share, picking up a pack of underwear at the store or sharing your stockpile of purell and toilet paper – SOMEBODY has to have that stuff.

None of this promises to remove the weight from the cup that Jesus drinks, the depth of those baptismal waters, the sharp edges of the rocks from the road, or the fear from our hearts. But perhaps resurrection means being afraid and doing it anyway. We aren’t called to be without fear, but to follow the one who has amazed us by what it is to be truly alive. Amen.

A Sermon for Ash Wednesday

Mark 9:30-37

30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; 31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." 32 But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him. 33 Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" 34 But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. 35 He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." 36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37 "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."

Jesus puts it all out there. Surrounded by his closest circle, he speaks clearly of who he is as the Son of Man and what will inevitably come - betrayal, death, and resurrection. Jesus puts it all on the table and out in the open. In his teaching, Jesus offers an understanding that this journey to the redemption of the world, toward justice and resurrection, through death and back…will not be smooth. It is not without struggle or heartache. Jesus is vulnerable and honest about who he is and what it will mean for their life together. Jesus shows the deeply interwoven nature of humanity and divinity. At Christmastide, we exclaim “God is here!” now Jesus explains that God is here to engage the fullness of humanity which includes death. God doesn’t skip over or out of the uncomfortable or uneasy bits. 

Upon hearing from their beloved teacher and leader that he’ll be gone from them before long, that the road they walk is full of stumbling blocks...they clamor to make meaning of it. Perhaps they were afraid to let their vulnerability, their lack of understanding known. Perhaps they were worried it might expose them as somehow lesser. Perhaps the open space of uncertainty made the uncomfortable, so they determined to fill it with something, anything. Perhaps their life experience, steeped in the real-world of empire that runs on hierarchy and position, privilege and prominence, status and security and dominance -  and assigning ultimate value to people accordingly...perhaps this muscle memory caused them to make moves that reflect THAT way of being. They find themselves chasing greatness when goodness is standing in their midst.

Some part of their being must sense the disconnect...between what Jesus has been talking about all this time, the world that is transforming into a new thing, and the one they can’t seem to shake.  Perhaps that’s what sin is, a rending dissonance that runs clear through to our souls. When Jesus invites them into conversation with him, to re-connect, to make themselves known...they fall silent and hide. When God walked through the Garden of creation and called for Adam and Eve, they too were silent and hid. They had been lured by power that breaks relationship and knew that this was a violation of what God had created. And this truth is one we are hesitant to make known, to give voice to, to make public. 

And yet, before they can find the words, Jesus knows the truth. God sees us for our full selves - our beautiful messiness. Jesus knows their questions, their humanity and gives it voice. He puts it all out in the open and on the table and addresses it directly.

Ash Wednesday invites us to look ourselves in the mirror and face ourselves and our world honestly. We smear a big black cross across our bodies so that we can no longer dance around difficulty, but see it clearly. It’s an opportunity for us to look deal honestly with who we are and what we are. These ashes are an ancient symbol of grief which is appropriate as we mourn continued injustice and isolation. These ashes point to the earth of creation and the earth of the grave because yes, we are messy and mortal. And yes, that is often a somber and sobering truth. But today is a day that we can let go of trying to keep it all in or tidy it all up.  Today is a day that invites us to wear our fragility and vulnerability on our sleeves, on our hands, right in the middle of our faces. They’ve always been a part of us, but now we have to look at it.

I find that terrifying, but also liberating. Because when death and pain and no longer need be hidden, it cannot control us. Like Harry Potter who daringly insists on calling Voldemort by his name, he dissolves the insurmountable power of evil as euphemism. Because anything we’re too afraid to name is given more power to than it deserves. Facing it and speaking of it with openness, is a revolutionary power. Today we can give up on pretending that everything is always sunny or smudge-free. We can let go of keeping appearances palatable for polite society. 

It’s like the bearded lady in The Greatest Showman who’s heart is broken open by hurt that creates a song of defiant proclamation, “this is me.” It’s like Home Alone’s Kevin McAllister running out to the sidewalk screaming “I’m not afraid anymore. I said, I’m not afraid anymore! Do you hear me? I’m not afraid anymore!” Even if we are still a bit afraid...we’re MORE afraid of living the rest of our lives hiding under the bed or behind a mask.

James Baldwin wrote: “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”

Today we bury our masks and refuse to be incapacitated by the fear of what’s behind it. In this surprising and subversive way, wearing our mortality openly proclaims that death no longer has dominion. Death and its henchmen don’t get to dictate or define our world. And so this mark of death is transformed into a mark of life. And so perhaps we find that there is beauty in the darkness too. Perhaps we find that alongside our struggle, there is also sparkle, and that even the depth of sin is no match for the depth of God’s blessing. 

Ashes are such incredible things. This signal of death and decay is also a catalyst for restoration and growth. After all, all dust is stardust, one with the cosmos, connecting us to all of creation across space and time. Ash is a critical ingredient of cleansing soap and it is an excellent fertilizer - enriching the soil and returning critical nutrients back into the ground. My chickens bathe in dust and ash because it actually protects them from parasites.

Jesus doesn't call the disciples OUT, but calls them IN - to this kind of transformative vision for the world. He Invites them to witness what welcome and embrace can do. Jesus teaches, not only to their heads - pushing them toward a “right” kind of think or understanding, but with his hands - showing them what this new creation looks like. Jesus embodies it, even unto the complete surrender of self.  And that is truly powerful, true greatness.

God wades into the waters of betrayal and shame and death with us. God chooses to dwell in the dust and the ash, and among children - the most vulnerable of the time . God shows sacred relationship that is not competitive or exploitative, but caring. God practices not only passive welcome but actively creates room, expands the circle, centers the marginalized, and leads by serving and advocating.  God reveals a new kind of clear vision that sees all that we think we’ve cleverly tucked into corners, or hidden behind others, draws its out, and holds us all close. This. This is who we are. This is what a cross becomes through the power of God. This is the truth we bear on our bodies and carry into the world. This is a love that can’t be unseen. Thanks be to God.

Made Whole: Redefining Purity

The Sacred Story comes from Mark 7:1-21 where religious leaders see Jesus and his disciples eating without having washed their hands (according to ritual tradition). They want to know why and Jesus redirects and widens the conversation to talk about what really makes someone unclean...what goes in or what comes out?

I think the older I get, the more I commiserate with the Pharisees and scribes. It’s that shift in life when you’re watching a tv show and you relate more to the parents than the teenagers?  I think the tradition of washing your hands before you eat is pretty good practice. Likewise, you really SHOULD wash your produce before you eat it. Y’all know that stuff is grown in dirt, right? And is sprayed with all kinds of stuff? And washing the dishes (the cups, pots, and kettles) is just a no-brainer.  I can only imagine how important all these things are in the ancient world as a critical matter of health. So when Jesus rebukes those asking about the importance of these practices…it’s not that Jesus doesn’t care about hygiene, but it doesn’t seem to be his top priority either. 

About 10 years ago, someone did a study on handwashing in hospitals.  It turns out that doctors and nurses actually weren’t great about washing their hands before and after seeing patients either. The CDC measured that only 40% of folks would wash up, despite having soap or disinfecting gel everywhere and signs all around that encourage you to wash your hands to protect your own health. So they came up with an idea to change the signs. Instead of saying, “wash your hands to protect yourself,” they said, “wash your hands to protect your patients.” Instead of assuming the strength of their own immune system, they were reminded of the vulnerability OF and their responsibility TO others. Turning the focus from self to others caused soap and gel use to increase by a third in just two weeks. 

In the same way I’ve been reminded that getting vaccinated doesn’t just protect you, it protects everyone around you, especially the ones who are most vulnerable. It’s flu season y’all, for heaven’s sake cover your cough and wash your (damn) hands. I don’t think Jesus is against this practice, but what Jesus does seem to be saying is that handwashing isn’t going to cure heart disease. 

Our actions and practices matter, absolutely, but…when you care so much about keeping the outside clean and yet are not moved by the knowledge that the elders have no one to care for them…there’s an issue of what’s in our hearts.  Jesus insists on talking about what we’re really talking about. Jesus wants to talk about what’s the real problem here. 

Because I think we’ve all participated in the sin of wondering, “what is God doing hanging out with THEM?” We all have people who come to mind when we think about who is defiling the faith, who gives Christianity a bad name, who is a danger to the Gospel. And when God includes and even LOVES them our gut reaction is a stunned sense of betrayal. What on earth is God doing sitting at THEIR table!?! 

The Pastor who will just baptize anyone whenever or the Pastor who will only serve communion to others who believe as they do or the Pastor of the megachurch down the street who seems to never take a stand either way; parents who are over-protective of their kids and the ones who don’t come to Sunday school or PTA meetings; the churches who have flags in their sanctuary and the one who criticize government policies. Is any of this raising your hairs yet? ICE Agents, religious fundamentalists, soccer moms who spend $8 on coffee by won’t make eye contact with the guy holding a cardboard sign on the corner, sex workers, people who don’t recycle or compost. We have our own expectations of where and with whom Jesus dwells.

Maybe we’re generous enough to think, “God bless em, but I still don’t want to sit next to them.” Perhaps we’d look at them with what we think is love only for our actions to say, “you COULD do it that way, but we’ll all look at you as at least a little bit inferior.” "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" Jesus says we can talk about handwashing AFTER we talk about why’s lying beneath this question.  We’ve got to know what we’re really talking about. 

Another way that Christian tradition will talk about cleanliness and being defiled is by talking about purity. Some traditions particularly emphasize this idea of staying or becoming pure, uncontaminated by sin, and avoiding any blemish. Often, it’s particularly focused on sexual purity, ESPECIALLY female sexual purity.  Even if we don’t ascribe to that particular theology, even if we have known its deep sting, we might still be susceptible to expecting purity in other ways – ideological purity, political purity – the idea that one deviance from the established norm, one single step out of the clearly-marked lanes and it makes you not only contaminated but a danger to others.

This insistence on purity creates a divine expectation of a mortal being and thus ensures that we’ll never be good enough. It binds us in a spiral of shame and/or casts us out as if we we’re the single source of what the real issue is.

Jesus says….you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.  The true threat to the body of Christ is not whether or not people scrub up before coming to worship. It is not whether folks know the traditions or do them right. Is it not whether people know the approved etiquette for worship – keeping silence or making noise at the right times, controlling their bodies in a particular way.  

We get caught up, consciously or unconsciously, in making following Jesus about correct confession, proper prayers, and right ritual. What keeps us locked into that way of life is the same lie told in the garden…if we can get it all right, we’ll somehow get just a little bit closer to God. 

Jesus reframes the conversation about purity, goodness, holiness, wholeness, well-being by pointing to the Ten Commandments. Each of the listed contaminants correspond to the covenant - to honor father and mother, not steal, not kill, not to covet or envy, not beat gals witness.... The laundry list of what defiles are not mismanaged rituals, nor any diagnosis, nor any particular misstep.  They are the things already outlined in the law Jesus summarized as “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” Still, some will hear Jesus’ correction of this broader list as to what defiles and set about purity and perfection with renewed focus. “Yes, Jesus, I’m on it.” We were really good at washing, I can handle this list too. In just a couple of chapters time the rich young ruler will come to Jesus and say I’ve mastered all these things too. I’ve managed to follow every law without flaw and keep myself in perfect health. And what does Jesus say? Not quite. God’s gospel is not mastery, it is love. Ultimate wholeness does not come through our perfection but God’s commitment loving us in our imperfection. 

The covenant points to the way God hopes for us to be, but that we cannot accomplish on our own, not even with thousands of years to try.   This is the real issue. That we are not perfect and we fear that disqualifies us from all kinds of love, but especially divine love. 

And so we cling to various forms of purity rather than the cross which takes all these death-dealing wounds into itself. But today I want to invite you to practice release. What is it that you need to be healed cleansed of? Healed of? See what God can transform in you. 

The truth is that we all need the cleansing waters of God’s grace, the living water of baptism that is stronger than our fear. We all need liberation from the shame and stigma we’ve been convinced we deserve. And we are all made whole, made new, every inch of us…in Christ. That’s why it’s so important to Jesus to talk about what really matters.  God’s promise of wholeness is for more than your hands or your habits…it is for your hearts too. Even when our bodies fail or our vices creep in, when the other voices wonder what on earth Jesus is doing with us, Jesus still chooses to sit at our side as a friend and vouch for us as beloved. It is a wonder I’m not sure that I will ever be able to grasp. But I dwell in it…I hope in it…and I’m grateful. Amen.

Made Whole: Healing in a Culture of Isolation

This week’s sacred story comes from Mark 5:21-43 where a woman who has been sick and separated for 12 years touches Jesus, is made well, and only then do they talk about faith. Meanwhile, the daughter of a community leader has died but Jesus goes to see her anyway and she gets up and is given a snack.

Hurt and heartache is such an egalitarian thing, even as it is often unjust. It seems like it pools among the already poor and struggling.  (Just look at the “Cancer Cluster” investigation right here in Houston in the predominately black neighborhood of Kashmere Gardens). But hurt and illness can humble even the most proud and prestigious – even well-respected community leaders like Jairus, even celebrities, even the ones with the corner offices and retirement plans, even the chair of that nonprofit that has done so much good for the neighborhood. It turns out that no amount of respect, accomplishment, meditation, or volunteer hours can inoculate us or the ones we love from being utterly human. 

Some ailments are visible – the ones that flush our cheeks and pale our skin, leave us with surgery scars, a sling around our arm or a walking cane, some that mean we won’t ever leave the hospital again.  And some illnesses hide in plain sight – chronic pain, anxiety, depression, HIV/AIDS, addiction, diabetes, cancer, rage, silent viruses in the body and mind, and hemorrhaging women whose names we do not know.

Whether or not our dis-ease is diagnosed or has a name…whether or not our symptoms are obvious…when we are not well in body and soul, it affects our whole being. We often sense there’s a limit to how much the people around us can do or deal.  And if this goes on for any prolonged time, this kind of pain and hurt can make us feel deeply alone, even among a crowd. We feel like we’ve tried everything - doctors, prayers, people, changing our diet, our intentions, the oils, and the regimens.  And maybe when those fell short too we leaned into addiction, addiction to substances or sex or stuff - to consumption, to social media, to busyness, to novelty, anything that could temporarily soothe or at least mask the ache of uncertainty, rejection, disappointment, or fear.

We isolate ourselves because we don’t want to be a burden, or we feel untouchable (and not it a good way). It feels like we’re crawling in our own skin. We hide away because when we have let our true selves be seen, we were hurt and we fear it’ll happen again. We isolate ourselves because we don’t want to admit how bad it really is because it scares us. We stay closed off because it’s literally all we can do, getting out of bed just isn’t an option some days.

Others isolate us because they’re embarrassed they don’t know what to say or it reminds them of their own pain or they’re afraid the might be as fragile and human as you are. 

And so, to try and bridge the gap between, to create our own sense of wholeness of connection, we can cut off pieces of ourselves. We separate bits of ourselves into categories – parent over here, daughter over there, student here, felon there, hobbies here, church-goer there. And we don’t let them mix. We compartmentalize ourselves in the hopes of managing it all just a bit better.  That will be the ticket out of this mess. If we can just configure it all just right, we’ll be ok. We lock up our feelings, we segment ourselves, we conceal the freckles that God gave us, we hide the whole truth of who we are because once it was the subject of schoolyard bullying that we didn’t even realize still hurts.

When we get to the point when those walls of separation and segmentation begin to crack and with nothing left to prop us up and nothing left to lose, no more pretense to maintain - when we no longer even bother to pretend that we’ve got it all together, that things are fine when they’re definitely not…we fall to the ground in submission or we plunge through danger and strain our arms to their limit just to touch something that might set us free from our bursting desperation. 

But even this is risky. It’s possible that even this won’t change anything – and even when we say we expect that to be the case…it still hurts when it happens. After the little girl is declared dead, Jesus still asks to be taken to her and the people laugh. In the face of deep disconnection, the idea of wholeness and restoration seems laughable. In this ancient Jewish society both blood and the dead are considered ritually unclean and anyone who touches them will be contaminated too, cut off from the people and at least for a time…separated even from the fullness of God. Who would risk such a thing?

Jesus knows the risk, knows the consequences, and chooses love anyway. Among a sea of people, pushing in on every side of him, Jesus notices when this woman touches even his outer clothes.  Jesus notices. Jesus knows when something’s off with us, and it sets something off in God’s very self. Even with all the barriers, God feels the power of new life that has been lying asleep and trying to emerge. 

Jesus stops everything to tend to it. 

The woman’s body had been made well, but this was only part of the healing. Jesus called out and she stepped forward…she came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the WHOLE truth. Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” Daughter!?! It’s been so long since anyone used a word of such intimate relationship with her. And faith!?! Is that what that was fluttering within her? She never said anything of faith – never declared Jesus as Savior, never expressed any allegiances or convictions. But Jesus speaks of God’s conviction for her and her wholeness. It’s the same with the little girl.  While her family and community have been reaching out for help on her behalf, she is unable to move or speak. She cannot even reach out for touch and she cannot plead for anything. And yet, Jesus casts out the noise of weeping and mourning, of sorrow and separation. God softly kneels beside her bed, touches her small cold hand and says with gentle firmness, “little girl, get up.” 

None of the positioning, pleading, campaigning, negotiating, or rationalizing produces healing.  No sense of, “if we could just….x,y, and z…we’ll be better,” not in the way our soul truly craves. Rather, is it WHO Jesus is that restores. The woman says “if I but touch those clothes, I will be made well.” She lives in a world of if/then transactional healing and wholeness.  That’s not a mark against her, it’s just how things work in the world. That’s the system of empire that surrounds us, a system of scarcity. And Jesus says, it’s not even that, it’s not that you’ve finally won the unwinnable system. It’s who I am. It’s not what you do that earns wholeness; it’s who I am that reveals it, even in a broken world. I bring a new system, a new economy where there is more than enough life and love for all. 

While our habits and practices can help us recognize and lean into our divine wholeness, they don’t produce it. The woman never uses the word “faith” for herself. She may never have called what she had faith or recognized it as such, she may even have been repulsed by very idea after it seemed to have let her down so profoundly. But Jesus does. Jesus lifts out part of ourselves we thought were dead or perhaps never even there.

Still, HEALING IS OFTEN A PROCESS. In this scripture we see that what is born out of one healing is another - truth, faith, wholeness. It calls forth that original blessedness deep in our bones that somehow became obscured to us or others. It sparks dormant hopes that lie below the hope we even knew. It is the even greater hope that emerges when the hope we hoped for doesn’t happen. 

When discussing this kind of hope, a friend and mentor read to me this final stanza of Percy Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound:”

“To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite;To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;To defy power, which seems omnipotent;To love, and bear; to hope till Hope createsFrom its own wreck the thing it contemplates;Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;This, like thy glory, Titan, is to beGood, great and joyous, beautiful and free;This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.” 

What’s unique in God’s life, kingdom, and victory is that this healing is not just for the privileged, it’s for all, and it’s the kind that lasts. In the ancient world, the ones who were healed were the ones who could afford it, the ones who could finance their travel to renowned physicians or the temples of holy healers, to centers that resemble modern health spas – equally as spacious and grand with natural spring waters and giant amphitheaters for charismatic speakers. They too taught that the right set of beliefs or the right way of thinking was necessary for healing. The ones who got healthcare were the ones who were already relatively healthy enough to make the journey to such places. In this system, healing was not given, it was earned. Healing doesn’t come TO YOU, YOU had to make the way for healing. Perhaps our system is not so different all these years later. The woman that Jesus heals has no money left for doctors or treatments, and the daughter isn’t well enough to make the journey to any healer. They point to the top and bottom of the social hierarchy. Those who are just 12 years old surrounded by family and those who have spent that same amount of time isolated from others. They are both dangerously unclean and neither expresses any explicit faith before they are healed.  This is who God heals – the high and the low, the overtly religious and those who haven’t been to church in years (if ever), the well off, the comfortable middle class, and the poor. 

And the healing culminates… in sharing food.

Jesus tells those gathered to get the newly resurrected girl something to eat. It’s a practical idea. She’s been through some stuff. She’s probably famished and food does wonders for a hungry body and soul. But Jesus also wants those around to see that she’s not a ghost, that this healing isn’t a smoke and mirrors trick. How many times have we been sabotaged with fear, even when we do get a glimpse of healing, that it’s not real or it won’t last? Jesus shows that this healing is not a shallow or hollow temporary fix, it is complete wholeness restored and it will remain. That doesn’t mean the little girl will never get a cold or the woman will never get arthritis for the rest of their lives, but they are eternally liberated in the truth that isolation (even within their own minds) will never again define them. The weight of our woes, as heavy as they get, is still no match for God’s love for us. They’ve experienced a hope so big, a relationship so restorative, a connection so powerful, and a love so profound that they cannot be intimidated, enslaved, or confined to anything less than God’s promise for ultimate wholeness. Each time we eat and drink this sacred meal, we taste that promise again and again as it nourishes us day by day. It declares that we are part of this body which has already gone to the grave and back. We are part of a divine body that in its brokenness is also life-giving food for a weary, disconnected world. It’s fragmentation is made whole in our sharing of it. Amen.