Tethered Away From God
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Rev. Ranjit Mathews’ talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
The Reverend Ranjit Mathews. Ranjit preaches because God has called him to prophetic and embodied witness to those with ears to hear. His vocation is to love extravagantly, and to invite the shedding from systems of white supremacy, purity culture, patriarchy, and the gospel of production. Ranjitt preaches with vulnerability, knowing he is deliciously imperfect.
Ranjit preaches to the Episcopal Church, and has served in parishes in New London, Connecticut; Long Beach, California; and Milton, Massachusetts, and as a midwife to the Jesus Movement with Anglican partners in Sub Saharan Africa. He preaches about the realm of God, and how it touches all parts of us, from our bodies to our minds and our souls.
Ranjit preaches among his ancestors of Indian Christian healers from Kerala in India. He preaches as a Catholic. Personality who has lived and learned from so many beautifully open personalities.
The truth is… truth is… is that I am worshiping something other than God. I have been so attached and tethered to systems in this world. Every day I see on my work calendar at 2:30pm, I've inscribed it in for a 2:30pm “nap.”
And every day I move beyond it. I push it away, recognizing that in my body, more than likely, I need to take a nap. I need to rest.
Friends, I share that because I know in myself that my worship is not of God.
I know that from when I grew up, (and this could be maybe a cultural upbringing, and in my time in a more fundamentalist Christian upbringing in college), that I was so interwoven with a sense of purity theology, or purity culture, that had me so disconnected or disembodied from myself.
Or even if I were to be connected with myself and enjoying the pleasure of my own body, I was told that that was wrong. I was told that that was a sin. Early on.
And so then I learned very intentionally to disconnect from myself. So then a whole understanding that I am invited into by God of connecting not only with my mind and my soul, my spirit, but also my body, that was cut off.
So is it any wonder, is it any wonder that at 2:30pm on a given day when that pops up just inviting me to take a nap, that I do not listen to that part of myself, of my whole embodied self?
I just dismiss it. Because, in fact, I've done that already because of my indoctrination, because of this purity theology, and also because I'm so tethered, that purity theology is so tethered to the market.
As if, ‘Ranjit, you are not worth shit if you take a nap.’ You're not goddamn worth it, right? You need to get on and be productive. Is that not anyway connected again from my distancing from my own body, my own bodily intuition, because I'm so tethered again also to the market, that then I lift up a sense of toxic masculinity within myself, right?
Because I do not connect it again to my emotions, to where my body is on a day-to-day basis. And when I'm disconnected from that, then I bring things in. I let any sort of trauma or emotion to just bubble up within me and harden, thus disconnecting myself from my emotions, from my feelings, and becoming more of a patriarchal man.
Aren't these all symptoms also of a deepening of white supremacy within myself?
We all know that, you know, I'm invited into perfection. I'm invited to cut myself off from my body in a very intentional way.
So, my friends, I name these things because, in fact, I do not worship God. Hell no.
I am tethered to white supremacy.
I am tethered to purity theology. I am tethered to market based capitalism. I am tethered to patriarchy.
Those are the systems, those are the idols in which my body and myself [are tethered]. That's who we worship.
So I share that with you all, my friends, folks, people of color living in the United States, maybe abroad, of how important it is to just let go and to grieve all the ways in which you, maybe, certainly me, have been attached to those systems. Giving a space to just grieve it all and fall apart.
During this pandemic time, that shifted for me. Where I realized that, you know, I do not have it all together.
And I was awakened to this portal within me of brokenness, and how I might be invited forward if I just allow myself the space to grieve, to not go forward and do something more productive, but maybe to rest.
I share that with you all, hoping that we are not tethered to becoming more productive within a sort of capitalist market based understanding, but that we lean ourselves more deeply into flourishing.
But what does it mean to flourish as people who are made in the image of God? Does that not mean to untether from those systems? Create space where maybe we have rest so that then we can then dream what a new world might be inviting us into?
My friends, I confess that I worship these systems and that I am not a person of faith, but I'm struggling to become one of them. Thank you.
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REV. RANJIT K. MATHEWS
The Rev. Ranjit K. Mathews was called as Rector of St. James, New London, on May 21, 2017. Rev. Mathews most recently served on the staff of the Presiding Bishop as the Partnership Officer for Africa.
Prior to his work with the churchwide office, Rev. Mathews was associate rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Long Beach, California, a bilingual parish where he worked to build connections between the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking community members and led the youth group. Before that he was a theology lecturer at the Msalato Theological College of St. John's University in Tanzania, and he has also served as assistant rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Milton, Massachusetts. Starting September 14th, he will be the Canon for Mission Advocacy, Racial Justice and Reconciliation for the Episcopal Church in Connecticut.
Throughout his work, Rev. Mathews has followed the example of Jesus' ministry of presence, compassion, justice and reconciliation, whether in pastoral care, or in the diplomacy involved with the Anglican partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa, or in anti-war protests before the Iraq War, or in investigations of immigrant detentions, or in building community partnerships to address local needs.
Rev. Mathews was born in Brighton, Mass. and grew up in Sharon, Mass. He majored in business administration at George Washington University and received his Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York. As a seminarian, Rev. Mathews served at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem and also studied theology at United Theological College in Bangalore, India. His father, Rev. Koshy Mathews, is interim rector of Gloria Dei Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rev. Mathews lives in New London with his spouse, Johanna, and their two young boys, Dhruv and Kabir. In addition to his extensive world service experiences in Africa and Asia, Rev. Mathews brings to us an ability to speak Spanish and a working knowledge of Malayalam, as well as a love of New England sports teams, national and world politics, books, nature, travel, movies, hip hop music and playing tennis!
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