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Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D. 12/19/22 Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D. 12/19/22

Holy Blackness: The Matrix of Creation

We share this sermon from Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney to nourish your soul and your biblical imagination. The sermon was originally preached at All Saints Church in Pasadena, CA on December 1, 2019 and follows the readings from A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year A.

Scripture Passages: Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 8; Romans 8:18-25; Matthew 24:32-44 (Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year A Advent 1) (full text translations at the bottom of this post)

In the velvet darkness of the blackest night
Burning bright, there’s a guiding star
No matter what or who, who you are
There’s a light (Over at the Frankenstein Place)
There’s a light (Burning in the fireplace)
There’s a light, light in the darkness of everybody’s life.

Let us pray:
God of fire and light who dwells in thick darkness,
the light and the dark are alike to thee,
open the eyes of our hearts that we might see. Amen.

In the velvet darkness, darker than a thousand midnights down in a cypress swamp, this luminous darkness, this radiant blackness, the wholly black and holy black womb of God pulsed life into the world against a tapestry of holy life-giving darkly radiant blackness, shaping, molding, knitting, coalescing earthstuff from starstuff from Godstuff. All before uttering the first word.

This more than binary God articulated in the binary idiom of Iron Age folk recalling the testimony of their Stone Age forebears, limited to two gender signifiers but using both to signal to the best of their ability that neither was sufficient even if some would use one more, to the near exclusion of the other, this pluripotent God whose breath-crafted children would bear her, hir, his, zir, our, their image, this God, conjured, confected, and crafted creation out of holy darkness.

The Poet and poetry of creation birth a story made of stories that tells us who we are, who we have been and, who we could be. We are born of blackness, starry night and fertile earth, our first human parents in science and in scripture have Africa’s soil on their feet and in their skin. But somewhere along the way we were taught to fear the dark, to fear the night, to fear the holy blackness that is the swaddling blanket of creation.

Some of our fear of the dark is ancient and instinctual from a time when we were not sure the sun would return from setting or storm or eclipse: Stay with us Lord of Light for the night is dark and full of terrors. The prayer to the Red God on Game of Thrones is in many ways the perfect embodiment of this and perhaps a worthy Advent prayer, (at least in a service where There’s a Light Over at the Frankenstein House from the Rocky Horror Picture Show is the Advent hymn). But some of our fear of the dark is carefully calculated and mercenary.

Some lost sight of or chose not to see the beauty of the diversity of creation having lost the memory of their own ancestral African roots and, when encountering a suddenly much larger world saw that our black beauty was valuable, profitable, salable. Then beginning in 1619 on this continent those ancient fears were seized upon and weaponized to build this nation on a foundation of slavery and genocide and the rhetoric of blackness became all that was wrong in the world just as Malik el-Haj al-Shabazz taught us when he was Malcom X: blackball, black sheep, blackmail, black hearted, black people.

My over-used but nowhere near retirement Black Lives Matter sign says, “Black Lives Are Sacred.” Blackness is sacred. But the world has lost sight of the goodness and sanctity of blackness. That is why it is so easy to kill us and our children and so easy to justify our deaths with fear, fear of the dark. Public Enemy prophesied rightly on Fear of A Black Planet. Fear of blackness. Fear of black people. All in service to a divinization of whiteness and light to the point of idolatry. To this Bishop Stephen Charleston says:

I have heard that the afterlife is a place of perpetual light. That’s a problem. Heaven needs night. Darkness is not evil, but a realm of mystery and imagination. The day is constant, but the night is creative. The stars dance. The moon dreams. The comets write poetry of fire. Without the night there is no dawn or twilight, no moments of sacred ambiguity, no subtle changes of perception, no promises kept or just made, a holy pledge of healing or of hope. No, please, we need the night in heaven. We need that glorious darkness, that obscure beauty, drifting on wedding gown clouds of white across an obsidian sky.

Thus, this the darkest time of the year is one of the holiest times of the year. The bleakest shadows of solar night hold the light in passionate embrace, and where they touch, shades of gray and, every color of the rainbow prism including those we cannot yet see. Our encultured fear, our tribalism, have kept us from seeing that all creation is inherently good. All God’s creatures are good by design. All of God’s children are good, born good, created good, created for goodness, good enough, even when they, we, fail to live up and into the goodness of God within us, it is still there.

We start this new Christian year in this Advent season with the goodness of God and the poetry of creation manifest in the liturgy of the earth. God is Poet and this good God-given earth is her poetry. Indeed, the earth is also both poet and poem, poetry groaning in creation. The liturgy of the earth, its cycles of sun and shadow, ripening and rotting, blossoming and blowing away, drenching and drying, feast and famine, storm and stillness, deep sea and desert wide are fluid ever-changing witnesses to and stanzas in the poetry of our lives, of our world. For we too are her poems, sonnets and ballads, dissertations of rap, rhythm and, rhyme and, more than a few limericks, quatrain and haiku and, forms for which there are yet no names. This great liturgy of creation is a liturgy of transition and transcendence. And so it is with life and death; they are not two separate polar realities for between them lies living.

It is into this life that brown baby Jesus comes to dwell, inhabit, teach, guide, accompany, heal, forgive, redeem, love and, live. And thus are we too called dwell in this good earth in our good incarnations, living, loving, forgiving, healing, accompanying each other on our pilgrim journey. We live in the waiting for the second Advent. Live in a world waiting for the fullness of redemption, restoration and, reparation. Live in this world where people don’t always see our poetry, our obscure beauty, our incarnations as Godstuff, our loving as the goodness of God in this world.

This earth is given into our care and we are given into each other’s care. Advent prepares us to encounter a God who dwells with us in the waiting earth. And Advent tells us that we are loved and worthy of love. Most of the world outside of a very specific set of churches doesn’t know that it is Advent. It is pre-Christmas sale season which began after, or even before, Halloween. Even in the Church Advent is often crushed into Christmas and the first Advent, the Nativity of black baby Jesus, often overshadows the second Advent, the return of the rainbow Christ, the fullness of humanity encompassing the poetry of all flesh, all kinds of flesh, transformed, human and divine, yet retaining enough of the poetry of the past to be recognized as the very same person, Mary’s baby.

Mary’s poor brown migrant baby. Christians the world over will sing their love for the baby Jesus for the next five weeks. But for many their love will not extend to Guatemalan baby Jesus or Muslim baby Issa who share his name. In far too many churches the stories of Advent and Christmas are used to sanctify white supremacy in the church. Introducing children to and reifying adult belief in a white Jesus who is not simply an aesthetic choice but a statement of power and domination. White Jesus is a colonized and colonizing Christ. Until the deaths of black and brown mother’s children mean as much as the deaths of white parent’s children and the windows and walls of our churches do not silently whitewash the brownness and Jewishness of Jesus, his family, friends and followers and his ancestors, the whiteness of Christian art and nativity plays will always be in service to white supremacy.

When Christ returns every system that holds people captive, dominates and subordinates will be unmade. And so we long for the second Advent. But I don’t think we’re all waiting for the same thing. The Church has been waiting millennia and in that waiting, has not only not healed the ruptures that form when we forget that we are all a handful of the same dirt, but in some cases has dug and deepened those fissures. And in some parts of the Church, the more you believe in the literal return of Jesus, the less you believe in or care about climate change because Jesus will just fix it after while.

Some read today’s gospel and see the immanent and unexpected return of Christ and all they can think of is who is going with him and who will be left behind. But that’s not the Jesus I know. The Jesus I know is in the field with the agricultural workers in the gospel. He’s with the women doing undervalued work in that same gospel. He’s not making a list and checking it twice. That’s someone else’s bag. And, I believe he is telling us this story so that we will take notice of who is around us and might not be able to make it alone.

We already live in a world where some people get left behind. In this world, people are left behind if they’re black or brown or poor or gay or trans or women or femme, or felons, or, or, or. But it won’t always be that way. While a traditional Advent reading might focus on Jesus’s return, I want to offer another reading. I don’t believe we have to wait for the return of Jesus for things to get better. I don’t believe that our problems are so big that only God can sort them out. I don’t believe that there is nothing that we can do about the quality of human life or the capacity of the earth to sustain life.

Jesus showed us by how he lived and died and lived again on the other side of death that nothing is too big, too much, too hard for God, that human dignity and flourishing are God’s dream for us no matter under what oppressive systems we find ourselves. The Jesus who allied himself with the poor and disenfranchised by becoming poor and disenfranchised will not abandon us to a world that does not love us, fears us and seeks to harm us. Rather Jesus stands with us as we remake the world that is our heritage, our sacred trust, as we rediscover its poetry and the poetry inside of each of us.

The time between the Advents is a pregnant time, indeed the earth is already in labor in apostle’s view. Now is a waiting time. Now is a watching time. And now is a working time. Jesus calls our attention to the people the world, and sometimes the church, says will be left behind. For much of human history women have been kept behind if not left behind. But the One for whose Advent we wait chose the flesh of a woman for the glory of the incarnation, that intimate bleeding flesh that the world of men wanted to leave behind, thus forever sanctifying woman-flesh and all human-flesh. And, for much of our history folk have wanted to leave gay folk and queer folk behind, yet Jesus comes to us through a miracle that transcends and queers gender roles, God-beyond-gender yet disclosed as the feminine spirit conceived a child with a human woman. From as soon as one person had two sticks while another had only one, we have left people behind in poverty and inequity. Yet Jesus came to us poor and under-housed. We are building walls – lying about building physical walls – while building legislative walls and the border-crossing Jesus is an asylum seeker. If we are not careful, we might just leave Jesus behind, not recognizing him because we’ve lost the sight and sound of the divine poetry in every human person.

We wait for the Advent return of the One whose incarnational gender poetry transcends the grammatical categories of frail human poets and translators, with that Advent will come the majesty of God, the manifestation of God’s perfect justice and love, for where God is, there can be no injustice. And dare I say, in God’s perfect justice none will be left behind.

The Scriptural Texts for the sermon from The Women’s Lectionary:

Dr. Gafney selected and translated the readings using an expansive gender-explicit approach and, in the Psalms, explicit feminine language and pronouns for God.

Genesis 1:1 -5

When beginning he, God, created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was shapeless and formless and bleakness covered the face of the deep, while the Spirit of God, she, fluttered over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; so God separated the light from the bleakness. 5 Then God called the light Day, and the bleakness God called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, day one.

Psalm 8
1 WOMB OF LIFE, our Sovereign, *
how exalted is your Name in all the earth!
2 Out of the mouths of children and nursing babes *
your majesty is praised above the heavens.
3 You have founded a stronghold against your adversaries, *
to put an end to the enemy and the avenger.
4 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, *
the moon and the stars you have established,
5 What are we that you should be mindful of us? *
the woman-born that you attend to them?
6 You have made us a little lower than God; *
you adorn us with glory and honor;
7 You give us mastery over the works of your hands; *
you put all things under our feet:
8 All sheep and oxen, *
even the wild beasts of the field,
9 The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, *
and whatsoever walks in the paths of the sea.
10 WOMB OF LIFE, our Sovereign, *
how exalted is your Name in all the earth!

Romans 8:18-25

18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the daughters and sons of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the daughters and sons of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Matthew 24:32-44

32 Jesus said, “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 33 So also, when you see all these things, you know that the Son of Woman is near, at the very gates. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

36 “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Creator. 37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Woman. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Woman. 40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Redeemer is coming. 43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, the owner would have stayed awake and would not have let the house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Woman is coming at an unexpected hour.

Sources for opening:
Richard O’brien, “There’s a Light (Over at the Frankenstein Place)” Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975 © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Sources for first paragraph in order:

Richard O’brien, Rocky Horror; James Weldon Johnson, “The Creation,” Howard Thurman (title, This Luminous Darkness); “black and radiant,” Rabbi Marcia Falk trans. “The Song of Songs”; “darkly radiant,” Mia McKenzie, The Thing About Being A Little Black Girl In the World: For Quvenzhané Wallis.

Rev. Wil Gafney Ph.D.

Womanist biblical scholar, the Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D. is the Right Rev. Sam B. Hulsey Professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas. She is the author of *Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to Women of the Torah and of the Throne*, a commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah in the *Wisdom* series; *Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel;* and co-editor of *The Peoples’ Bible* and *The Peoples’ Companion to the Bible*. She is the author of a *Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church* and translator of its biblical selections; the first two volumes, Year A and W (a stand alone volume) were published in August. Volumes B and C are due in 2023 and 2024. She is currently writing a second volume of *Womanist Midrash* focusing on women in the Prophets. She is an Episcopal priest canonically resident in the Diocese of Pennsylvania and licensed in the Diocese of North Texas, and a former Army chaplain and congregational pastor in the AME Zion Church.
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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.

Angela Denker 5/20/22 Angela Denker 5/20/22

America’s Blood Moon: Do not look away

Late last Sunday night, almost midnight, I found myself stumbling around my half-lit backyard, barefoot in pajamas, squinting up into the sky.

I’d been restless for hours, scanning mindless reality TV, trying to get my brain to turn off and stop the ugly thoughts from racing through my brain.

I live in a major city, but the neighborhood was mostly quiet that night, and nobody saw me when I walked from the backyard to the front: ratty gray threadbare sleep shorts, a white t-shirt whose neckline was encrusted with drool.

I had taken a melatonin gummy, and my body was achy and exhausted from the travails of the day and the years, and it was a miracle I didn’t walk right off my front steps and fall into the bushes, where rabbits and squirrels and probably hordes of mice were scampering around, eluding their midnight intruder.

The city lights made the sky bright, even on a clear night, and so while I saw a few stars I couldn’t find the one thing I was looking for that May evening.

I forced myself to walk further in front of my house, feet padding over the cracked and rough sidewalk and onto the smooth, asphalt-covered street. A police car rolled down the main thoroughfare, blazing through the stoplight.

I sighed in frustration.

I craned my neck upwards one more time, twisting backwards and almost losing my balance … “ah!”

A sharp intake of breath. My lungs filled with air. My mouth opened agape.

The Blood Moon.

It had been hiding in the corner of the sky, tucked in a sliver of sky between our slanted roof and the neighbor’s deep red maple tree, whose leaves had just begun to open again to the sky after our frigid spring.

I had missed the full lunar eclipse, but I marveled anyway at what I saw. A sliver of light, a crescent moon illuminated, while the rest hung, craggy and angry in the sky, a muddy red color I’d never seen before on the moon or anywhere in the sky above.

People with better cameras than me posted images on social media where the moon looked like a fiery orb, the red light caused when the earth moves between the moon and the sun, creating a total lunar eclipse, where the moon is completely submerged in the earth’s shadow, according to almanac.com. Like so much of our experience here in the world, what we appear to see (a bright reddish orange moon) is not exactly what exists in reality. The solar rays that bend around the moon to reach Earth are of all wavelengths, but Earth’s atmosphere scatters the shorter blue/green waves, leaving only the orange/red colors to reach our eyes.

I stood in awe, in the road, for a few seconds. To see the Blood Moon was to be reminded of how utterly small I am; a tiny speck in a universe grander than I could ever comprehend.

I wanted more. I walked quickly inside, locating the 1950s era binoculars we stored in our boys’ bedroom. I woke up my husband; he came outside and viewed the moon.

But it was midnight, and we had to work in the morning, and the kids would need breakfast and the Earth would keep on rotating and revolving. So relatively quickly, after a few more mindless minutes of reality TV, I pulled a sleep mask over my eyes and went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning to real reality. Backpacks to gather together for sleepy elementary-school-aged boys. A last-minute request for “home lunch.” A cavalcade of ants, marching through the left-open kitchen window above the sink, massing for battle all over our kitchen countertops.

Inside me was a sluggishness. I had looked to the heavens, but I was firmly rooted on earth. Feet strapped firmly to the ground as though they were fastened with leather buckles to a pair of sandals made from bricks. Each step felt heavy, ponderous.

As I said above, the Blood Moon isn’t really bloody at all. It’s what our eyes see when we look at it; the result of what happens to light when it comes down here to earth. Some of it dies, before it even has a chance to be mourned.

That moon, blood red in the sky, hung over America like a shroud. Our light has been dimmed for far too long.

I thought about Roberta A. Drury, age 32. Margus D. Morrison, age 52. Andrew MacNeil, age 53. Aaron Salter, age 55. Geraldine Talley, age 62. Celestine Chaney, age 65. Heyward Patterson, age 67. Katherine Massey, age 72. Pearl Young, age 77. Ruth Whitfield, age 86.

Say their names.

Pearl Young still worked as a substitute high school teacher at age 77. Ruth Whitfield was stopping by the grocery store after caring for her husband of 68 years, who lived in a long-term care facility. Andre Mackniel was going to get a birthday cake for his son.

Katherine Massey reminded me of my mom. She was an avid letter writer, a person who cared deeply about the civic life of her community, who wasn't afraid to speak out and say unpopular or controversial things, doing so with irrepressible love and spirit.

Celestine Chaney was a survivor of brain aneurysms and breast cancer, the youngest of four sisters. Margus D. Morrison was a school bus aide, the kind of too-often underpaid and thankless jobs filled by the very people who impact kids’ lives the very most.

Heyward Patterson was a dedicated church member, often driving people to the grocery store and helping them load groceries into his car. He served as a deacon and loved to sing.

Aaron Salter, a retired police officer turned store security guard, lost his life protecting others, even though when he fired at the gunman, the gunman’s bulletproof vest meant Salter died instead. Two guns, two men, one dead, one a killer of 10, who would have killed more if not for Salter’s courage.

Roberta Drury had just moved to Buffalo to care for her brother, who had been diagnosed with leukemia, and his children. Geraldine Talley was a baker, and according to the Washington Post, her friends called her “the sweetest.”

I hope you didn’t skim those last six paragraphs. If you did, go back and read them again. Say their names.

On Tuesday, the U.S. marked 1 million COVID deaths. Across the U.S., one person dies every 5 minutes from a drug overdose, according to the L.A. Times.

Life has become cheap in America. If you stopped and thought about all the kids who never got a chance; all the unfair cancer diagnoses and car accidents and gunshot deaths and heart attacks, it would knock you over. You wouldn’t be able to pay your insurance or your credit card bill because it wouldn’t matter to you anymore. You’d be sucking down life, deep into your lungs, as fast and as hard as you could because you knew it wasn’t going to last.

There’s big business in obscuring death. Add collagen powder to your coffee. Try CrossFit. Buy this $400 air purifier. Botox. Fillers. Hair plugs. Hair extensions. Filters. Moisturizers. Life insurance. Fences. Walls. Guns. Armor. Ignorance.

Maybe that’s why some White people this week seemed utterly determined to look past the 10 Black lives murdered in a Buffalo grocery store last week. Some people placed an inordinate amount of attention trying to make sure we all heard about the other shootings. The other deaths. As if more death meant these lives could mean less, if only ours could mean more.

Black Lives Matter.

Do they?

Did they matter in your church on Sunday morning? On your talk news radio show? Around your dinner table? In your kids’ school?

I am talking here to my fellow White Christians, who make up the largest religious and racial group, population-wise, in our country. Too often we have imagined if we shut and scrunch our eyes up tight enough, the Blood Moon will vanish into the night. The pain and death of racism won’t have to be real to us. We can drink in the rhetoric that makes us feel better about the jobs we didn’t get, the college we didn’t get accepted into, or the money we don’t have (in our minds) without acknowledging that that same rhetoric led an 18-year-old boy/man to jump into his vehicle and drive from rural New York over 200 miles to the Blackest ZIP code he could find and start killing people because of the color of their skin.

I protested with fellow clergy in Minneapolis after George Floyd was killed. Last year, former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck until he killed him, was convicted of murder. It mattered. It matters. But none of it brings anyone’s child, parent, nephew, friend, mother, son, daughter, aunt, sister, brother, back to life. And just because lots of other people died last Saturday does not mean we can stay silent while Black Americans are being murdered because of the color of their skin.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians that “all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” but even then it was more of a prayer than a reality. That is the job of of pastors and prophets and theologians, after all, to paint a vision of the world that God desires for us, and call us into it.

More powerfully today, I hear God’s call to repentance again to rebuke and renounce white supremacy and Christian nationalism.

Like Cain killing Abel, we are tempted to turn away, hiding our eyes behind our hands while the Blood Moon shines eerily above.

“Where is your brother Abel?”

“Where is your sister Pearl?

Where is your sister Ruth?

Where is your sister Katherine?

Where is your brother Heyward?

Where is your sister Celestine?

Where is your sister Geraldine?

Where is your brother Aaron?

Where is your brother Andre?

Where is your brother Margus?

Where is your sister Roberta?

“We do not know. Are we our brothers’ keeper? Are we our sisters’ keeper?”

I do not know what replacement theory is.

I don’t see color.

There were shootings in Milwaukee, too.

There was a shooting in California.

My friend is sick.

I am tired.

“What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”

Angela Denker

Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump (Fortress: August 2019), is a Lutheran Pastor and veteran journalist who has written for *Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Christian Century,* and Christianity Today. She has pastored congregations in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orange County (Calif.), the Twin Cities, and rural Minnesota.
Twitter | @angela_denker
Facebook | @angeladenker1
Blog | http://agoodchristianwoman.blogspot.com
Website | https://www.angeladenker.com

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Laura Jean Truman 3/21/22 Laura Jean Truman 3/21/22

Lent Devotion: Everyday Holiness

1. Everyday holiness is bread and wine.

We’re always trying to make our daily lives more holy by making them less human. We don’t make the sacraments “more important,” though, when we divorce them from their whole, embodied, normal physicality, as if our brains are closer to God than our bodies. The holiest things are also the most “normal” ones. This can make us uncomfortable. We prefer to theologize away everyday qualities of the sacraments. We retreat to our brains when talking about “sacred things,” because our bodies feel less holy. But so many of the sacraments are so physical! Eating and drinking and bathing are mundane, delightful, physical, essential, joyful. These are physical pleasures and physical needs, and here is God in them all– calling those physical joys and necessities holy. Perhaps many of us have despised our bodies for so long, or at best, ignored them. It can be uncomfortable to think about body maintenance or desire as holy. Our shame around our bodies, though, and what our bodies want and need, can calcify into a theology of mind that denies the physicality of the sacraments for a more heady brand of spirituality, one that nods its head to the body but does not revel in it. The sacraments, especially Holy Communion, invite us to revel. They invite us to let our minds be still for just a moment, and allow our bodies to need, and to want, and to enjoy. Into our shame and dismissal of our bodies, Jesus comes to us. He comes “eating and drinking,” and inviting us to the table to eat and drink with him (Lk 7:34).

The table invites us to come and eat – not to come and think.
Come – with your body. The table is set. Amen.

2. You don’t have to tidy up first.

I grew up in an evangelical church culture that took “don’t eat and drink judgment on yourself” very seriously. If you had “unconfessed sin” or didn’t feel “close to God” that Sunday, evangelical etiquette demanded that you skip communion. We only had communion a couple times a year at my childhood church. I’d watch folks pass the trays of tiny plastic cups and crackers down the line, passing it on without taking any for themselves. I asked my parents why people weren’t taking communion. If your heart isn’t prepared, they told me, you should skip communion.

Lord have mercy. When is my heart prepared? When do I have all my ducks in a row and my stuff entirely together and my sin rooted out and my heart earnest and kind and penitent and holy? Absolutely not one day. Not one day ever. There is not a single day that I will be worthy to take the bread and the cup. And that, friends, is the entire point of the reckless grace of this table that God has set for us. It’s here for us precisely because we are never going to wake up some Sunday and really have it all together. We’re not going to get close. We need the table. We need the radical, reckless, unbound grace of Jesus because we are never going to be able to get our stuff together and never going to be able to come properly tidied up and never going to be as good as we want to be. And to us – to us, and to our messy, ugly, spiritually and morally unkempt neighbor – God comes.

Unable to get close to our best selves or close to our perfect God, God comes to us, and sets a table, and says – just as you are, this is my body, broken for you. Take. Eat.

This is grace. It’s not what we bring to the table, but how the table is set for us: as we are, in our brokenness, in our pride, in our mess, in our inadequacy. To us – to the strays and disasters and fallen souls – God comes. God sets us a table, just for us. And God invites us home. Amen.

3. Holy hospitality and a family meal

“This is a family meal,” my pastor used to say when he presided over the table every Sunday morning. This is a family meal. There is power in a family meal. There is unique holiness in hospitality. Hospitality invites people as they are, and makes a space for them to come and release their performative self and find refuge. Nothing says you are welcome, come and rest like a very large meal. Working in the restaurant industry for the last six years, I have a front row seat to how every important moment is marked by a meal. Engagements, graduations, and baby showers happen over dinner. Funerals, divorces, heartbreaks also come with casseroles, nights out over nachos – achingly difficult moments accompanied by meals dropped on a back porch.

We need to eat, and also we need to be fed. Food is always more than just food. It’s comfort, tenderness, celebration, nourishment. It helps us run races in the morning and feeds broken hearts at night. Food carries us physically and emotionally into the hard or joyful days we are facing.

This is the gift Communion offers us.

When God wants to tell us we are welcome and we are home in God’s love – God brings us a meal. God invites us to come and eat, whether we come in dancing or heartbroken or everything in between. God invites us, exactly as we are, to come and feel the full acceptance of a home cooked meal. Amen.

4. To make space for a God who makes space for us.

When we think of the table, we think about the hospitality that God offers to us. There is a way, though, that taking communion is also offering hospitality to God. God sets the table for us and welcomes us, and then we offer that welcome back to God, housing God in our bodies as we eat and drink. It’s a strange relationship in this moment, when we dance as equals with the creator of the universe. This is a mysterious and beautiful side of human freedom. Because we are so free, we can consent to the grace of God - and in our consent, we can offer hospitality back to God in the exact moment that God offers it to us.

God as Christ incarnate becomes vulnerable. Like the three Trinitarian strangers visiting Abraham or Jesus coming to the home of Martha and Mary Jesus becomes vulnerable enough to need a place to rest, to sit down and be at peace. Similar to poor stressed Martha who thought she had to make everything perfect, we can think we need to do more or be more or hide the parts of ourselves we’re ashamed of in order to welcome the Divine. Jesus, though, is just so glad to be here - not only giving to us but also, in the wildest mystery of the incarnation, accepting from us, too. Jesus doesn’t just take delight in giving hospitality. Jesus is delighted to be welcomed, too.

This is also love – not only to recklessly give, but also recklessly receive.
The vulnerability of God is a great mystery of the incarnation. Every week, when we take communion, we encounter that mystery again. We are welcomed by God when we put out our hands for the body of Christ. We also, in a miracle of the vulnerability of the Divine, welcome God, too. Amen.

5. Pandemic Communion

It’s just whiskey and the heel of supermarket whole wheat bread, and I am not sure of a theology of Long Distance Communion, but I know I need Jesus and I know it is a pandemic and I know that online church is all I have – so bless my heart, this is going to be what it is going to be.

Sprawled out on my living room floor in my 600sq ft apartment, the computer precariously balanced on the coffee table, and my makeshift communion lined up on the wood floor next to my coffee cup, I don’t feel particular holy. This does not feel like “church.” I do feel a lot less lonely than I did last night, though. The little chat bubble starts popping up, and everyone is saying hello as the announcements start, and then when the sermon starts people pop in with a joke or a quote or a heart emoji. I don’t feel quite so alone, for this half heartbeat of a Sunday morning.

The pandemic has been a very alone time. It has made me anxious and tightly wound, fragile, jumpy about picking fights, less gentle with others and myself. I’m more of an extrovert than I thought. I learned that I meet God most in rubbing shoulders with my neighbor, in joyful, awkward, thoughtful conversations.

I miss those conversations.

I didn’t think I’d be able to be as close to God, or to my neighbor, if all we had were screens. I didn’t think makeshift Zoom community could be as tender. I thought, too, that every week I’d bake real communion bread with my seminary recipe, and pick up red wine at Kroger. Pandemic me is always scattered and behind, though, so all I have this morning is the end of the whiskey bottle and this heel of bread. I’m not sure if it’s holy or if it’s enough, but it’s what I have, on this hardwood floor in this pandemic time.

Like the little boy walking up the mountain with a bag lunch, asking Jesus if it will be enough, I wander into online church with my makeshift communion and anxious heart and ask – am I enough? Is this enough? Is this holy? Is this church? And there, on the floor, with what I have – God comes. Jesus multiplies this “not enough” into comfort, and community, and holiness, and presence, even in this most unexpected place. Like Jesus has always done. Like Jesus will always do.

There is no place that the reckless hospitality of the Divine will not break into our lonely, broken, messy, sinful, heartbroken, scattered lives. “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence,” Abraham Kuyper says, “over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

Even this hardwood floor. Even this online church. Even this whiskey and wheat bread. Even this lonely pandemic. In every strange and sacred and scattered moment – we are Christ’s, and Christ is ours.

Laura Jean Truman

Laura Jean is a queer writer, preacher, and former chaplain living in Atlanta, GA. Originally from New England, she has a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of New Hampshire and an M.Div. from Emory University Candler School of Theology, with emphases in monasticism and mysticism. She supports her itinerant chaplaining and writing by slinging drinks at a historic tavern in downtown Atlanta.

Facebook | facebook.com/laurajeantrumanwriter
Instagram | @laurajeantruman
Twitter | @Laurajeantruman
Website | laurajeantruman.com

Photo by Eric Sun

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Diana Butler Bass 2/9/22 Diana Butler Bass 2/9/22

The Mystical Body of Zoom

Online church is a gift to be embraced.

This post initially appeared on Dr. Diana Butler Bass’ ongoing blog, The Cottage, and has been republished here with her permission. You can subscribe and receive regular posts from Dr. Butler Bass on her webpage here.

On Monday, a friend’s text interrupted my work day. It was from Jeremy Rutledge, the senior minister at Circular Congregational Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

He’d seen a couple of tweets I’d posted on Sunday night in response to a New York Times opinion essay. The article argued that churches should end online services and return to regular, in-person gathering. In some ways, it wasn’t terribly different than arguments for in-person school. But, in the process of making her case, the author managed to demean people who are disabled or suffered from high-risk conditions — and I pointed to that problem on Twitter.

Jeremy’s text read:

“Diana, as an immunocompromised and high risk pastor, I had a visceral response to that NY Times piece. If you’d like to chat, I’m around…”

I called him immediately.

“Hi Jeremy, what’s up? How are you?”

“Well,” he replied, “That essay in the New York Times felt like someone slammed a door in my face.”

He told me how his congregation had responded to the pandemic, especially with the challenge of having a pastor at high risk. “For almost two years,” he said, “I’ve seen people work tirelessly to be and bring church to each other in new ways.”

It was inspiring to watch a congregation that is nearly 3 ½ centuries old change how we do things overnight in order to meet the needs of the moment.
Our recorded services reached farther than we ever imagined. On a regular basis, I still receive letters from far away. People write who have been tuning in because there’s not a progressive church where they live or because what we’re doing resonates with them. I met a woman at church this month who was attending in-person for the first time. She told me that if not for our online services, she wasn’t sure how she would have made it through the last year.
We have learned so much about what it means to really be the church in terms of making a place for the vulnerable, the high risk, the lonely, and the left out. As we have become a church that is both in-person and live-streamed, we have widened the circle of our welcome.
Honestly, it’s all just love. We have done everything we can to care for each other, to stay connected, and to make church available to all in safe and healthy ways. I’ve never seen so many people work so hard for so long trying to make a place for everyone. I think we’ve all been changed by it, and I don’t think any of us want to go back.

For Jeremy and the people at Circular Church, the pandemic opened a door. They’ve been a great church for a long time, a community who accepted LGBTQ people and worked on the front lines of racial justice in South Carolina. But COVID taught them that even inclusive churches didn’t really understand the wideness of welcome — for all their risky work for justice, they’d not seen those whom they’d overlooked.

The vulnerable, the high risk, the lonely, and the left out — including their own pastor.

Sometimes you can’t see until you can see. The people in Charleston got to work. They changed. And they don’t want to go back.

* * * * *

The contrast between Circular’s experience and the article couldn’t have been clearer. Although it made some good points about the importance of bodies and vulnerability, the central claim asserted: “Online church, while it was necessary for a season, diminishes worship and us as people.” It went on to state that “we seek to worship wholly” and insist that “embodiment is an irreducible part of that wholeness.”

Obviously both Pastor Rutledge and the essayist care about good church, the kind of gathering that embodies the presence of God, love of neighbor, and dignifies our full humanity. But where Jeremy’s congregation discovered digital gathering as an entry into wider and more just community, the Times article maintained that online church “diminishes” our humanness.

You might see this as a tempest in a theological teapot. You might argue this as an unnecessary dualism of an either/or choice when a both/and solution is probably the best way forward. But the crux of the matter might be deeper than that. Two questions arise from the tension Jeremy felt when reading the article: What is embodiment? Whose bodies count?

* * * * *

At first, the answers seem simple. A body is a body. And, of course, every body matters.

But it isn’t quite that easy. The Times piece defines “bodies” as material entities and “community” as bodies in the same room with other bodies. Aaron Smith, a podcaster, pinpointed a problem with this: “People have stopped using embodied as ‘taking shape’ and started using it as ‘physical proximity’ which misses the point entirely.”

That’s exactly right. Honoring bodies, embodiment, and vulnerable community are more than putting fleshly beings in a room together. It is about something “taking shape.” And Jeremy’s story hints at the other, harder possibility and work: that of shaping a body.

For as robustly as Christians should and must defend materiality, we also need to recognize that bodies are more than bones and organs. The New Testament uses two words for bodies: sarx and soma. Sarx, often translated as “body,” means “flesh,” literally the tissue and bowels of living bodies. Soma, also translated as “body,” means living bodies but it also has broader meanings that include dead bodies, spirits and non-material bodies, non-conventional bodies, heavenly bodies like stars and planets, and social bodies.

Embodiment doesn’t just mean living flesh in a particular place. But embodiment in a robust understanding extends from skin-and-bones particularity to the larger shape of things as a whole. Embodiment and wholeness are linked. We speak of “the body politic,” the family as a body, an economic unit like a union as a body, the social order in general is often seen as a national or corporate body. Christians speak of the church as a body — and very specifically the body of Christ — and the mystical body of believers. All the faithful are part of a body, “the communion of saints,” that stretches through time and space and knows no fleshly barriers. Bodies are specific and touchable (sarx) and, at the same time, universal and beyond physicality as we know it (soma). In the first sense, embodiment entails physical proximity almost as a necessity. In the second sense, however, embodiment means the shape of things — how we are connected, what we hold to be true, and how we work together for the sake of the whole.

When specific human bodies (sarx) gather together in particular places, they often (and unwittingly) define the communal, more transcendent body (soma) to be composed of only those who are near them. Indeed, throughout western history, people with disabilities, physical limitations, or illnesses were considered to be parasites, plagues, or cancers on the body politic. The social body was poisoned by certain fleshly bodies, leading to eugenics movements and genocides of those with “unfit” bodies. In the church, the mystical body could be polluted by doubters, heretics, infidels, and witches (always identifiable by physical deformities on their bodies) who needed to be exiled, silenced, corrected, or exterminated by any means possible. Understanding embodiment strictly on the terms of flesh and physical proximity has led to some of humanity’s worst episodes of exclusion and violence in both state and church.

Defining embodiment as “the shape of things” or the “shape that things could be” is harder. In this case, we fleshly, limited sarx-humans have to imagine what shape transcendent, communal soma-bodies look like beyond familiar people in familiar places. Creating a body politic or experiencing a mystical body or caring for the body of the Earth — these are hard. But all these bodies call out for consideration, attention, and compassion. They include that which we can touch, hold, and hug, but they also expand our flesh bodies toward the communal body — those we can’t necessarily touch, hold, and hug — as a reality in which we humans find real wholeness, healing, and justice.

And that’s what online church has done. It has challenged us to understand that body is more than sarx. It is also soma. We are individual flesh bodies (that matter greatly) AND are of a piece with the earth’s body, the body of creation, the body of humanity, all sorts of universal, truly “catholic” bodies we struggle to comprehend and yet constantly shape both intentionally and unwittingly. Particular and vast, touchable and transcendent — body, bodies, Body.

* * * * *

Although online church took many forms, I always enjoyed Zoom the most. Occasionally, it seemed weirdly “disembodied,” but Zoom actually gave shape to that more transcendent Body than is typical in a church building. It took us to a place where every single flesh-body was treated equally (we all got the exact same size box), had the same privileges on the screen, and where everyone could fully participate in the work of the people. If you stop and think about it for just a moment, Zoom (in particular) was surprisingly, unexpectedly, annoyingly real. A place where every fleshy body could enter* and every body mattered.

It wasn’t disembodied at all. Those are real people with real bottoms sitting in real chairs on the other side of those screens. We got to see into one another’s worlds, with disruptive children, barking dogs, messy bookshelves and kitchens, and unexpected wheezes, sneezes, and burps. Parishioners in pjs, preachers expounding the Gospel while muted, doughnuts and orange juice standing in for wafers and wine. We saw face-to-face with a kind of astonishing intimacy we didn’t know could happen, with every moment of sadness, shock, joy, silliness, and boredom close-up. Indeed, Zoom glories in our imperfection, invites mistakes and slip-ups, and makes everyone just as awkward and unpolished as everyone else. Online church didn’t diminish but instead magnified us all.

It reminded us that church is far more than what happens in a special building on Sunday morning in the most intrusive and personal ways, drawing our everyday lives into a communal experience that somehow defies the boundaries and walls that often protect our professional and private spaces. It opened up participation to all sorts of sarx-people — and gave us the ability to see our soma-community exists here and now, a truly diverse, inclusive Body that gathers outside of conventional space and time, and that isn’t just a theory, an utopia, or an after-death hope.

Yes, things are changing regarding the pandemic. Many people are eager to return to what used to be. We have better tools to manage the virus and are starting the journey toward whatever comes next. But wherever we go, we shouldn’t just go back. We certainly shouldn’t return to limited ideas of body and embodiment. Old church will happen once again, and perhaps we’ll do it better than we did. But online church wasn’t just a way to adapt to an emergency. It is a gift of opening our theological imagination to the shape of the spiritual community — authentic, meaningful human community — that is being birthed right in our midst. This wasn’t an accident of pandemic or a temporary solution.

Welcome to the Mystical Body of Zoom.

*There is, of course, an important conversation to have about access, broadband availability, and technological equity. Acknowledging problems of economic inequality should not be used to undermine the ways that online community has positively impacted the lives of disabled people, those with unconventional bodies, people isolated for various reasons, victims of trauma, those with long term illnesses, and the elderly — millions of whom have benefited by finally being able to participate in meaningful community because of changes made during the pandemic.

Diana Butler Bass

Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is a multiple award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality. She holds a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of ten books, including Christianity After Religion and Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution. Click here information on Diana and her work.
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Laura Jean Truman 1/5/22 Laura Jean Truman 1/5/22

Epiphany: When God Speaks Our Language

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

Psalm 139:7-10 NIV

We can waste a whole lifetime believing that only one way of experiencing God is true. We can waste a whole lifetime ignoring the longings of our heart, because we’ve been taught that God doesn’t speak through those longings.

We can force ourselves into churches that make us uncomfortable for the sake of “discipleship.” We can make ourselves be more “expressive” in worship, or struggle to learn to meditate and be still, because someone important told us once that it was The Way to Know God. Then when we don’t feel safe, or whole, or connected to God through those practices, we assume it’s our fault. We think we’re doing it wrong.

We doubt our own souls before we doubt the religious gatekeepers telling us that their voice is the same as the voice of God.

You must not be trying hard enough, they’ll say. Being a Christian means being discipled, and discipleship isn’t comfortable. Church isn’t supposed to feel easy! Being a Christian isn’t supposed to be fun! What feels good can’t be trusted. What you want is probably bad.

Learn our language, religious leaders says, no matter how uncomfortable, no matter how ill-fitting.

Like a child forced to draw with their non-dominant hand, who grows up assuming drawing is painful and they are bad at it, we are forced into spiritual practices that feel uncomfortable, then naturally assume God is distant, unpleasant, and unsafe. That discomfort in sacred spaces or with spiritual practices can signal that we’ve been doing religion with our non-dominant hand for too long.

But God doesn’t demand we learn a new soul language before God will speak to us. God comes to us in ways we understand.

God is longing to sing us home in our native language.

Epiphany, the story of the Magi, is about a God who sings us all home, in the language we speak, as the people we are.

Epiphany is not a story of the Magi coming to God. Epiphany is a story of God coming to the Magi, speaking to them in a spiritual language they understood, before they took one step towards God. Epiphany, like all the best stories, is a story about Grace.

This Feast of the Epiphany is Thursday, January 6th, the last day after the 12 Days of Christmas. In the Western Christian Church, Epiphany is the celebration of the Incarnation for the Gentiles – it is the first time the Gospel went out to the non-Jewish world, represented by the Gentile “three kings” of the East coming to worship Jesus (Mt 2:1-12).

The word magos (Magi) is sometimes translated “wise men” and sometimes “kings.” These are theologically safe translations, but not entirely accurate (and the number three only comes from the three gifts they brought – Scripturally, we have no record of how many showed up). While we can’t be entirely sure of the Magi’s story, the most common use of the Greek word magos in the New Testament and in later non-Biblical Greek sources is simply magicians.

Oh dear. This makes us uncomfortable. We’d prefer the Magi to be “wise men,” gentlemen scholars engrossed in scholarly pursuits. Gentiles, yes, but safe, tidied up Gentiles. We like the poetry of “God coming for the outsiders” but only for less messy outsiders. And if they must be so heretical to be magicians (or, as Acts 13:6 translates the word, “sorcerers”), at least let’s see a repentance scene when they come to worship Jesus!

Surprisingly, though, the magicians see the star, are “overjoyed,” bring Jesus gifts, worship Him – then return home. They come as they are - weird witchy astrologers - and leave as they are, weird witchy astrologers. There can be exegetical knots tied over whether the Magi are a good example or not, but Matthew is straightforward in his telling – the Magi follow the star, worship Jesus, and when warned about Herod’s intentions in a dream, dutifully go home a different way. For Matthew, these Magi saw God. For Matthew, God came and found these Magi exactly as they were.

If we dig deep enough into what we love, we will always find God waiting for us, like the funky astrologers buried in their star charts while God planted a star in the sky.

If we earnestly and truthfully follow what makes our soul sing, there is God, singing in harmony all along.

It can be hard to believe the things we love can bring us to God, or that we don’t have to sacrifice our deepest self in order to be found by God. The church has certainly spent a lot of time and energy telling us to distrust ourselves for the sake of “sanctification.”

This is not to say that we aren’t in the process growth and development, or that our religious practice can stretch us into new shapes in a healthy way! We are always growing, and sometimes that’s a bit uncomfortable as we learn new skills or practice the fruits of the Spirit we’re a bit weaker in. There is a time, especially, to sacrifice a bit of what makes us comfy to honor the native language of our neighbor. We can sacrifice our preferences for the sake of our neighbor, as act of worship. These are all ways God sings us home.

The process, though, is like pruning a bush, branch by branch – it grows stronger and better and more resourcefully, but the bush doesn’t change into a rabbit. Its essence is the same bush. We’re growing into our best self, not growing into another self entirely. Our extraneous fluff is being trimmed, but we aren’t shaped into a new self altogether.

And when you finally let yourself hear God sing to you in your heart’s first language, it is such a beautiful gift. Coming home to ourselves and finding God there waiting is delightful, like being permitted to be a kid again in the presence of the Divine, opening Christmas presents given to you by someone who really knows you, playing without being worried about being watched. It is so holy to speak the language we spoke before we knew anyone was listening, when we were “naked and unashamed,” and to believe that God not only talks that language back to us, but that it gives Her joy to do so.

Epiphany, at its core, is a story about the primacy of Grace – God coming to us, however God can, wherever God can, in any language God can use, just to make sure we hear Her clearly. We never make a single step on the journey towards God before God has taken so many steps towards us first.

This is the Gospel, beginning to end.

Blessings on your Epiphany. May you hear Grace singing you home to yourself, and to God.

Laura Jean Truman

Laura Jean is a queer writer, preacher, and former chaplain living in Atlanta, GA. Originally from New England, she has a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of New Hampshire and an M.Div. from Emory University Candler School of Theology, with emphases in monasticism and mysticism. She supports her itinerant chaplaining and writing by slinging drinks at a historic tavern in downtown Atlanta.

Facebook | facebook.com/laurajeantrumanwriter
Instagram | @laurajeantruman
Twitter | @Laurajeantruman
Website | laurajeantruman.com

Photo by Eric Sun

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Diana Butler Bass 5/10/21 Diana Butler Bass 5/10/21

Religion After Pandemic

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Lost means gone — it also means dislocated

During a Freeing Jesus event hosted by a Seattle church, a man asked: “What do you think is going to happen with churches after the pandemic? How is Christianity going to be changed by this?”

The question startled me. I was focused on my new book and not talking about the future of faith. I quickly pivoted back to Jesus. And the questioner just as quickly pivoted back to “What’s going to happen after the pandemic?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Nobody knows.”

Since the publication of Christianity After Religion in 2012, people have asked me more questions about church, faith, and the future than I can possibly remember. I’ve learned a thing or two about conversations regarding the future.

1. No one knows what the future holds, not even the most intuitive historian, skilled trend spotter, or well-trained futurist.
2. Time is an odd thing. We experience it (mostly) in terms of change and chronology. But in sacred perspective, time exists differently. Indeed, theologically there is no past, present, or future. God holds time without reference to what has been and what will be.

In other words, I’ve become more modest when speaking of the future of faith. Even though I am happy to engage these questions, I think a more fruitful course (at this moment) is to focus on now.

Truth is, we don’t even know where we are in the course of the pandemic. Perhaps the best way to understand this moment is that we are nearing the end of the beginning. Millions of Americans are vaccine-hesitant (or vaccine-denying), and billions of people around the planet are suffering from resurgent strains, lack of adequate medical intervention, and no vaccines. COVID isn’t through with us yet, even while here in the United States, we see a bit of light on the horizon.

Instead of navigating all those unknowns, it seems a wiser course to focus on what we do know. And what we know is what we’ve been through – and how we are continuing to struggle.

* * * * *

So, what have we been through?

It is quite striking how people use the word “lost” and “loss” to describe the last fourteen months: we’ve lost friends and relatives to death, we’ve lost a year of our lives, we’ve lost income, we’ve lost a sense of security, we’ve lost our ability to move freely through the world. We’ve lost a lot.

My clergy friends speak of grief and lament — perhaps the post-COVID church will be one marked by that sad journey. But I think that “grief and lament” lacks specificity. It is hard to grieve millions of people (even when necessary to do so), and it is hard to grieve the hundreds of millions of lost years of our lives (even when the sadness of that is weighty). We need to grieve what is gone, yes. But that is not the only task ahead.

Lost doesn’t just refer to what is gone. It also means that which is mislaid, out of place, dislocated. Sometimes lost just means that we’re lost. And that is the other task for the post-pandemic world: to help others find what has been lost, to point the way beyond the thicket. We need to find ourselves again; we need to be relocated in the world.

* * * * *

We’ve been dislocated in four major ways:

1) Temporal dislocation

We’ve lost our sense of time as it existed before the pandemic. How often have you thought: What day is this? What time is it? Did I miss an event? What month is it? That’s temporal dislocation.

2) Historical dislocation

We’ve lost our sense of where we are in the larger story of both our own lives and our communal stories. History has been disrupted. Where are we? Where are we going? The growth of conspiracy theories, the intensity of social media, political and religious “deconstructions” – these are signs of a culture seeking a meaningful story to frame their lives because older stories have failed. That’s historical dislocation.

3) Physical dislocation

We’ve lost our sense of embodiment with others and geographical location. For millions, technology has moved “physicality” into cyber-space and most of us have no idea what to do with this virtual sense of location. Without our familiar sense of being bodily in specific spaces, things like gardening, baking, sewing, and painting have emerged as ways of feeling the ground and the work of our hands. We’ve striven to maintain some sort of embodiment even amid isolation. But the disconnection between our bodies, places, and other bodies has been profound. That’s physical dislocation.

4) Relational dislocation

We’ve lost our daily habits of interactions with other humans, the expression of emotions together in community. Have you worried you won’t know how to respond when you can be with your friends without distance, with no masks? How it will feel to be in large groups again? How will work or school feel back in person, with others at the next desk or waiting on customers face-to-face, or in the first in-person meeting? What happens when the plexiglass comes down, the mask is off? That’s relational dislocation.

With these dislocations in mind, the task comes into focus. Surely, religious communities need to be about the work of relocation – finding what has been lost, repairing what has been broken, and re-grounding people into their own lives and communities.

* * * * *

The word religion is believed to have come from the Latin, religare, meaning to “bind” or “reconnect.” Religare is about mending what has been broken, recovering what has been mislaid, and reconnecting that which is frayed.

What is the future of religion post-pandemic? Well, it depends. It depends if we continue to insist on the other definition of religion — as obligation to a particular order of things (like doctrine, polity, or moral action— a “bounden duty”). If nothing else, the pandemic has revealed that particular orders of things can be upset, overturned by the most unanticipated of things. If religion is about maintaining a certain order of liturgy, dogma, or practice, well, then, we can consider religion one more pandemic loss.

If we think of religion in terms of religare, however, the task of the post-pandemic church — the work of finding, repairing, and relocating — is clear. We must reconnect ourselves and others with time, history, physicality, and relationships. In this sense, the future of religion has never been brighter — our lost world needs finding. Pandemic dislocation calls for guides and weavers of wisdom. We don’t need to return to the old ways, we need to be relocated. We need to find a new place, a new home in a disrupted world.

And at the very heart of finding our lost selves is relocating our hearts in and with God. There is a journey beyond the pandemic, and we will find the way a step at a time. We haven’t been to this particular future before. And we will need one another to get there.

This blog is reprinted with permission from Diana Butler Bass's newsletter, The Cottage. It is published twice a week and covers issues of faith and politics, religion and culture, and spiritual practices. To read more or sign up, please click here.

Diana Butler Bass.jpeg — Diana Butler Bass

Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is a multiple award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality. She holds a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of ten books, including Christianity After Religion and Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution. Click here information on Diana and her work.
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Imagining Christian Community Post-Pandemic

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Dr. Raj Nadella 4/8/21 Dr. Raj Nadella 4/8/21

Preaching Thomas and Embodied Solidarity (John 20:19-29)

In the story of post-resurrection appearances in John 20, Thomas seems to ask for proof of Jesus’s resurrection. But was he also asking for something else?

When Jesus made a surprise visit to the disciples, he showed them his hands and side, apparently to convince them that he had risen from the dead. There was much celebration of this joyful reunion that Thomas learned about from other disciples. The Greek word elegon, a past continuous verb, suggests that the disciples kept telling him that they saw Jesus, but Thomas wasn’t ready to believe yet.

He wanted proof that the Jesus who appeared to the disciples was the same Jesus who was crucified. He wanted concrete proof of the risen Jesus.

It must have been hard for Thomas, and others, to believe that Jesus who confronted the Roman empire and challenged its status quo could actually survive and tell the story. It would have been hard to fathom that anyone could beat Rome’s death machine which had effectively eliminated every single challenge to its apparatus of oppression. Understandably, the idea of meeting the risen Jesus seemed unrealistic to Thomas.

For communities ravaged by imperial violence, the idea that justice can prevail seems like an impossible scenario.

However, John 20 suggests that Thomas was not interested solely, or even primarily, in proof that Jesus rose from the dead. If he only wanted proof of resurrection, he would have simply asked to see Jesus and perhaps touch him. But Thomas is asking for much more: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

Why was it especially important for him to see Jesus’s nail marks, feel the holes left by the nails and touch the wound in his side that had been pierced by the Romans?

Apparently, Thomas wants proof of Jesus’s crucifixion and suffering as well. He seems more interested in visible and tangible proof that Jesus who appeared to the disciples was in fact crucified. Later, when Jesus makes another appearance, he invites Thomas to examine his nail marks and put his hand in his side. All this begs the question: Why was it important for Thomas to be convinced that Jesus did in fact die on the cross?

Gerard Sloyan helpfully noted that John’s gospel was likely addressing an early form of Docetism. The word Docetism is derived from Greek word dokein which means “to seem.” Docetics believed that Jesus was a phantom-like figure who did not suffer on the cross but only appeared to do so. Within that context, John likely employed the Thomas figure to address such doubts and highlight the significance of Jesus’s suffering on the cross. Hence, the emphasis on the nails and putting his hand in the side that was pierced.

On a practical level, Thomas and others must have known at least a few figures who led popular movements against the Roman empire, gave powerful speeches about confronting oppressive structures, built an image as champions of justice, but quietly slipped away when they had to put their bodies on the line. Which is why Thomas wants visible and tangible proof that Jesus put his body on the line in the process of confronting the empire.

He wants assurance that Jesus wasn’t just an eloquent teacher and a charismatic leader, but actually had his skin in the game, nails in his flesh and a spear in his side.

When Jesus finally met Thomas, he invited him to touch his wounds and side. The text doesn’t say whether Thomas actually touched them. He likely did not. He did not need to. The scars left by the nails and spear were too big too miss and too scary to touch.

Thomas responds by saying, “My God and My Lord.”

What made Thomas call Jesus God and Lord was not his power but his wounds and scars. It was not the resurrection alone that convinces Thomas of the Lordship of Jesus but the assurance that Jesus did in fact place his body on the cross.

For Thomas, the scars represent Christ’s commitment to challenge the power of the empire, to suffer along with the powerless, and stand in solidarity with them.

In a culture that celebrates the resurrection and its power as key aspects of the Christ event, the story of Thomas highlights the cross and suffering as the hallmarks of the Christ event. Many Christians gloss over Good Friday and move too quickly to Easter Sunday, perhaps due to a discomfort with the motif of Christ suffering. Within such contexts, this text celebrates embodied solidarity that was quintessential to the story of Jesus — God who became flesh, dwelt among us and suffered in the process of confronting forces of evil. Incarnation was about the word becoming flesh and the flesh putting itself on the line alongside the oppressed and allowing itself to be pierced and scarred.

In his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone observes powerfully that “The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.”

The hope that Cone highlights can only be realized when God’s people carry each other’s crosses in our everyday contexts and stand in solidarity with each other to bring life out of death and hope out of despair.

As we continue to reflect on Easter, meeting the risen Lord should not be solely about celebrating his victory over death but should focus on embracing his wounds and scars that signified God standing in solidarity alongside us. (Jesus’s invitation to Thomas to touch his wounds and put his hand in his side are an invitation for us to be in solidarity with each other and place our bodies on the line for those at the margins.)

The story of Thomas and the gospel of John in general tell us that embodiment matters in the struggle against injustice. They caution us against substituting words for embodied solidarity in the process of challenging the powers of our time. At a time when many Christians these days have invested right words and theologies to causes of justice but have largely not invested much skin in the game, the Thomas story insists on tangible proof that we have placed our bodies on the line in order to transform oppressive structures.

Dr. Raj Nadella

Raj Nadella is the Samuel A. Cartledge Associate Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. His research and teaching interests include postcolonial biblical interpretation, migration and New Testament perspectives on economic justice and their ethical implications for the Church and society. He is the author of Dialogue Not Dogma: Many Voices in the Gospel of Luke (T&T Clark, 2011) and an area editor for Oxford Bibliographies Online: Biblical Studies. He is the co-author of Postcolonialism and the Bible and co-editor of Christianity and the Law of Migration, both forthcoming in 2021. He has written for publications such as the Huffington Post, Christian Century and Working Preacher.

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Laura Jean Truman 3/4/21 Laura Jean Truman 3/4/21

Lent: Being Human with Our Human God

Come to me,
all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest …
For my yoke is easy
and my burden is light.
Matthew 11:28,30

I’ve always been a fan of Lent. It’s a good time to make fancy spiritual to-do lists, read important books, and whip ourselves into spiritual shape so that we come out the other end holier. I love the idea of becoming holier! (Unsurprisingly, I also love New Years Resolutions).

Lent hasn’t always been about a frenzy of perfectionism, though. Historically, Lent is the fasting period in the liturgical year between the feasts of Christmas and Easter — 40 days the Church sets aside to meditate on our mortality and repent of sin.

Somewhere along the way, though, the emphasis on our smallness and sin shifted, and the spiritual practices that were supposed to make us feel and mourn our humanity were swapped out for practices to make us more disciplined and stronger, “better” Christians and better citizens. For many, Lent is now time to try to scale impossible heights of spirituality, purity, and self-control. We use Lent to beat ourselves into shape, to tame our human bodies, and to try to become just a bit superhuman.

There’s nothing wrong with self-improvement! But discipleship is the focus of Ordinary Time — that period between Easter and Advent, months of Gospel texts where Jesus preaches and heals and serves, when we work through the steady practice of sanctification. Lent, though, serves a different spiritual purpose, and isn’t a hyper-intense “40 Days of New Years Resolutions!”

Lent is grittier, earthier, and more human.

Lent begins with ashes on our foreheads, reminding us that we came from dust and we’ll end up back there. Lent also ends with death — the sun sets on Holy Saturday with Jesus still in the tomb. The season is bookended by human fragility and transience. The world isn’t the way it should be, and we aren’t the way we wish we were, either. There are aches of sin and death in the center of the world that we don’t know how to heal.

The impulse is to use Lent to fix these aches. But Lent isn’t time to practice saying repeatedly if only we could be better. It’s time to practice being present to the ways we aren’t better: to practice being present to our humanity.

And in this heavy season, we see a God who doesn’t stay removed from our pain or tell us to “get it together!” and “just ignore the suffering!”, but a God who comes to carry our human burdens alongside us.

***

“Come to me, all who are weary,” Jesus says in Matthew. “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light!” (Matthew 11:28,30). This verse feels like taking a deep breath. We’re trying to pull the weight of being human all by ourselves, piling on practices and productivity, ignoring our pain and fighting through. We keep thinking that succeeding at Lent means pulling this weight all by ourselves.

Jesus doesn’t take away the heaviness of being human. But Jesus comes alongside and says, I will pull the weight of being human along with you. When we pull it together, it’ll be lighter.

This is the Gospel — that Jesus “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself human” (Philippians 2:6). The story of Lent isn’t the story of a superhuman God swooping in to tidy things up while staying clean and in control, or a story about how we can do fantastic, ethical things “through Christ who strengthens us.” It’s a story of a God who is here with us, inside it all.

God Incarnate means “God with a body.” It means God knows everything ugly and scary about being human, all about broken hearts and broken promises, all about having a body with anxiety, insomnia, and the flu.

If Lent is just superhuman-ing through our fragility, we won’t see Christ, aching body and aching soul, not just a popular preacher or successful prophet, but a dusty person as lonely, scared, and weary as us.

This God says to us, “you are entirely human, and I’m with you. You are entirely human, and entirely Beloved.”

In practicing that Presence of unconditional acceptance, maybe we’ll become better people. And maybe we won’t become better people. That isn’t the goal, though. If that hoped-for holiness doesn’t find us, Lent hasn’t failed. Grace, like the theologian Paul Tillich says, comes anyway:

“Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. […] It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

Tillich continues,

“Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!” If that happens to us, we experience grace” (The Shaking of the Foundations).

This acceptance of ourselves, fully human and fully fallible, but still held and Beloved, is the deepest lesson of Lent.

If we spend Lent pushing against our humanity, muscling past the ways we’ve failed, it’s hard to learn this lesson of radical grace that is the beginning and end of God’s heart for us. We’re permitted to be small and scared, because grace is for that small, scared version of ourselves. Grace is, in fact, especially for that version. This is some good news, because these pandemic days, sometimes that feels like the only self we have left.

***

We’re all experiencing such a lack of control right now, and it makes sense to try to gather our lives back together by making rules to organize ourselves and the world.

But Lent has a better gift for our battered souls. We don’t have to keeping trying to overachieve our way through spiritual practices, attempting to launch ourselves into superhuman spiritual orbit. We can name our weaknesses out loud, to mourn and suffer them together — and to know that Jesus is with us, pulling alongside us.

Into heaviness and sorrow, into sin and failings — God comes.

We are tired, but we are not alone.

Laura Jean Truman

Laura Jean is a queer writer, preacher, and former chaplain living in Atlanta, GA. Originally from New England, she has a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of New Hampshire and an M.Div. from Emory University Candler School of Theology, with emphases in monasticism and mysticism. She supports her itinerant chaplaining and writing by slinging drinks at a historic tavern in downtown Atlanta.

Facebook | facebook.com/laurajeantrumanwriter
Instagram | @laurajeantruman
Twitter | @Laurajeantruman
Website | laurajeantruman.com

Photo by Eric Sun

One Year Changed: Faith in Pandemic

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Angela Denker 2/18/21 Angela Denker 2/18/21

The Lent I Didn’t Want

Every year, I look forward to Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent with the kind of relish that only one raised with a certain sort of Midwestern stoicism and glory in suffering can amass.

Maybe it is the same part of me who brags about walking outside in 15 below, up the hill both ways to school growing up in Minnesota, or having to shovel the church sidewalk before waving palms on a chilly April morning.

At its worst, or sometimes its best, Ash Wednesday is a hair’s breadth away from schadenfreude, a glory in others’, or our own, misfortune. For one day in the church year the George Costanzas of our congregations rejoice! You should fear success! The Christian life is about suffering and pain! Now give up that chocolate and hit the gym. Do your devotions each morning. Trudge your weary winter self to church to eat watery soup supper with paltry crackers. Rejoice in your mediocrity!

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Of course this is a shallow way of looking at one of the richest days of the church year, and yet I also know it’s a message that Americans have often needed. On Ash Wednesday you are invited to come to church as you are. You’re encouraged to wear your pain, your grief, your failure, on the sign of a cross on your forehead.

Today I saw a video a pastor friend made for last year’s Ash Wednesday, to tune of the old TV show, Green Acres:

Ash Wednesday is the day for me! Reeeemembering Mortality!
Get those ashes on top your head.
And remember that one day you’ll be dead.

Thanks Pastor Joseph Graumann Jr.!

The tune has a certain sort of calming and honest simplicity, in a church where too often we over-complicate and over-spiritualize the realities of everyday life, to the point that many people think church has nothing to do with their everyday lives.

And so I was satisfied each Ash Wednesday, knowing that despite the ashes and wreckage and imperfection of my life, this one day the church service would acknowledge and honor that imperfection, and in doing so would remind me that this acknowledgment, this extra-special day of repentance, would usher in eventually a reminder that, like the dust of the earth, I too was created for the glory of God, and that my dust would be like stardust, a promise of eternal life, love, and relationship with God.

Then, COVID-19 came along. Suddenly, ashes were everywhere.

I read this article from the Los Angeles Times about Diego Pablo, the overworked and chagrined cremator of L.A. At 44 years old, Pablo had long worked alone, burning bodies into ashes for grieving families, on staff at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. There were so many bodies to burn this year, especially after a devastating COVID surge hit Southern California, that the cemetery had to add a second worker to burn the bodies. Pablo was training 23-year-old Tristen McBride for the night shift.

Unlike many Americans during COVID, Pablo had excellent job security in the midst of the pandemic. But like most of us, the ashes - the unremitting death - tormented him in sometimes unexpected ways. The L.A. Times called him, as opposed to a first responder, a last responder. Like so many who are employed to clean up after those more privileged than themselves, Pablo cannot take a spring vacation or dwell in the vast dark spaces of the COVID-denying Internet to pretend the pandemic isn’t happening. Instead, he lives with its death each day. Unsurprisingly, he himself contracted the virus, during the havoc-filled Southern California COVID days of December, and the virus spread through the one-bedroom apartment he shared with two cousins.

Pablo survived his bout with COVID. But his heart bears the calluses of the last year, and he talks about it in ways that Christians would do well to recognize on this Ash Wednesday 2021.

Pablo told the L.A. Times: “When it hits us personally, I try to feel what these families feel. When you feel the pain and the tears. But nothing comes out. I feel nothing. Sometimes I worry I have a hard heart. A cold heart. I think that’s what’s helped me do this job for so long.”

Pablo and McBride cremated 58 people in January 2021, compared to just 17 a year earlier. A nearby crematory had to shut down due to Southern California restrictions on air quality, due to so much death and so much burning.

Another nearby mortuary had to stop allowing family members watch their loved ones’ bodies being placed in the chamber. It took too much time. There were too many bodies, too many ashes. The fire raged, consuming everyone in its path. Some, standing in the midst of the fire, they gave it their humanity, becoming cold and hard inside so that the flames couldn’t touch them.

We all have had to do what we do to survive.

And so Pablo sits after the burning in his windowless office, doing paperwork for the dead.

I lay out tiny tins of ashes we bought online.

Usually in the church we would use the palms we burned on Palm Sunday for the following Ash Wednesday, but last year there were no palms. We’d worshiped online together in quarantine, the hollow sound of our voices alone echoing hymns and prayers. Back then we imagined that we’d survive by Zoom and singing and solidarity. Now it is another year and much goodwill has been lost.

Pablo keeps working. He attends a service at work for his own cousin. His heart alternately breaks open and snaps shut. There are so many ashes and so much death. There is work and bills and food and rent. What is a life in these days? What kind of God could gather up this vast dust of death and make life again?

This Lent is different. We do not need more reminders of our own mortality. It surrounds us, haunts us, dwells in the bodies of those first responders and last responders who guard our days.

And so I did not particularly want Ash Wednesday or Lent this year. It has felt like Lent since March 2020. The ever-present shadow of a global pandemic. The angry words traded between family and friends. The mistrust and suspicion. The lack of an off-valve.

This is not the Lent I wanted: services without suppers, sharing the peace without sharing hugs, the vacuity of empty spaces and desperate attempts to pretend we are somehow untouched by the reality of COVID.

Nevertheless, this is perhaps the Lent I needed. And so I will wear my ashes in solidarity with Diego Pablo and the millions of others who have lived next to death for far too long. I will acknowledge that Lent is not about my own shortcoming but about God’s unimaginable ability to pull life out of death, creation out of dust, green buds out of brittle branches, forgiveness out of anger and fear.

The gift of hope this Lent is not that my mediocrity is normal, or the church can embrace imperfect me or you. We learn that each year. This year, in a Lent coupled with far too many ashes and far too much unjust death, the gift of hope is that my standing among the ashes is a recognition that God dwells here, too. In acknowledgement of suffering, death, and pain — in this is God glorified. In the ignominious cross, our ashes - the ashes of our loved ones long dead and newly lost — merge with the promise of a new life that rises from the flames.

This is not the Lent I wanted. I wanted to give up chocolate or wine or commit to a new practice of reading my Bible. I did not want to pay homage and dwell in the grief and death of this year. But this is the Lent I received: the Lent of a God who walked himself into death and grief and pain and shame, refusing to avert his eyes, so that when I entered into that grief and death myself, I would find my God right next to me.

Savior when in dust to you … Low we bow in homage due;
Listen to our humble sigh; Hear our penitential cry!

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Angela Denker 1/21/21 Angela Denker 1/21/21

Morning and Mourning in America

This week, after the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States of America, and Kamala Harris as the first Black, South Asian, and woman Vice President of the United States of America, it is morning again in America.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that, after a bitter election and baseless allegations of fraud from former President Donald Trump, the inauguration of Biden and Harris felt like a new day in America. Once commonplace pleasantries between Republican and Democratic congressional representatives were this week an almost unbelievable ode to a nearly forgotten past era, before the meanness and hatred unleashed during the past few weeks and years.

When white supremacy and racism are repudiated from the highest office in the land, it is a new day in America, a transition from the charlatan preachers and so-called Christian leaders who once filled the halls of power only to bow to the powerful and veer far from the Gospel of Jesus that is grounded in love, forgiveness, and truth.

In his final benediction at the inauguration, African Methodist Episcopal Rev. Silvester Beaman spoke of “mourning the dead,” “giving justice to the oppressed,” “seeking rehabilitation beyond correction,” and “making friends out of enemies.”

“Neither shall we learn hatred anymore,” Beaman continued, quoting loosely from the Biblical prophets Isaiah and Micah, “... We will lie down in peace, not make our neighbors afraid.”

Beaman acknowledged the enslaved African Americans who built the White House, the Indigenous Americans whose land was taken from them, and the recent immigrants whose lives and liberty had been threatened almost ceaselessly for the past four years.

Beaman did not say Jesus’ name, but he preached Jesus’ Gospel, with words taken from the Bible itself, including Jesus’ own first sermon.

It was a glaring contrast to the prominent Christians, many of them Evangelicals, who had sanctioned cruel rhetoric and policies against millions of Americans, from victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, to LGBTQ Americans and military veterans, to women, to people of color, to Americans living in poverty. They had done so as part of a cruel exchange, a bargain for political power and judges on the Supreme Court, supposedly to put an end to abortion, while the former President they called “Pro-Life” oversaw the deaths of 400,000 Americans due to Covid, something he still called the “China flu” on his final day in office, an epithet that led to disparagement and mistreatment of millions of Asian Americans.

To hear Beaman’s prayer was a resounding comment on a new day in America, particularly for American Christians. Americans have not heard this kind of Christianity from government leaders and prominent speakers hardly at all in recent memory, with few notable exceptions, including leaders in the Black church, like the Rev. William Barber II, who led the inaugural prayer service this week, and Rev. Raphael Warnock, Pastor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s former Atlanta congregation, and one of Georgia’s two new senators.

It’s important to emphasize, though, as Beaman’s soaring rhetoric reclaimed a gentler and more honest American Christianity, and poet Amanda Gorman led us into a brighter American future in “The Hill We Climb,” that this new day in America is merely at its dawn.

As former President Ronald Reagan claimed almost 40 years ago, it’s morning in America. The claim of a new day is barely at its dawn, the sun peeking out at the edge of the horizon, with trees and meadows and buildings and people in the distance emerging out of their shadowy forms.

Morning in America is perhaps more apropos today in January 2021 than it was in 1984, because, there is a glimpse of a different, newer, more just country just over the horizon. The new day in America does not mean the foes of white supremacy, hatred, anti-semitism, fear, anger, and divisive rhetoric have been vanquished, nor does it mean that the bloodthirsty lust for capitalism and greed and power has any less hold on America.

But maybe, just maybe, there’s an alternative narrative emerging in the morning of the first day. This alternative narrative, this new day, emerges on a morning that cannot be separated from the mourning in America, with more than 400,000 dead due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new day began with the new night, on Tuesday evening, when Biden and Harris asked Americans to take a moment to turn on their porch lights and ring church bells to honor the hundreds of thousands of American dead.

Again during his inaugural address, Biden asked Americans to pause and be silent to honor the dead. To pause and mourn, a practice with which this President is all-too-well acquainted, after the tragic deaths of his first wife, daughter, and later, his son, Beau.

I’m reminded, in this early dawning of a possible new day, of the mourning story of the Hebrew Bible, in Ezra 9-10. Ezra the scribe writes: “At the evening sacrifice I got up from my fasting, with my garments and my mantle torn, and fell on my knees, spread out my hands to the LORD my God, and said:

O my God, I am too ashamed and embarrassed to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens.

As Ezra wept and confessed, he was joined by what the Bible calls a “great assembly of men, women, and children, who also wept bitterly.” Only at that moment did they make a new covenant again with God who throughout the Bible makes and remakes covenants with God’s people, always willing to forgive and to begin anew.

The story of renewal and new life for God’s people begins with mourning, as it did for Ezra, as it did for Noah, as it did for the women who found the empty tomb at the Mount of Olives.

So, we begin again today in America, chastened and mournful, not ignorant of the realities of sin and death, but resolute that joy has come in the morning amidst the mourning.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Ulysses Burley III 1/18/21 Ulysses Burley III 1/18/21

Law and Morals

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.
—Matthew 22:15-22

Law and Order.

When you hear these often-coupled words, what comes to mind first? For many of us it's probably the famed police and courtroom drama that aired on NBC for 20 years, showcasing the sometimes-nuanced process of determining one's guilt or innocence in less than an hour of commercial-filled TV. Often scripted based on real-life events, the show highlighted legal, ethical, moral, or personal dilemmas to which all of us could relate. I imagine that's what made it one of the most popular shows in the history of primetime network television.

However, when I hear the words Law and Order, something quite different registers for me. Instead, I hear that phrase as a political dog whistle with very real consequences for marginalized communities and people of color. In June 2020, Donald Trump declared himself the "Law and Order" president while threatening military intervention to suppress nationwide peaceful protests against police brutality following the state-sanctioned murder of George Floyd. Ironically, the same president incited violent riots at the U.S. Capitol where some law enforcement officers were put in harm's way, while others simply looked the other way.

Nothing about the events at the Capitol resembled law or order, and yet those in power might have us believe that what took place was not only acceptable, but necessary to illegally maintain power, and more dangerously, dictate what is lawful or not.

The challenge to Jesus on the question of paying imperial taxes to Caesar calls attention to the oppressive nature of earthly rulers who pardon allies, loyalists, followers, and other members of the ruling class, yet impose heavy financial burden on everyday citizens. While such economic inequality might be legal, Jesus suggests that what is lawful from Caesar’s point of view isn't automatically righteous unto God. In the process of being challenged, Jesus is challenging us to carefully consider the complexity of that nexus where what is political and what is theological intersect, cautioning us not to blur the lines between what man says law is and what God declares as moral.

Law and Morals.

People pay taxes to Caesar’s oppressive empire as a legal mandate, but Jesus instructs us to also give to God the things that are God's as a moral mandate to promote an alternative kingdom. Paying taxes only legitimizes Caesar’s political power to set laws and enforce them, not his moral authority to rule. That moral authority belongs to God.

My brothers and sisters in faith and goodwill, we are in a political moment where the empire wants to maintain law and order as the status quo — where subjugation and oppression are hidden under the guise of legality — while failing to adhere to law and order themselves. But we are also in a theological moment where Jesus warns us that what is law might not be moral. And while we often participate in Caesar's economy — either out of self-preservation or because we feel like we just don't have a choice — God does not deal in Caesar's currency.

As children of God then, under this earthly rule of legal oppression — we can continue to pay the tax to keep in line with the law, but it cannot be divorced from actively resisting what is lawful yet immoral and working to promote the alternative kingdom where the moral authority to rule is God's alone. That's what being salt and light is all about! People rarely change systems from the outside-in. The change comes from within. Our light shines brightest amidst the darkness. Our salt adds flavor to the bitterness. Jesus understands this, so instead of pushing back on the darkness and bitterness wholesale, Jesus commands a both-and strategy: "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."

For communities that have and continue to deal with oppressive and violent administrations under the veil of Law and Order, the choices are never as clear cut as paying taxes or flatly refusing to pay; rather, the way forward is likely somewhere left of center — a fair tax. Nevertheless, taxation without representation is theft, and thieves who have come to steal, kill, and destroy democracy lurk amongst us in plain sight.

The Beatitudes suggest that whatever brings wholeness, transformation, and healing to communities is in-and-of-itself a form of resistance against that which seeks to rob us of our livelihood. So, let us RESIST the empire's attacks; let us RESIST racism and white supremacy; let us RESIST partisanship and divisiveness, and let us strike back until kingdom come and God’s will be done.

Dr. Ulysses Burley III

Dr. Ulysses W. Burley III is the founder of UBtheCURE, LLC – a proprietary consulting company on the intersection of Faith, Health, and Human Rights. Ulysses served as a member of the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches as well as the United States Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) under the Obama Administration. He has been recognized by the National Minority Quality Forum as a top 40 under 40 Minority Health Leader for his work in faith and HIV in communities of color and serves on the NMQF Advisory Board. Ulysses is an internationally recognized speaker and award winning writer on topics including faith, HIV/AIDS policy, LGBTQIA, gender and racial justice, food security, and peace in the Middle East. He is a lay leader at St. Stephen’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chicago, IL.

Facebook | @UlyssesIII
Twitter | @ulyssesburley
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Website | www.ubthecure.com
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Christ | Christmas | Covid

A virtual event providing spiritual leadership and comfort for church leaders (clergy, lay, and volunteer) and a space to grieve, lament, and reclaim the prophetic hope of this season.

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Dr. Raj Nadella 1/14/21 Dr. Raj Nadella 1/14/21

Reflection on Terror in Washington D.C.

The violent attacks on our nation’s Capitol and the mayhem that unfolded are disturbing and shocking on many levels. Still, there is much about those attacks that is eerily familiar, especially the absolute sense of entitlement with which thousands of White insurrectionists stormed the capitol complex and the freedom they enjoyed in doing so.

It appears that the insurrection was driven not just by a sense of blind loyalty to Donald Trump but also by an irrational fear of the changing political landscape in the U.S. that has seen many people of color headed for prominent positions. The insurrection occurred as a Black-Indian woman is about to occupy the nation’s second highest office and the most diverse cabinet in American history is about to be sworn in. It occurred on the day a Black American and Jewish American won historic Senate victories in Georgia. Within this political context, the attack in D.C. was a grotesque display of power by White supremacists aimed at maintaining the status quo at any cost.

Many of the insurrectionists displayed, among other things, American flags and Christian symbols. Perhaps it is significant to note that many of them were also unmasked. The image of unmasked rioters carrying American flags and Christian symbols in support of White Supremacy is a metaphor for the ways the insurrection exposed the unholy alliance between White supremacy and some segments of Christianity. As the attacks on our nation’s Capitol were playing out, The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser tweeted about her teenage son quoting Sinclair Lewis, “When fascism comes to America, it will come cloaked in American flags and bearing crosses." The tweet highlights the ways sections of Christianity have been eagerly jumping into bed with the empire the last few years and enabling it to perpetuate ugly aspects of the empire in pursuit of power. Many self-styled Christian leaders have actively aided White Supremacy by weaponizing religious symbols and contributed to the current crisis.

The eighth century prophet Amos spoke of the divine disgust for people who substitute religious festivals, offerings, and symbols for justice, the quintessential divine attribute. Amos encouraged people to pay more attention to ensuring justice for the marginalized than to religious sacraments. What would Amos say in our context? He would ask Christians to focus more on addressing the idolatry of racism rather than on engaging in seemingly religious rituals. He would ask Christians not to engage in a form of religion that might cause them to be blind or indifferent to structural racism that treats armed White people attempting a coup much more gently than unarmed Black people questioning systemic violence, to paraphrase Jelani Cobb. If visible expressions of religion take precedence over commitment to justice, they run the risk of becoming substitutes for justice or even weaponized in service of injustice.

Few progressive Christians would participate in anything remotely similar to the attacks in D.C. but the prophetic call for the Church is to consistently privilege justice over religious symbols.

It is not enough not to actively contribute to the disease of racism. Any indifference to it or a failure to consistently enervate it invariably makes one complicit in it. My prayer is that faith leaders will have the needed wisdom to realize the seriousness of the Church’s complicity in this disease and sufficient courage to confront it.

Raj Nadella

Raj Nadella is the Samuel A. Cartledge Associate Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. His research and teaching interests include postcolonial biblical interpretation, migration and New Testament perspectives on economic justice and their ethical implications for the Church and society. He is the author of Dialogue Not Dogma: Many Voices in the Gospel of Luke (T&T Clark, 2011) and an area editor for Oxford Bibliographies Online: Biblical Studies. He is the co-author of Postcolonialism and the Bible and co-editor of Christianity and the Law of Migration, both forthcoming in 2021. He has written for publications such as the Huffington Post, Christian Century and Working Preacher.

Church Anew 1/8/21 Church Anew 1/8/21

Chaos in the Capitol: What Will We Preach This Sunday?

Responding to the insurrection at the United States Capitol, Church Anew contacted our network of contributors to ask what they would preach this Sunday. Our prayer is that these words from visionaries, nationally recognized or locally committed, provide witness for your proclamation this Sunday as the nation looks for spiritual leadership and solidarity. May the Spirit ignite your words with fire for justice.

Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible
Methodist Theological School in Ohio

May You Be Brave

In December 2013, I wrote the blessing below and posted it on my social media. I don’t remember the context for this blessing, what made me write it at the time. But as I was reflecting on what I wanted to say to preachers who must stand and deliver this Sunday, the first Sunday after Epiphany, it seems especially appropriate:

May God Strengthen You for Adversity

A blessing for today:

May God strengthen you for adversity
and companion you in joy.
May God give you the courage of your conviction
and the wisdom to know when to speak and act.
May you know peace.
May you be gifted with deep,
true friendship and love.
May every God-breathed thing you put
your hand to prosper and succeed.
May you have laughter to fortify you
against the disappointments.
May you be brave.

On Wednesday, I watched with sadness as the United States Capitol building was overrun by aggrieved citizens. I want to be clear to note that they were citizens. They’ve been called a number of things, including by me: rioters, insurrectionists, seditionists. But they were citizens who believe that the election was “stolen” from them, who believe that the votes of (mostly) black and brown people should be rejected, that there is “proof” that the current president has been wronged. And so, they were there for the revolution and to “take back their country.” For them, those of us who voted against their will are not true Americans. I was not surprised at all. I have found myself weary from all the handwringing and the “this is not who we are” posts from (mostly) white people. I have found myself weary from the “unbelievable” and “shock” from the media and others. Most of that weariness is because no one I know that is an activist/advocate for racial and social justice found it “unbelievable” or “shocking.” It was predictable. I’ve been saying for many years, “we are not safe,” because I have been in conversations with (white) people who have said directly that they can’t wait for a revolution to “take our country back.” It was as American as baseball and apple pie. White grievance and rage are baked into the DNA of this nation. I know what I just wrote is offensive to people whose mythmaking about this country deifies it and demonizes anyone who says such things. Right about now comes the “if you don’t love this country, leave” or “go back where you came from.” It’s all so very predictable.

I turned my television to a station that is consistently sympathetic to the current president and was reminded that there is no Venn diagram between the world I generally inhabit and the world of those who only dwell in that world. And, as I usually pray, I wondered how in the world will we ever know one another since we don’t live in the same universe. And that’s where the blessing I wrote in 2013 comes in. I don’t have anything deep to write in this moment. But I know that those who claim the gospel as our starting point will have to be brave. Bravery requires precision. It requires thinking clearly about what all the issues are. It requires using language carefully. It requires resisting pablum and platitudes. It requires resisting “what about-ism” when calling out wrong. It requires truth-telling, even in the face of rage and handwringing. It calls for wisdom. But it also calls for friendships, love, and laughter. It calls for strength and God-given companionship. And preachers must invoke all of that. So, friends, may you be brave as you prepare to preach in the breach of these difficult days.

Dr. Raj Nadella
Samuel A. Cartledge Associate Professor of New Testament
Columbia Theological Seminary

Reflection on Terror in Washington D.C.

Few progressive Christians would participate in anything remotely similar to the attacks in D.C. but the prophetic call for the Church is to consistently privilege justice over religious symbols.

Dr. Greg Carey
Professor of New Testament
Lancaster Theological Seminary

Preaching When It’s Broken

God bless you, preachers who will address congregations this Sunday and in the Sundays to come. Here in the United States, things are broken, most people know they’re broken, and we all need healing and truth. It’s necessary, but so very difficult, to bring healing and truth together when the truth is painful.

For many of us, this moment feels somehow new; for others, it’s all too familiar. Some communities in our society, particularly black and brown communities, know the brokenness more acutely than those of us who are white. For many of us, the invasion of the Capitol and the response to it by people we know, love, and also admire, brings this brokenness to the foreground.

We learned the things. Don’t make it about you and your emotions. You are pastor to the whole congregation. You’re called to exegete the congregation. We know those things. We also know some congregations will need comfort, while others will need direction. And we know there are times when we must draw the line and speak the truth, come hell or high water. But it’s broken: so now what?

Jeremiah preached when Jerusalem was broken. We just witnessed the desecration of our Capitol; Jeremiah endured the absolute destruction of God’s dwelling place. Commentators remind us that Jeremiah features oracles of judgment alongside laments. Kathleen O’Connor notes how “messages of hope coexist with threats of doom.”* We’re also reminded that Jeremiah physically enacted his message and its consequences, from moldy underwear (ch. 13) to time in the stocks (ch. 20). We might not necessarily preach texts from Jeremiah during this season of brokenness, but our reacquaintance with the prophet may resource our preaching.

I don’t mean to turn Jeremiah into a hero or a role model. The book stands out for its misogynistic language and imagery, aspects of the book that cannot be redeemed. Moreover, it’s rarely helpful to imagine ourselves as biblical prophets. I simply suggest we may relate to the book in ways that lead to wisdom.

In this moment, I commend the voice of lament. Lament allows preachers to take our place alongside our listeners rather than thundering down to them from on high. Just about everyone is hurting right now from Wednesday’s devastation, even when we disagree about what it means. Add on the pandemic and our economic dislocation, and preachers can speak as co-witnesses with their congregations to the pain this moment represents. Voice that pain, preachers. Speak those images. Name those feelings, not the emotions but their bodily manifestations. Name tightness in the gut, hot tears, pillows fluffed over and over again. “My heart is beating wildly,” says the prophet. “I cannot keep silent; for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war” (4:19).

Lament opens some space for truth. During his election campaign, Rev. Raphael Warnock was attacked for his preaching. Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s historical Ebenezer Baptist Church and a newly elected senator, decried the racial and economic injustice endemic to our brokenness. We name such preaching the jeremiad. But like Jeremiah, Warnock pronounced truth from within the location of brokenness, not down at it. We are not all victims in the same way, but preachers can voice that brokenness, can walk around in it, and can identify the need for rectification. We can diagnose the fractures, and having done so, speak the truth about them. We do so only as participants in the brokenness.

* Kathleen M. O’Connor, “Jeremiah,” in Women’s Bible Commentary (3rd ed.; ed. Carol A Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 267.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder
Associate Professor of New Testament
Vice President of Academic Affairs & Academic Dean
Chicago Theological Seminary

More Pandemonium in a Pandemic

When my sons were in elementary school, I constantly told them, “You can’t do what white children do. The consequences for you will be different.” My afternoon pickups were filled with trepidation and angst when I asked them, “How was your day?” I always feared there would be report of “misbehavior” from a white teacher or a detention note for an “infraction.” A small slight from a white boy or girl was an almost criminal act for my then small children.

The acts of insurrection yesterday proved the refrain is still true: “Black people cannot do what white people do. The consequences will be different.” In June 2020, innumerable armed guards phalanxed the Capitol ready to pounce Black Lives Matter protesters. However, this past Wednesday was a stark contrast as white seditionists overpowered police officers, desecrated legislative halls, disrespected federal offices, and demoralized congresspersons and senators alike. With the statue called “Freedom” looking down, extremists took much liberty, looted, and ran amok on Capitol Hill. The images of mayhem and chaos from that white, pristine edifice are quite different from those in Ferguson and Baltimore. Why? Race in America makes the difference. Race in America is the difference.

Before some of us could celebrate historic victories in the Georgia senate races, our attention was diverted to efforts to circumvent and upend democracy. While thousands of Americans were dying, still dying, from COVID-19, a narcissistic, political sickness begged our focus. As the liturgical calendar turned the page to Epiphany, a manifestation of mayhem, madness, and selfish motivation demanded center stage. And yet, this is the messiness of humanity. This is the messiness of the season.

Epiphany is the showing, the appearance of the magi, a group of Persian travelers, who come to pay homage to a baby born in Bethlehem. The Gospel of Matthew in chapter 2 records “fear,” “terror,” and “lies” as colors painting broad contextual strokes of the arrival of Jesus. Herod is anxious. The people under him are grossly apprehensive. Herod prevaricates. The magi sniff him out. Herod kills innocent babies. Jesus is born — born in pandemonium. The Prince of Peace appears, and Persians bow when all of Jerusalem is in a panic.

What is striking about Matthew’s lens is that the magi still bow. Although Herod takes herculean efforts to thwart what is beyond his control, angels still speak. Humanity is no match for divinity. The Creator knows what to do with and in chaos. Creation has chaos in its DNA. The late Toni Morrison’s words ring just as true now: “I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom.”

I am not offering some in the sweet by and by theology. This is not a clarion call for a Kumbaya convening. We are frustrated. Some of us are afraid. We are angry. I am furious. What I told my children years ago does not have to be redacted. What is problematic is that little boys and girls whose entitlement goes unchecked grow up to be men and women who know no boundaries and who are not afraid of the police.

Dr. Ulysses Burley III
Founder, UBtheCURE LLC
Former member, Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches

Law and Order.

Law and Morals.

Rev. Paul Raushenbush
Senior Advisor for Public Affairs and Innovation
Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC)

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.'
—Matthew 7:15-23

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. We have a false prophet in the land who has harkened the susceptible to his Twitter voice, where he, his Senatorial enablers, and Media minions fed them lies, fear and resentment. We have a false prophet in the land who is posing for a photo op - holding the Bible, wrapped in a phony Flag as he blasts those hurting and suffering out of his path. We have a false prophet in the land, declaring himself the keeper of the faith, the protector of faithful, whose craven ministers lap at his feet. Oh, weary people. Oh, wondering populace. We were warned and warned. And now, this false prophet, a president who believed himself a monarch. A ravenous wolf who, when threatened by his electoral loss, told his pack to attack, and they did.

And so many did. So many eagerly made themselves prey to the trump call. Those who break down doors and windows, and parade with Nazi symbols believe themselves to be the righteous ones. Those who wave the confederate flag believe they are saving our country. Those who hang a political flag in place of an American one, believe themselves to be the keepers of our traditions and the hopes for our nation's future. Those whose faces twist with hate, who burn with violence believe themselves to be followers of the Prince of Peace. They do not yet know that Jesus' warning: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of Heaven' — applies to them."

Their deluded minds, their fallen souls is evidence of a terrible failing of the Church and it is our great challenge ahead. Knowing good from bad, right from wrong, truth from lies, figs from thistles — these are the essential lessons of a life lived in the Way of Jesus. We must ask ourselves at every juncture to make a judgement upon which we shall be judged — is this the Way, or have I strayed? If you are not vigilant, if you are not awake, if you follow wolves, you will be led to spiritual slaughter. We are living in an age of disinformation in which the powerful or the clever are able to manipulate the population to make them believe just about anything. How well have we prepared one another for that world? Have risen to this occasion to proclaim a Gospel that pierces through these bubbles of insanity, that plant such terrible trees that lead to such poisonous fruit.

Too many Christians lift up the cross and say "Lord, Lord" even as their theology is based on white nationalism, and their heart is hardened by hate toward immigrants, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Too many Christians cry "Law!" "Order!" as they attack peaceful movements for Black lives, while letting white militias threaten openly and praise good people on both sides. What happened in the Capitol was only the latest offense in a series of terrifying and terrorizing acts that have been given sanctuary and sanction by too many in the church.

It must stop now — in God's name. Now, the wolf in sheep's clothing has been denuded, de-platformed. The emperor has been laid bare, crude and plain for all to see. But that is only half the work. We must find ways to reach out and bring Americans led astray out of a life of falseness, of hate, of hurt into the Way of Truth, of Love- a missional invitation of repentance, reparation and reconciliation. Let the radical, liberation ethic of Jesus show all of us a better way and build together a future based on mutual care, liberty and justice. It will take all of our spiritual power, it will take all of our media savvy, and technology skills, and our shared civic commitment. We must reach out to our enemies, talk to them, listen to them, love them until they come back and become, once again, our neighbors, all part of the beloved community of God.

Dr. Eric Barreto
Associate Professor of New Testament
Princeton Theological Seminary

This Sunday, the lectionary takes us to an illuminating story for these difficult days. A story about wise seekers and a fragile king. The political center, the imperial heartbeat of this story is ever clearer this Sunday.

The magi first come to King Herod and ask, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?”

Let’s consider anew the gravity of this question.

In Herod’s mind, there is not a king of the Jews except him and certainly no child was going to take his place. Even asking such a question is an act of political treason, but Herod is curious. Even more than curious, he is completely insecure, not totally stable, even paranoid. It’s not obvious quite yet in Matthew’s narrative, but Herod was a cruel, oppressive ruler. His cruelty will soon become explicit in Matthew’s account, but for ancient readers Herod’s reputation required no explanation. The simple mention of his name would bring with it images of his cruel rule. If Herod felt his power was threatened, he would lash out violently even against his own family. One historian from that time said of Herod that it was safer to be a pig in Herod’s house than one of his own children. He killed several of his children suspecting them without reason to be plotting against him. When he knew his death was imminent, he ordered that a litany of men be executed so that there would be the sound of violence at his death and thus some grief in the land, even if it weren’t for him. Obviously, Herod’s interest in this baby is not the same as that of the magi. Even on this day of epiphany, threats against the Christ child abound.

In the midst and in the wake of Christmas revelry, we should remember that while the angels proclaimed, “Joy to the world!,” the kings of the earth trembled. When the promise that the world would be turned upside down by a mere child was proclaimed, the powerful only saw a threat to be exterminated.

This is a story we need these days. The birth of the Christ child drew in these distant worshippers. The magi saw in the stars a sign of something hopeful, someone who was about to transform the world. And the magi celebrated. They brought gifts. They rejoiced. Might we dare say that they hoped for something? Might their wisdom entail not so much their relentless chasing of a star but their relentless hope? Hope that the world did not have to be this way.

The magi celebrated.

But Herod quaked.

Herod wondered if his power was so ephemeral that a mere child would challenge him along with the armies and the empire at his back. Herod quaked.

When powerful, narcissistic, fearful people like Herod quake, the rest of us have to worry too. Because in Herod’s fear rests the threat of violence. Herod, it seems to me, was a weak ruler’s idea of what the powerful are like. And followers of an executed Christ should know more than most that the pretentious, narcissistic, vicious exercise of power is utter weakness, total folly, true cowardice, pitiable fragility. The promise of the resurrection is a divine power that heals, loves, and embraces the other. True power does not lash out at any threat. True power does not still the cries of children caught in the crossfire of a king’s insecurities. True power is wise and full of compassion. True power sees the birth of a baby as a possibility not a threat, hope for the future not an anchor or a chain. True power would rather die for the sake of the other than kill in order to preserve what little power we think we have.

That Jesus’ life starts in this way is instructive. Pursued by Herod in his earliest years, Jesus is later caught by the same empire and executed on a cruel cross. Empire thought they had once again defeated the powerless. But Empire could not see the truth. God’s power is not like the purported power of Empire and privilege and supremacy.

In Herod’s cruelty, we may be reminded of the political character of the gospel. From the very first, the gospel threatened the powerful even as the gospel lifted up the lowly, the meek, the powerless. Perhaps after the glitter of Christmas has faded and the revelry of the New Year has abated, we need to be reminded that the light of Christ still shines if we will only open our eyes and step out in faith. Perhaps in the short cold days of January, we need to be reminded what shape true power takes:

Power in a manger.
Power in a humble home visited by magi.
Power as people’s ailments are cast out with a simple word.
Power as words that reshape our imaginations.
Power at tables of abundance and belonging.
Power as life fades on a cross.
Power as friends and followers flee in fear.
Power in the resurrection of the body.
Power in the crumbling of empire’s arrogations.
Power in the flourishing of abundant, liberated life.
Power as we hope against hope.

Dr. Diana Butler Bass
Author, Speaker, and Independent scholar

At the very beginning of the Christian story in Matthew 2:1-12, we are warned that the birth of the peace and justice is intertwined with the reality of imperial violence. As the beloved community comes into the world, evil kings will lie and murder — do anything — to stop the possibility of God’s dream made manifest here and now.

So what do we do?

Be like the magi. And do not give in to Herod.

The best wisdom I have tonight is that the wise men were, indeed, wise. This is the time to pause amid the yelling (and I’ve been doing a lot of yelling on Twitter!) and remember the light of the star. Remember the angelic song of peace. Remember the longing of our hearts for a governance of grace. And remembering, we continue on following the star. It will stop. We can kneel, worship, be overcome with joy. Even through Herod lies, God’s presence does not absent itself. Love is still here.

And then — once we let that truth fill us — we do not go home the way we came. Because there will always be some Herod whose fear leads to violence and death. We will leave this Epiphany by another road.

I don’t know where that other road will take us. But we can’t continue on the road we’ve been traveling. If nothing else, I’m glad we’re on this journey together. There are many who see more clearly today than yesterday, and many who will be searching for the star. Look up. Salvation is at hand.

An excerpt from Dr. Butler Bass’ The Beloved Community and Imperial Treachery. Used with permission.

Rev. Angela Denker
Pastor, Author, and Veteran Journalist

I am heartbroken thinking about the deployment of tear gas and gunfire on Black Lives Matter protesters all over America this summer, including here in my home town of Minneapolis. Meanwhile, we watch armed anarchists and militia members storm the Capitol with very little law enforcement response.

Meanwhile, National Guard troops are finally called in to save America. Ordinary American men and women who signed up to serve their country and maybe get help with college tuition as they serve drill on weekends. They didn't deserve this. None of us did.

None of this is limited to the last four years. For far too long we Americans have valued our lives based on our bank accounts and our social media followers. We have lifted up liars and grifters as role models to emulate.

This year, I am going to try and BE. Focus on the following questions: Who am I? What are my values? How do I love my neighbor as myself? How do I follow the Jesus Ethic? Do I consider what Jesus would do in every critical situation in my life?

My prayer today, as I continue to watch armed protesters punching law enforcement officers on the steps of the Capitol in Washington D.C., is that maybe America can reexamine herself, too — especially our leaders. If I may, especially our leaders who have supported the President for the past four years.

Reexamine ourselves. Who are we? What are our values? How do we love our neighbors as ourselves? How do we follow the Jesus Ethic, for those of us who claim to represent American Christianity? What would Jesus do today in America?

May God bless the United States of America — and may justice roll down like waters.

May you and I be those who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God in 2021.

An excerpt from Rev. Angela Denker’s blog Be: America's Self-Examination In 2021. Used with permission.

Rev. Meta Herrick Carlson
Minneapolis Pastor and Poet
Bethlehem Lutheran Church

A blessing for grieving terrorism

There is sickness
with symptoms as old as humankind,
a rush of power born by
inciting fear in others,
a wave of victory
in causing enemies pain.

There is a push
to solve the mystery,
to isolate the suspect and
explain the evil simply
to a safe distance
from the anomaly.

There is a temptation
to skip the part that feels
near the suffering
that shares the sadness,
that names our shared humanity.

There is a courage
in rejecting the numbing need for data
in favor of finding the helpers,
loving the neighbor,
resisting terror
through random acts of connection.

There is a sickness
with symptoms as old as humankind,
but so is the remedy.

From Rev. Meta Herrick Carlson’s book “Ordinary Blessings: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Everyday Life.” Used with permission.

Naaima Khan 1/7/21 Naaima Khan 1/7/21

Racial Equity as Spiritual Healing

If there’s one thing that the pandemic has taught us, it’s that human connection is absolutely critical for our mental and spiritual health. When face-to-face interactions have not been possible due to public health and safety concerns, virtual methods of connection have become more widely adopted. However, as many of us have found, even virtual connection has its limitations. This is because we are fundamentally physically social beings.

And as social beings, it’s important to pay attention to our patterns of socialization. In her book, White Fragility, author and scholar Dr. Robin DiAngelo comments on how people in the United States are socialized to maintain relatively homogeneous networks. It’s especially uncommon for people who identify as White to be closely connected to many people of color.

Sometimes, what we miss in connection with other humans is not as obvious to us.

But how much more can we learn and how much richer can our life experiences be if our networks are more diverse? If we aspire to be global citizens that are interculturally agile, this raises the question: what is our responsibility for connecting with communities that are racially and ethnically different from us?

America’s history is defined by the original sins of the near genocide of Native American communities and the enslavement of African Americans. If there’s one inflection point that the triple pandemics of COVID-19, racism, and economic inequities have pushed us to, it’s the question of when America will come to its racial reckoning.

And that’s where we often face the social rub.

Race has become, not just a conversation at the forefront of our minds, but also a divisive conversation.

And, in my opinion, that is because we not only have a problem of racial hatred in the form of outright bigotry — we also have a deeper problem of racial denial eating away at the spiritual soul of this nation.

The average American will likely not overtly hate or discriminate against groups of people based on their racial identity. However, our problem is coming to terms with the need to scrutinize and counter the more subtle forms of racism — the problematic narratives we’ve internalized since we were children. For example, seeing the founders of this country as people who perpetrated genocide and enslavement instead of heroizing them to the point of glossing over these realities.

The legacy we’ve established through whitewashed narratives of our country’s past continue to inform how our culture and systems work until today.

Our goal should be to no longer sugar coat realities or talk in abstractions, but to build on the authentic conversations that we’ve begun in the wake of George Floyd’s killing and the subsequent uprisings. The goal is to recognize and confront our own feelings of discomfort and guilt so that we can become more whole.

And this is not easy work.

Talking about race causes visceral reactions within us that include getting defensive or tuning out. But it’s exactly when we begin to notice this discomfort that we need to sit with it. We must lean into exploring why it exists and where there might be opportunities to engage in the conversation in a different way — one that seeks to hold multiple perspectives, including those of your own lived experiences and identities as a person.

A common mistake that I see people who champion racial equity make is internalizing difficult conversations about race as personal condemnation.

And that’s why conversations tend to stop. Yes, we all have work we need to do at an individual level, but it’s also in the context of how we, collectively, participate in larger systems and structures of racism.

We typically understand racism as discrete acts of hate and bigotry, which certainly is part of how racism shows up. But it also entails things that are much more subtle. In her book, White Fragility, Dr. Robin DiAngelo writes:

“[If, instead] I understand racism as a system into which I was socialized, I can receive feedback on my problematic racial patterns as a helpful way to support my learning and growth. One of the greatest fears for a white person is being told that something that we have said or done is racially problematic. Yet, when someone lets us know that we have just done such a thing, rather than respond with gratitude and relief [that we learned not to do it again], we often respond with anger and denial.”

As we enter 2021, I invite us to see this moment as the beginning of an era of our racial reckoning.

It’s an opportunity for us to recognize that White dominance and normativity hurts everyone including White people. It’s an opportunity for us to interrogate the ways that we continue to participate in and reinforce systems that elevate the White identity as the dominant group.

Hundreds of years of apathy and a lack of collectively addressing the legacies of genocide, slavery, and colonization have deepened wounds within Indigenous, Black, and brown bodies until today. But it’s equally important to recognize and discuss how the wounds manifest in White bodies.

You might ask, “how?”

In our faith tradition, Muslims believe that God uses the symbolism of likening all humans to one big human body — and the different communities that make up our human race symbolized by different parts of that body. Seeking collective liberation is about getting to a place where, if one part of our body — if one community — is hurting, we all feel that pain and act to heal it.

We often think about working on racial equity as “head work,” where we look at data, change policies, or work to create more accessible programs. While all of those elements are important, we must start doing the heart work required to make more foundational shifts to how we operate. We must work toward a deeper, spiritual healing that recognizes that in order for our hearts to be healthy and whole, we must all be healthy and whole.

Editor’s Note: The author wrote this blog before the latest killing by the Minneapolis Police Department of Dolal Idd and the events of Jan. 6.

Naaima Khan

Naaima Khan is Owner and Principal of Create Good, a consultancy that helps organizations more effectively pursue anti-racism work with a special focus on using keen insights from data and evaluation. Prior to starting her own business, she worked in philanthropy for over eight years, advocating for it to be a more accessible space for IBPOC professionals and communities. Naaima has spoken about race equity and inclusive design at Ignite Minneapolis, Black Ignite, TEDx Mahtomedi and the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits annual conference. You can follow Naaima on LinkedIn, or on Twitter @naaimak.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Meta Herrick Carlson 1/6/21 Meta Herrick Carlson 1/6/21

Coming Back Together: Church and Consent Culture in 2021

Sometimes I catch myself thinking about the last handshakes and hugs I shared with parishioners before Covid-19 and the Holy Spirit sent us out of our buildings. I can recall the veins in a matriarch's hand, the exuberant high five of a child, the desperate embrace of a widower. I miss the energy of being proximate in crowds, but 2020 has me wondering about those who have not missed the pressure to share contact and personal space.

In my new book Speak It Plain: Words for Worship and Life Together (Fortress Press, 2020), I offer some tips for creating a trauma-informed worship space. What if our faith communities spend this season apart learning to talk about trauma and developing new hospitality practices to support folks on the other side of Covid-19? Here are a few ideas.

What is Consent Culture?

This means creating patterns of behavior that ask for permission and respect each unique response. When we build habits that check-in before and after interactions, we're normalizing options for gathering, honoring the personhood of others, and recognizing whole people. Developing these practices can feel awkward for the majority or dominant culture, which is now engaging the social and emotional work that was previously left to those whose needs had not been noticed or prioritized. But stick with it! With patience and practice, the shared responsibility for safety and welcome can become a long-term trait and active characteristic of the whole system.

Normalize Options

Every community develops patterned behavior and expects newcomers to find their way into the mainstream. But safe and healthy communities regularly examine what's been normalized. If it is essential, we learn to speak to why we've made it central to the shared practice. If it is not, we work to provide a variety of options to decenter and dissolve that norm into one option rather than a requirement.

Think about the rituals in your faith community. Can you name a practice that requires apology, explanation, or avoidance from those who do not conform? Here are a few examples:

The greeters extend their hands to shake mine, and I'd prefer not to. So, a friendly greeting turns into me awkwardly apologizing for waving instead.

My kid doesn't go up front for the children's time. Other adults want to hear that he's just shy, and he will eventually join the others. But he's just not interested and that's okay.

There's social pressure to eat sweets and drink coffee at church gatherings. I have dietary restrictions and my partner doesn't like coffee, and it becomes a topic of conversation every time we refuse. I don't want that to be our only identifier.

I appreciate verbal and written announcements that expect someone will be brand new every week. It sets me at ease on behalf of guests to hear that my community does not require conformity, but invites participation in ways that are comfortable and meaningful for them. The review helps me remember why we do what we do.

By regularly examining our patterned behavior, we will build brave spaces where belonging does not require conformity and people can safely be their whole selves.

Honor Personal Space

While Covid-19 has trained our bodies to prefer six feet of personal space, everyone defines personal space differently. It's common for folks who don't need much space themselves to assume the same about others. He's a hugger. She's a close talker. They pull you in while shaking hands. These intentions are usually friendly, which can make it difficult for those impacted to say something or set boundaries. The church has an opportunity - and a responsibility - to create space that honors the felt safety and boundaries of every person.

The lectionary is filled with stories about Jesus noticing and responding to the needs of others, acting with attention to the impact, and modeling bodily autonomy. Is there a text coming up that invites people to think about what personal space will be like when we're back together in one place?

What if communion servers are trained to ask children before touching their heads to bless them, or if you crowdsource kids about what mutual interactions they prefer when they come to church?

By consistently honoring the personal space of others, we show our young people how to honor bodies and voices in God's name.

Recognize Whole People

The collective grief and trauma of Covid has stretched more than 10 months, which means we are learning to engage small talk with more vulnerability and paradox. I hope the messy and complicated answers to, "How are you, really?" continue when we're back together at church.

I asked my kids for a few ideas:

If you don't actually want to know how someone is, or you don't have time to listen to the answer, don't ask, "How are you?" Just say, "I'm glad to see you," or, "I'm really glad you're here." Or just, "Hi."

Grown ups try to talk to me by talking about what I'm wearing and what I look like, but they can ask questions about what I'm reading, playing, learning, wondering, and feeling, too.

I have a few more:

What if our hospitality volunteers have local resources saved in their cell phones - and are trained to help a person call a mental health, domestic violence, or housing service instead of dialing 911?

What if we learn to ask different questions of newcomers, so we can learn what "getting involved" means to them? What if we expect to be challenged and changed by their investment rather than shored up for our existing, internal priorities?

What if we come back to our space with fresh eyes and ask, "What story is this space telling?" Invite neighbors and ask your newest members. Consider artwork, accessibility, and historic precedent. So many of our congregations steward spaces that tell stories about the ghosts of pastors past, theology colonized, or that the community has already peaked and is finished becoming.

It will be powerful and emotional to be back in one place. Before we do, let's consider the trauma that will surely come with us and prepare spaces to help all people to find welcome, safety, and wholeness.

Meta Herrick Carlson

Meta Herrick Carlson (she/her/hers) is a pastor and writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She serves a two campus congregation all learning how to let go and lean in for the sake of a shared future. At this time, Meta is safe at home with three children who cannot ration snacks. Meta’s first book *Ordinary Blessings: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Everyday Life* proves a worthy gift in these uncertain times. Her second book *Speak It Plain: Words for Worship and Life Together* with more ordinary blessings and resources for church nerds and liturgical communities was released in December 2020.
Website | Instagram

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Ulysses Burley III 12/29/20 Ulysses Burley III 12/29/20

What Kind of Neighbor Are You?

I was raised in a black upper-middle class neighborhood on the Southeast side of Houston, Texas. At the time my mother was one of the top black residential realtors in the city. She was an expert in neighborhoods, and many of the houses in my neighborhood were either sold by her or under contract with Bookman-Burley Realties.

MacGregor Terrace was my neighborhood — three-story homes on two acres of land with circular driveways, swimming pools, and fireplaces with brick chimneys. To our right was a couple who were both college professors at Texas Southern University. To our left was a family who owned one of the few black pharmacies in the city. Behind us were more homes owned by doctors, judges, restauranteurs, entrepreneurs, architects, school principals, city councilmen, an Olympic gold medalist named Carl Lewis, and a future multi-platinum, Grammy award-winning recording artist named Beyonce.

These were my neighbors growing up — black people experiencing some level of middle-class comfort despite a legacy of denial by historical racism and segregation in housing that prevented us from accessing the American Dream. For centuries, Blacks were the property, and for decades Blacks were denied the right to own it. MacGregor Terrace is where affluent Blacks in Houston found peace and prosperity in property ownership, even after segregation was no longer the law of the land as whites simply refused to sale to Blacks in certain neighborhoods well into the 1990s.

This is the legacy of my childhood community. Back then black people didn’t really have the freedom to choose our neighborhoods or our neighbors. Today, we can pretty much move where we can afford — and those who can afford more often leverage that to choose what are classified as safe, family-focused residential communities inhabited by homeowners. Despite this, we still can’t choose our neighbors.

No one can. And the best neighborhoods don’t always translate into the best neighbors.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, a lawyer poses a question to Jesus: “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus had this funny way of never answering questions directly — always answering a question with another question. He reminds me of many of my professors who used to challenge us to not focus so much on having the right answer, but more so on making sure we were asking the right question. Because the right answer for the wrong question is still the wrong answer.

From this parable the lawyer determined that the Good Samaritan was the most neighborly to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers, but that still didn’t answer his initial question of “who is my neighbor?” And that’s because I believe it’s the wrong question. Instead, the question the lawyer should have pondered, and the question we should all ask ourselves in the year of our Lord 2020 is: “What Kind of Neighbor am I?” Because it’s the only question we can answer for ourselves.

America is our neighborhood. The wealthiest country in world, with great diversity of thought and culture. A democracy where “we the people” have equity in our future as a country. It’s a neighborhood that boasts the mightiest military on earth, guaranteeing our safety and security. Our public health infrastructure is the best and our resources rank us the country most prepared for a pandemic. Opportunity and prosperity abound. U.S. citizens are proud and immigrants flock to our borders hoping to share in a piece of the American dream.

And yet, the U.S. has the highest rate of poverty among developed countries. People are vilified for their diverging sociopolitical views in the public square daily. We’re the only democratic Republic on the planet that intentionally makes participating in democracy difficult. In our neighborhood there are more guns than there are people and sometimes those sworn to protect and serve us pose the greatest threat. America has the deadliest COVID-19 pandemic in the world, and it’s made worse by our lack of leadership and absence of accountability to our neighbors. And to think: those looking to relocate here risk being locked in a cage and separated from their families.

If the events of this year have taught us anything, it’s that living in the “best” neighborhood doesn’t guarantee that we’ll live amongst the best neighbors. Whether it’s doing something as simple as wearing a mask, or overwhelmingly voting in favor of science, or equality and human rights, or common decency after these values escaped us for four years — we have failed each other as neighbors, especially those who consistently find themselves in ditches on the side of the road.

Our neighborhood is such that the neighbors we’d most expect to aid us in our deepest moments of distress, may in fact pass us by. Even worse, it may be people in our own families, or people who profess a shared faith that at the very least asks us to love our neighbors.

Rev. Dr. Stephen Ray, President of Chicago Theological Seminary, explains that, “Evil requires religious people for atrocity to become mundane. It requires people whose habits of life and faith subordinate the material well-being of others to some higher ‘good.’ This is one reason I try hard to never be religious. I fear too greatly that I will come to believe God requires something of me greater than the love and care of my neighbor; particularly, when they are the least among us.”

So who is my neighbor? 2020 has proven this to be the wrong question.

A better question that we should all be asking going into 2021 is, “What kind of neighbor am I?” The good news of the parable of the Good Samaritan is that while some people may choose to knock us down, and others choose to step over us, there’s always someone good and noble willing to lift us up, and it might be the least likely suspect. My prayer is that we as people of faith and goodwill are not so religious that we believe God requires something greater of us than the love, care, and uplift of our neighbors, regardless of who they might be.

Dr. Ulysses Burley III

Dr. Ulysses W. Burley III is the founder of UBtheCURE, LLC – a proprietary consulting company on the intersection of Faith, Health, and Human Rights. Ulysses served as a member of the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches as well as the United States Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) under the Obama Administration. He has been recognized by the National Minority Quality Forum as a top 40 under 40 Minority Health Leader for his work in faith and HIV in communities of color and serves on the NMQF Advisory Board. Ulysses is an internationally recognized speaker and award winning writer on topics including faith, HIV/AIDS policy, LGBTQIA, gender and racial justice, food security, and peace in the Middle East. He is a lay leader at St. Stephen’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chicago, IL.

Facebook | @UlyssesIII
Twitter | @ulyssesburley
Instagram | @ubthecure
Website | www.ubthecure.com
YouTube | Ulysses Burley

With seven-minute talks from faith leaders, activists, artists, and more, we will memorialize the way this moment has shaped us and will continue to influence us far into the future.

Angela Denker 12/17/20 Angela Denker 12/17/20

Renouncing State Violence

Content Warning: This blog contains reference to violence, sexual assault, and abuse.

The stories of their crimes make for harrowing reading.

Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row in the U.S., strangled a pregnant woman and brutally murdered her unborn baby.

Brandon Bernard, executed on Dec. 10, was involved in the murder of two youth ministers.

Alfred Bourgeois, executed a day after Bernard, was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter after subjecting her to physical and sexual abuse.

Ten Americans have been executed by the federal government in 2020, a year of unspeakable American death. They are the first Americans to be executed by the federal government in 17 years.

The crimes for which they were sentenced to death are unspeakably horrible. Murder, rape, white supremacy, death of children, sexual assault, dismemberment.

For none of these convicted criminals did the horror begin with their crimes. Uniformly, they too are victims of traumatic childhood experiences, of unspeakable cruelty, of poverty, of hatred, of drug addiction. Violence begets violence. Once we knew this.

Only a federal government set upon cruel and unusual punishment, equipped only to rule under a reign of terror and hatred, would inflict upon our nation government-sponsored homicidal violence in a year of mass American death, when more than 300,000 Americans have died of COVID-19.

We stand alone among nations atop of towering heap of discarded corpses, deflated lungs unable to breathe, dead healthcare workers with discarded PPE dangling around their necks. Our government sees the grief and destruction and collective despair and opts only to kill more and more.

LAW AND ORDER!

A return to normalcy and predictability is understandably desirable on the part of everyday Americans. But those in power twisted that desire for peace and turned it into war, knowing that chaos and fear would only tighten their grasp on undiluted violent might. They suggested that it was kill or be killed, that only more death would feed the insatiable beast of a nation propped up by consumerism and celebrity more than shared commitment and sacrifice and democratic ideals.

The crimes of the ones our government killed are horrific, and so are their deaths.

They’re strapped down, unable to move. They’re injected against their will with a powerful sedative otherwise used in euthanasia for animals, or, in lower doses, for sedation. Medical experts can’t be sure if the high doses of the drug used for executions cause pain or suffering before death. Drug companies in America are skittish about providing drugs used in executions. States have had a tough time obtaining pentobarbital for purposes of execution.

After a 17-year break from the business of death, the federal government authorized pentobarbital for lethal injection under Attorney General William Barr in 2020. Barr chose to retire after overseeing the federal government’s return to death. His work was completed, but it carried with it a shroud of shame and secretive dealings. The Department of Justice would not comment on where it would obtain the drug it used to kill 10 Americans, according to TIME magazine.

Death is shameful business.

Killing is expressly condemned in the Bible. And yet research has shown that a combination of being white and being a biblical literalist is the strongest predictor of Americans who would rather punish the innocent than let the guilty go free, according to research by Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead, in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

The year 2020 has shown that white American Christians are unduly predisposed to inflict harsh punishment on others, and worry little about unjust punishment, whether that’s in treatment of Black Americans by law enforcement, or the disparate effect of Covid on Americans of color and Americans living in poverty.

This blood-thirst betrays how far we’ve strayed from Jesus, whose birth on Christmas again we desperately await next week. Yet in our churches’ preparations for Christmas, with our outsized light displays and garish Christmas trees laden with ornaments purchased online, we would do well too to prepare for Christmas by returning to the words of our Savior, particularly when it comes to our understanding of our federal government’s recent return to the business of death and execution.

You’ve heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

These are the words of Jesus himself, from his Sermon on the Mount. American proponents of the death penalty, among them purported Christian leaders, suggest that death is the only righteous and worthwhile deterrence.

But I suspect I am not the only parent of a willful child reading this article. And no matter how I scream until my lungs wear out and insist upon timeouts and lost privileges and early bedtimes and harsher and harsher punishment, I know my words are not truly heard until we nestle together, heads bent quietly, and in the trustworthiness of love and mercy, we hear what one another have to say.

Two thousand years ago, God had every violent punishment available at God’s disposal, and God still does. But in God’s infinite wisdom, God knew that the greatest deterrent of unremitting and horrific violence and sin was not violence and sin itself. God had tried that.

And so on Christmas more than 2,000 years ago, God chose to respond to sin, evil, and death with forgiveness, love, and mercy. Would that American Christians advocate for the same of our all-powerful nation and those who would seek to lead it.

Christ | Christmas | Covid

A virtual event providing spiritual leadership and comfort for church leaders (clergy, lay, and volunteer) and a space to grieve, lament, and reclaim the prophetic hope of this season.

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Laura Jean Truman 12/2/20 Laura Jean Truman 12/2/20

Advent: When Waiting Is the Work

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Psalm 130:5-6

I’ve been trying to develop my meditation practice this year. The science is clear that meditation improves mood, decreases stress, increases attention span, even increases creativity. Contemplative practices have been a staple of Christian spirituality for thousands of years, as a way to encounter God and our deep self. There are a hundred good reasons to learn to meditate.

And yet, predictably, practicing meditation has not been going well. It is just too still for me.

Sitting still makes me uncomfortable. I’d rather be doing something. When I’m sitting still, I notice everything out of place — my ankle pushed against the wood floor, the too-dry air sucking into my nose, the so-loud music from my neighbor’s apartment. My mind whirls. When I stop moving, all I can think of is what needs to be done.

This is a hard inner voice to resist, because it seems so reasonable. There is always just so much to be done. Injustice is everywhere and the work is never-ending. When we look at the suffering of the world, being still feels like a sin. How can we justify stopping, resting, breathing, waiting?

Into this anxiety and restless busyness, the liturgical year invites us into the holy waiting of Advent.

Into a culture that prioritizes productivity over presence, Advent invites us to believe that we have value even when we are still. Into a culture that tells us if we don’t do it, it won’t get done, Advent asks us to stop working for a season. God is going to do a new thing, and all we have to do is wait.

There is a time for everything, Ecclesiastes reminds us, and the liturgical year leads us through this sacred time that runs alongside secular time — through a time to feast, a time to fast, a time to repent, a time to be forgiven. Yes, there is time to work alongside God bringing in the redemption of the world. And there is also a time to stop working, to sit and be still. It’s tempting to say that the “sitting still” is just a preparation for the work, but it would make just as much sense to say that the work is preparation for sitting still. Neither the steady work of Ordinary Time or the patient waiting of Advent is more important.

During Advent, the waiting is the work.

The work that happens in stillness is echoed by the seasonal shift from fall to winter. When the earth rests in the winter, it’s not non-productive. In death, the earth is waiting for resurrection. In stillness, the earth is replenishing. In waiting, the earth works.

It is an act of humility and trust to stop moving and fixing and tending and meddling. In Advent, we acknowledge that there are forces at work beyond our own heady dreams of fixing the world. We admit that even when we stop, God still works. We put down our tools and put down our pride, and wait for the morning that God always brings in.

***

As we wrestle with our anxiety and impatience and the difficulties of learning to be still, it’s important to be gentle with ourselves. Waiting is hard because our culture has worked tirelessly to disciple us into the myth that life’s meaning is tied to our productivity. The world has taught us to be unsatisfied and to always strive for more – to be more, have more, get more, do more, fix more. Unlearning that is hard work, and it takes practice.

No one has taught us that the work goes on, even when we are still. No one has ever taught us that God can break into the world even when we have stopped working.

It's hard work to train ourselves to sit still and wait for the sunrise, instead of bustling around trying to make the sun do its thing. But practicing stillness is so important because it teaches us to decenter ourselves in the story of redemption. We remember how small we are. We remember that we do not run the world. We don’t control as much as we wish. The sun will rise in the morning whether we bustle or not.

And practicing stillness is so important because in this pandemic winter of 2020, everyone’s most important vocation is to be still and wait.

Whether we are essential workers, working from home, unemployed, corralling our kids’ education and mental health, or some combination of these – we are all being called to wait this winter. We are being asked to wait to hug the people we love. We are waiting to write in coffee shops, waiting to eat at our favorite tavern, waiting to fly to see the ocean we love, waiting to run races and go to book signings. We are waiting to be able to work safely outside of the home. We are waiting with aching hearts to visit our family. We are waiting with aching souls to worship together in our sacred spaces.

It’s very hard to feel like it’s productive work to stay inside drinking tea, trying not to let seasonal depression clog up our souls. Does this stillness matter? Can we survive it? In the stillness, does God still work?

But the stillness is exactly what will save our neighbors’ lives. This winter, the waiting is the work. This winter, the most important way that we can love our neighbor is to practice stillness.

This winter, we practice Advent as an act of love and an act of hope – hope that this too shall pass.

Advent teaches us how to wait and be still, because in the rhythms of the church year, just like in the rhythms of the seasons and the rhythms of night and day – the darkness and cold is not forever. Winter always moves to spring. Night always shifts to day. The loneliness of Advent always gives way to the God with us, Immanuel, of Christmas.

In this dark night where we cannot force the sun up into the sky, where we cannot wish the night to end faster, where we have no control and no power and only this aching loneliness and fear and anger that makes it so hard to sit still – the Psalmist reminds us that the night will pass. “I wait for the Lord,” the anonymous poet sings, “more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” Like the watchman, there is nothing we can do to speed up time. And like the watchman, we know that no matter how long the night feels, there is always morning on the other side.

Advent helps us practice stillness. Advent teaches us to trust that the sun is always going to rise, that the night never goes on forever, that into dark long periods of history - God comes.

Every time.

Laura Jean Truman

Laura Jean is a queer writer, preacher, and former chaplain living in Atlanta, GA. Originally from New England, she has a BA in Philosophy from the University of New Hampshire and an MDiv from Emory University: Candler School of Theology, with emphases in monasticism and mysticism. She supports her itinerant chaplaining and writing by slinging drinks at a historic tavern in downtown Atlanta."

Facebook | facebook.com/laurajeantrumanwriter

Instagram | @laurajeantruman

Twitter | @Laurajeantruman

Website | laurajeantruman.com

Photo by Eric Sun

Christ | Christmas | Covid

A virtual event providing spiritual leadership and comfort for church leaders (clergy, lay, and volunteer) and a space to grieve, lament, and reclaim the prophetic hope of this season.

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Ulysses Burley III 12/1/20 Ulysses Burley III 12/1/20

Advent and World AIDS Day 2020

Founded in 1988, World AIDS Day was the first public health awareness day recognized globally. Observed on December 1st of every year, World AIDS Day is when organizations and individuals around the world endeavor to increase HIV/AIDS awareness, and rally to eradicate HIV related stigma to move closer toward ending the HIV epidemic. World AIDS Day offers a global platform to recognize the role of networks of people living with or affected by HIV, peer educators, counselors, community health workers, door-to-door service providers, and faith-based organizations, at a time when COVID-19 demands an urgent response of unlimited resources, while funding cuts and visibility for civil society are jeopardizing the sustainability of services and advocacy efforts.

The 2020 international theme for World AIDS Day is “Global solidarity, shared responsibility” to highlight the necessity of oneness, togetherness, and connectedness in the HIV response at the international, national, and local levels. The theme for the 2020 United States observance is “Ending the HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Resilience and Impact” - an effort to unite the 2020 international theme of “Resilience” set by the International AIDS Society (IAS), with the federal “Ending the HIV Epidemic” plan introduced in 2019.

More specifically, "Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America," is a ten-year, $291 million investment beginning in fiscal year 2020. The plan leverages the powerful data and tools now available to reduce new HIV transmissions in 57 geographic focus areas where more than 50 percent of new HIV diagnoses occur. With an ambitious but achievable goal to decrease new transmissions by 75 percent in five years and by 90 percent in 10, the U.S. HIV epidemic would be reduced to less than 3,000 new diagnoses per year by 2030.

“Resilience” refers to resilience in science, resilience in policy, resilience in financing, resilient communities, and resilient individuals in what has been our relentlessness to stay the course of ending HIV as public health crisis despite being in the midst of a competing public health crisis created by COVID-19. As such, local and international interfaith communities have not only called for resilience, but also for renewal of a movement so abruptly interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Christians in particular, World AIDS Day presents a unique opportunity to theologize resilience and renewal in the context of HIV and AIDS given that December 1 falls within the first week of Advent. The word ‘advent’ is a Latin derivative of adventus meaning “coming.” For Christians it’s a time of expectant waiting for the coming of new life in the birth of Jesus Christ. Yet it’s a season that has the potential to transcend faith and meet people living with HIV where they are at this time in the epidemic’s 39 year history. At the height of the scourge in the late 80s and early 90s, the church was often the final resting place for people who had died from HIV related illness; a place to dignify the dead where they were not always dignified in life.

In a 1994 New York Times article titled, “Ritualizing Grief, Love and Politics; AIDS Memorial Services Evolve Into a Distinctive Gay Rite,” Tom Viola of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS was quoted saying to a priest, "I'm tired of being welcome in the Catholic Church dead. Until they welcome us live, it would be ridiculous for them to have the last word at memorial services." HIV was a death sentence back then, and the church had gotten good at welcoming people dying with HIV. For many Sundays since, churches have observed World AIDS Day by re-memorializing the fallen through prayers and litanies of remembrance.

But what about the living?

HIV is no longer a death sentence. It no longer has the last word. People living with and at risk for HIV are in a season of Advent - experiencing new life in the birth of innovative treatment and prevention modalities. The advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has birthed the Undetectable Equals Untransmittable (U=U) movement, where a person being treated for HIV can achieve a viral load so low that HIV is undetectable in their bodies, thereby ensuring they cannot transmit HIV to someone else. Similarly, the advent of Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) has ushered in an era of HIV prevention for people at high risk for HIV transmission, with just a once daily single-pill regimen of HAART.

This renaissance has gifted us the first generation of people living with HIV over the age of 50, and we’ve never been closer than we are right now to achieving the first generation without HIV/AIDS. Greater global solidarity and shared responsibility is urgently required to get there, ending the epidemic once and for all.

The strong advocacy role played by communities is needed more than ever to ensure that HIV remains on the political agenda especially in the era of COVID-19, and that decision-makers and implementers are held accountable. Even more than that, the faith community is needed to lead the charge in humanizing the response to ensure that we treat people and not just disease.

On this World AIDS Day and in this season of Advent, churches are called into expectant waiting not for the coming of death – or even the remembrance of it – but for the coming of new life to be enjoyed by the fellowship of people of faith and goodwill who include people who have not only survived HIV, but who are thriving. Churches are encouraged to redefine theological healing as not just the complete absence of disease, but the presence of life through treatment and prevention. And finally, churches are morally mandated to love our neighbors as God loved us - eradicating stigma, embodying love, and ending the epidemic – one day, each year, until we find a cure.

What a tremendous opportunity before us to give people living with HIV their roses while they’re alive and well!

Dr. Ulysses Burley III

Dr. Ulysses W. Burley III is the founder of UBtheCURE, LLC – a proprietary consulting company on the intersection of Faith, Health, and Human Rights. Ulysses served as a member of the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches as well as the United States Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) under the Obama Administration. He has been recognized by the National Minority Quality Forum as a top 40 under 40 Minority Health Leader for his work in faith and HIV in communities of color and serves on the NMQF Advisory Board. Ulysses is an internationally recognized speaker and award winning writer on topics including faith, HIV/AIDS policy, LGBTQIA, gender and racial justice, food security, and peace in the Middle East. He is a lay leader at St. Stephen’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chicago, IL.

Facebook | @UlyssesIII

Twitter | @ulyssesburley

Instagram | @ubthecure

Website | www.ubthecure.com

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Christ | Christmas | Covid

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Angela Denker 11/23/20 Angela Denker 11/23/20

The End of Dialogue?

You should know that I begin this article from a frustrated, and maybe even angry place. That’s not a comfortable place for me to be. I much prefer hope to despair, compromise to acrimony, and love to hate. I’m not there right now. God usually has to lead me through the truth before we can get to the hope. Cross before resurrection, something like that.

About four years ago, after Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States over Hillary Clinton, I reached out to my conservative family and friends who had supported him. I am someone who rarely shares partisan opinions and had worked for a Republican congressman in the past, but I had shared publicly that I was voting for Hillary partially because she was the first female candidate for president from a major American political party. I knew how it felt to be a woman in male-dominated professions, as a current pastor and former sportswriter.

In my message to my family and friends after the election, I said that as Trump had proven victorious, I wanted to acknowledge that perhaps I’d missed something that they’d seen.

I wanted to listen and to understand, to have the opportunity to move into the next four years together.

I did more than just send that message. I ended up spending a whole year traveling the country and interviewing Christians in red states and counties about the 2016 election, resulting in my first book, Red State Christians.

One reviewer said I’d displayed “intrepid forays of empathy,” and I liked that. I liked the idea that ordinary Americans could listen to each other and gain insight; that we could burst out of partisan stereotypes to share our truths and learn from the truth together. I saw this happen in several people and places where I went: from Florida to Texas to Appalachia.

And so I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years talking about the hope I see in America, even in the midst of a devastating pandemic and a much-needed and overdue reckoning with racism and white supremacy, particularly in the church.

The truth is that humanity gives me hope. Most of the time.

A couple of weeks ago, after Election Day 2020, I re-read that conciliatory message I’d sent to my family and friends after the 2016 election. I waited to see more messages like it after the 2020 election, particularly from Trump supporters.

I am still waiting.

And I keep hearing questions from pastors and teachers and grandparents and grandchildren and parents and college students and ordinary Americans all over this country. They’re asking me how we can move forward together again after 2020: how I can help them facilitate healing conversations that enable “both sides” to be heard.

Ecclesiastes tells us that for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. There is a time for dialogue. And there is a time for hard truths.

Dialogue, hope, and reconciliation cannot be a one-way road.

We have to meet each other in the middle. Far from a desire to listen and grow and learn from 2020, as we also had an impetus to do in 2016, instead the overarching message from President Trump is a blind refusal to consider that those who disagree with him have a legitimate right to even be heard, much less listened to and understood. Regardless of their efficacy, Trump’s attempts to undermine America’s electoral and democratic process are wantonly destructive of our nation itself, driving ordinary Americans to cynicism, despair, and hatred.

What are Christians to do?

At my Southern Baptist Bible camp in rural northern Minnesota, we sang a song:

He has shown thee
Oh Man
What is good and what the Lord requires of thee
But to do justice
And to love mercy
And to walk humbly with thy God

So we are called, unremittingly, to mission, to action, to love, to forgiveness, to justice, to reconciliation with our neighbor.

Jesus has some advice as well. These are the words he sent his disciples out into the mission field with, words I often repeat to Americans seeking dialogue, community, and hope:

As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food. Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. (Matthew 10:7-14)

“If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.”

In the days, weeks, and months ahead, American solidarity is needed to defeat the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. American solidarity, especially among white Christians, is needed to confront and repent and repair the devastating effects of racism and white supremacy in our churches. None can do this work alone. We need each other, like urban Americans need food from farmers; and rural Americans need broadband connections and engineering from urban tech workers. We need desperately to talk, listen, understand, and forgive one another.

And we are faced with some tough choices. I still believe that my utmost task is to see the God-given humanity in every single person. That every single person has a sacred story to share, and that their story and their world matters. I desperately believe in the power of listening and sharing and knowing each other deeply, so that we can love each other as God has first loved us.

But there will be times when dialogue isn’t working, when the truth crowds out empathetic understanding, and when failing to speak painful truths is more enabling than kind.

There will be times when we all are called to shake the dust from our feet: to refuse to stand silently by when ugly and hate-filled venom tainted by lies is spewed into the American atmosphere, threatening our country’s long tradition of bipartisan democracy and at least the idealistic hope that every single person has inherent value, no matter their political beliefs.

I titled this article with a question I’ve been wondering about. Is this the end of dialogue?

I will never say that. I will never lose hope in ordinary people’s ability to listen to each other and come together to work for the greater good.

But for me, I will no longer enter into unbalanced dialogue, meaning that dialogue without a shared commitment to understand each other is unproductive and harmful to the truth.

Jesus guides us in this way. We are called to go to one another, in this Covid era perhaps via Zoom or on the phone, and we are called to share God’s love and God’s word. We are called to radical mutuality. And we are called to the truth. Without a shared commitment to hearing the truth, we are called to shake the dust from our feet and walk away.

Christ | Christmas | Covid

A virtual event providing spiritual leadership and comfort for church leaders (clergy, lay, and volunteer) and a space to grieve, lament, and reclaim the prophetic hope of this season.

On-Demand Access

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

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Christ | Christmas | Covid

I wanted to listen and to understand, to have the opportunity to move into the next four years together.

The truth is that humanity gives me hope. Most of the time.

Dialogue, hope, and reconciliation cannot be a one-way road.

“If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.”

I titled this article with a question I’ve been wondering about. Is this the end of dialogue?

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Twitter | @angela_denker
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