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Diana Butler Bass 4/21/22 Diana Butler Bass 4/21/22

The Holy Thursday Revolution

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.

Before the pandemic, I was often asked to preach on the second Sunday after Easter. The traditional verses for that day are always the same in liturgical churches — John 20:19-31 — the story of Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance, including the popular account known as “Doubting Thomas.”

One year, as I struggled to come up with a sermon on that perennial text, my attention drifted away from Thomas and back toward the first sentence of the story:

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."

“The house where the disciples had met” leaped from the page. What house? Of course! The house where, just a few days before they’d had the Passover meal. The house where Jesus had washed their feet and called them his friends. Where they had shared bread and wine — the house of the “upper room.” In the wake of Jesus’ execution and the strange reports from Mary Magdalene of Jesus in the garden, the frightened disciples had gone back to the upper room. Perhaps to grieve, perhaps to remember, perhaps to await what they thought would be their own arrest. But they had gone back to the room with the table, their last gathering place.

Thus, on the night of the resurrection, Jesus showed up there. With his friends. At the scene of the Last Supper. On Easter, Jesus goes from the tomb back to the table.

If you are writing a play about this, the scenes would be table, trial (with its various locations), cross, tomb (burial), tomb (resurrection), and table. The table is the first setting, and it is the final setting of the story. Indeed, when the disciples want to meet Jesus again the next week, they return again to the upper room to meet him at the table.

They never return to the cross. Jesus never takes them back to the site of the execution. He never gathers his followers at Calvary, never points to the blood-stained hill, and never instructs them to meets him there. He never valorizes the events of Friday. He never mentions them. Yes, wounds remain, but how he got them isn’t mentioned. Instead, almost all the post-resurrection appearances — which are joyful and celebratory and conversational — take place at the upper room table or at other tables and meals.

Table - trial - cross - tomb/tomb - table.

What if the table is the point?

Every Holy Week, Christians move toward Good Friday as the most somber — and most significant — day of the year. Depending on your tradition, your may sit in silence, reverence a cross, listen to a sermon, recite the Seven Last Words, fast in quiet prayer. You may weep, sing mournful hymns, feel the weight of injustice. It is sobering business, keeping watch with the execution of an innocent man. For centuries, Christians have been told that everything changed that day, the cross was the bridge between the sinful world and the world of salvation. The cross is all that matters.

Somber, yes. The most somber day. Of course. But what if it isn’t the most significant? What if the most significant day was the day before — the day of foot washing and the supper, the day of conviviality and friendship, the day of Passover and God’s liberation? What if we’ve gotten the week’s emphasis wrong?

Christians mostly think of Maundy Thursday as the run-up to the real show on Friday. And, because the church has placed such emphasis on Friday, we interpret Thursday through the events of the cross. Thus, when Jesus shares bread and wine with his friends, it becomes a prefiguring of his broken body and the shedding of his blood for the forgiveness of sins. We return to the cross all the time. We see Thursday through Friday. From that angle, it becomes morbid. A doomed man’s final meal while the execution clock ticks.

But his friends didn’t experience it that way. They weren’t thinking about a cross or a blood sacrifice. They saw Friday through Thursday. They were celebrating Passover. They were in Jerusalem with friends and family (not just twelve guys at a long table — sorry Leonardo) at a big, busy, bustling holiday meal to commemorate God freeing their ancestors from slavery. Passover is a joyful meal, not a somber one. And, because Passover was about liberation from a hostile oppressor, it was fraught with political expectations and possibilities. Would God free them likewise from Rome? Was the promised kingdom at hand? They were thinking about their history and their future, and they were enjoying the supper at hand.

Jesus loved meals. They knew that. They’d had so many together. Go back through the gospels and see how many of the stories take place at tables, distributing food, or inviting people to supper. Indeed, some have suggested that Jesus primary work was organizing suppers as a way to embody the coming kingdom of God. Throughout his ministry, Jesus welcomed everyone — to the point of contention with his critics — to the table. Tax collectors, sinners, women, Gentiles, the poor, faithful Jews, and ones less so. Jesus was sloppy with supper invitations. He never thought about who would be seated next to whom. He made the disciples crazy with his lax ideas about dinner parties. All he wanted was for everybody to come, to be at the table, and share food and conversation.

“I think of Jesus,” wrote theologian Beatrice Bruteau, “setting up these Suppers somewhat on the order of the ‘base communities’ of liberation theology.” Gatherings of the Kingdom of God.

Bruteau continues by quoting Rabbi Kushner on Sabbath meals:

And the laughing. The sharing. And the singing. One melody is scarcely spent when another comes forward. We don’t even notice the racket of the children. There is a great holiness in this room. It grows with the sharing. [I take a large ceramic Kiddush cup, fill it with wine, offer it to my wife and then to the man next to me, who] hands it to his wife with the solemn instruction, “Here, keep it going.” And we do. From hand to hand. Drunk from and refilled. Time and time again.

Sabbath. A vision of the kingdom of God. The meal reminds us and continues the promise.

What if Maundy Thursday was that? The Last Supper of the Old World. The last meal under Rome, the last meal under any empire. And it is the First Feast of the Kingdom That Has Come. The first meal of the new age, the world of mutual service, reciprocity, equality, abundance, generosity, and unending thanksgiving. Pass the cup, keep it going, hand to hand, filled and refilled, time after time. This night is the final night of dominion, the end of slavery; and this night is the first night of communion, the beginning of true freedom: “I will no longer call you servants but friends.”

This table is the hinge of history. The table is the point. Thursday is the Last Supper and the First Feast. The Holy Thursday Revolution.

Pull up a chair. Bring a friend.

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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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.

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.

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.

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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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Diana Butler Bass 9/24/20 Diana Butler Bass 9/24/20

Forty Days

There are 40 days to the election.

I invite you to consider this election season to be like Lent, a time of prayer and practice.

1) Pray daily for some specific issue or candidate.

Prayer takes many forms - I often think of Anne Lamott’s triad: help, thanks, wow. This is a time for all three sorts of prayers.

Ask God for help if you are angry, afraid, despairing. Ask for help on behalf of others, intercede for specific issues and candidates. Honestly, the nation and the world are in a desperate state right now - don’t hesitate to pray “help, help, help” on behalf of yourself, for all those who are fearful and suffering, and for the healing of the planet.

Find gratitude in the midst of it all - for truth tellers, activists, courageous voters, politicians who care about the common good, for those willing to take risks. For exhausted campaign workers, brave preachers, overworked parents. Say thank you to God, to the universe, to your friends and neighbors. Remember these words of Maya Angelou: “Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.”

Open yourself to awe - you’re going to need the “wow” of birdsong and blue skies, of starry nights or laughing on zoom. Even now, especially now, praise is possible, and it is the song of life. Give yourself moments of wonder.

2) Take action every day.

Donate money, make calls, vote early, write postcards, encourage others, go to a Zoom rally, distribute signs. Light candles. Join a protest or vigil (safely, of course). Help others understand new voting procedures. Volunteer if you are to assist at the polls. Post smart, reliable information and important news stories on social media. Correct rumors and gossip. Be loud.

Pray. Act. Every day for forty days.

Your prayers needn’t be dissertations or polished liturgies. Your actions needn’t be earth-shattering. Heartfelt, even wordless, prayers speak magic into the universe. Small actions add up, daily acts compound goodness.

Invite others to join you in these 40 days.

Share your prayers and ideas for action.

INSPIRATION:

Prayer and action...can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation.
- Henri Nouwen

It’s unrealistic to think that the future of humanity can be achieved only on the basis of prayer; what we need is to take action.
-The Dalai Lama

You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. This is how prayer works.
-Pope Francis

I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer, until I prayed with my legs.
-Frederick Douglass

I've heard people say that God is the gift of desperation, and there's a lot to be said for having really reached a bottom where you've run out of anymore good ideas, or plans for everybody else's behavior; or how to save and fix and rescue; or just get out of a huge mess, possibly of your own creation. And when you're done, you may take a long, quavering breath and say, “Help.”

-Anne Lamott

Church Anew 9/3/20 Church Anew 9/3/20

Being Church Today: Leadership and Resiliency

As we face crises of public health, racial inequality, and economic turmoil, Church Anew sought to help pastors, church leaders, and congregation members harness resiliency to respond to the immediacy of these issues.

We asked ourselves, “How can we set the table for mutual learning in this moment?”

We found an answer in our first virtual event, Being Church Today, presented online on Monday, August 17 and now available through on-demand access. The event gathered a diverse set of nationally-recognized thought leaders that gave personal, action-inspiring seven-minute presentations from their own homes on the most pressing issues of our time. Over 1,500 clergy, church staff, and volunteers registered for this event, looking for guidance, dialogue, and community in a digital environment.

Award-winning author and speaker Diana Butler Bass opened her presentation with a question:

“What do we do? How do we lead? What is that authentic place of leadership? I've wondered about this in my own life. And I've thought a lot about different verses that have framed my understanding of who I am as a Christian, and they have served as powerful guides when I have felt lost or needed something to lean into as a leader.”

Dr. Butler Bass cites Galatians 3:28 as her verse of guidance: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

This creed and statement of faith was about the struggle of the church against bigotry, slavery, and sexism. It affirmed the identity of the Christian community as people who stood against barriers of class division, ethnicity, and gender.

Likewise, Dr. Joy Moore, Vice President of Academic Affairs and Academic Dean of Luther Seminary, referenced this passage in her talk as well:

“Paul begins to dismantle the very systems of the ancient culture, the caste system, the class system, slave and free, ... the only thing that matters is this lasting mandate that humanity is created to bear the image of God.”

Being Church Today also featured speakers such as Rev. Emmy Kegler of Grace Lutheran Church in Northeast Minneapolis who spoke about complacency in the church, particularly in leadership:

When we are unwilling to be uncomfortable, we perpetuate violence against those on the margins. We teach girls to be quiet about their abuse. We refuse to be the one person who can make a 29 percent difference in trans youth suicidal ideation. We raise and confirm Dylann Roof.

And with that recognition came a challenge:

“So for a moment, I want you to reflect: how are you willing to be uncomfortable? Then I want you to hear, don't do that. Because we have been following our wills and where we are willing to be uncomfortable for far too long. Instead, the question I want to commission you with is: where does God's world need you to be uncomfortable?”

Church Anew hopes to help congregations thrive today and in the years to come by investing in sustained involvement in the communities they serve.

By being a voice for justice both in the church and out in the streets, pastors, staff, and volunteers can lead with their actions and actively encourage understanding and inclusion in their congregation members, engaging new people along the way.

Nationally-renowned author and friend of Church Anew, Brian McLaren, called on us to be more inclusive, to push boundaries, and care for our earth:

To be church today means to rediscover the revolutionary message of Jesus for people in a catastrophic situation. Not an evacuation plan about leaving earth or heaven when you die. But a transformation plan about loving God, yourself, your neighbor, and this precious Earth.

Referencing the late John Lewis, McLaren encouraged attendees to make “Good Trouble” and included people on the margins.

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church sought to answer the question: What is the specific contribution of the church in this moment?

“What can churches do in such a time as this? Churches can bear witness to the fate they hold in the way of Jesus of Nazareth, his way of love, unselfish, sacrificial love, as the way to the very heart of God, into each other's hearts as the way to life.”

Paraphrasing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bishop Curry cautioned us:

“We will either learn to live together as brothers and sisters, or we will perish together as fools. The choice is ours: chaos or community.”

Maybe you are inspired by the words of these speakers, but wonder how to sustain momentum. Tyler Sit, church planter of New City Church in Minneapolis, reminded us there is resilience in nurturing the energy necessary to bring about positive change in your community:

“What we wanted to prevent was this bump of reactive energy that fizzled out and then everyone just went back to normal … Christians are particularly positioned as people of resurrection to have a hope that on the other side of discomfort, there's a new world that God is making for us.”

Another six distinguished speakers as well as local Minneapolis artists and leaders spoke to the challenges we face and the actions we can take in this moment. The event also featured a live chatbox where attendees connected and shared the communities they came from, how the presentations challenged them, and what they will bring back to their own congregations.

Church Anew is drawing upon the wisdom and mutual learning from our communities to forge resiliency and the courage to take action.

By equipping leaders and community members with tangible ways to address grief, division, and uncertainty, we can move closer toward God’s beloved community.

This only scratches the surface of the practical and thought-provoking content offered in this event. On-demand access to the recording is still available for $49. Keep an eye out for upcoming virtual conferences as well as the Church Anew Blog to strengthen our relationships with each other, ourselves, and God.

Diana Butler Bass 8/13/20 Diana Butler Bass 8/13/20

The Importance of "And": The Forgotten Political Message of Christianity

Editor's note: Diana Butler Bass will be speaking at the Church Anew online conference, Being Church Today, on August 17, 2020 about leading from our deepest sense of identity. In her weekly newsletter, The Cottage, she explores Christianity's first creed and her hope for a different kind of Christian politics.

Religion News Service was quick to point out that Kamala Harris, the newly selected Democratic vice-presidential candidate, is both bi-racial and bi-religious:

Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, to a Jamaican immigrant father…and an Indian immigrant mother…is both Black and South Asian. She grew up in a home that accommodated both Christian and Hindu religious practices.

Black and Asian. Christian and Hindu.

Over the coming weeks, it is important to remember the “and” of Kamala Harris’ experience. That little word – and – is a conjunction which, as the dictionary puts it, connects things “that are to be taken jointly.”

We forget how important “and” is, this small, modest word.

In the case of Sen. Harris, the “and” acts as a bridge between identities that most people consider distinct. Race and ethnicity, faith and religion – these are humanity’s unbridgeable divides. When we imagine these things, we picture boundaries, borders, and walls. Not unity, not what we share.

There is a potent political message in her “and”: a candidate whose life embodies a bridge counterposed to a President who based his previous campaign on building a wall. This election is about choosing between bridges and walls. Do we want to span that which seems impossible to connect or strengthen the fortifications that separate?

Most people think Christianity is necessarily part of the wall-building enterprise.

Indeed, some call for a “Christian America,” a thinly veiled desire for a white, religiously unified state. Many believe that to be a Christian means to reject other religions – to follow a singular way with an exclusive savior. Church membership requires adherence to creeds and particular dogma that proclaim Christian superiority over and against other – and lesser – prophets and teachers. “Bridge” is not the infrastructure associated in popular culture with “Christian.” Wall, fortress, moat, yes. Bridge, not really.

This would have been a big surprise to the early Christians, those who took up the new faith in the years following Jesus’ death. They proclaimed a creed. But it wasn’t the familiar creed that most Christians know from church. The first creed was thus:

For you are all children of God in the Spirit.
There is no Jew or Greek;
There is no slave or free;
There is no male and female.
For you are all one in the Spirit.

To read the whole piece, please continue here:

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Diana Butler Bass 5/28/20 Diana Butler Bass 5/28/20

Pentecost, Prejudice, and Pandemic

Pentecost burns away our baseless assumptions in a fire from heaven. Pentecost is no party this year.

A sermon for Pentecost,
May 31, 2020

Ahmaud Arbery

George Floyd

1,000 names

100,000 dead

(Silence)

Pentecost is the noisiest of all Christian holy days—a party, the “birthday of the church,” celebrated with banners, red balloons, and cake. We hear rushing wind, tongues of fire, and cacophonous crowds. We re-enact Acts 2 in multiple languages, reminding us that God sent all humankind a gift—the spirit with its promise of peace and portents of salvus for the healing of the earth.

Alleluia! The long awaited day of the Lord is here!

But this week, names:

A man, panting, running, and fighting for his life.
“I can’t breathe; I can’t breathe…” and, then, no breath.
A thousand names in print takes our breath away.
100,000 stopped breathing.

A celebration, a birthday?

No thank you.

I feel like we are being strangled, the life choked from us—disbelief, sorrow, fear, rage. Violence in the streets, jails, and cages at our border, targeting black and brown men, women, and children; a virus stalking us all, turning familiar comforts into threats. We are hunted and haunted by guns and germs, prejudice and plague. And the victims mount. Each with a name, many known, some known only to God. From a single name to the many to myriads, this unholy litany of grief.

Pentecost is no party this year. Indeed, this feast falls on the eve of a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, June 1, to be marked with silence at noon. Silence, more than shouting this year. Mourning, not celebration.

This discomforting Pentecost drew my attention away from the traditional readings. (Although I confess it would be tempting to preach on fire, myself wanting to call down the fire of heaven on this whole, unjust, unfair, unwelcome mess!) Of all the alternatives offered by the lectionary, a single verse—1 Corinthians 12:13—spoke to most deeply my heart:

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Pentecost is, of course, not only about birth but baptism. And here, in First Corinthians, Paul speaks about what it means to be baptized and to live in the Spirit. We are in one Spirit, with one body, he insists. And then, in words that sound familiar—he reminds of that oneness, whether we are “Jews or Greeks, slaves or free,” we all drink the same Spirit.

That short clause echoes Paul’s other (and more extended) use of those words, found in an older letter, in Galatians 3:27-28 —

“As many of you are were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female: for you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Galatians 3:27-28 has long been one of my favorite bits of Paul. And I’m not alone in that. The words have been referred to as Paul’s finest writing, his best religious vision and poetry, and the lens through which the whole of Pauline theology should be read. For centuries, Christians have drawn inspiration from them for causes of justice including abolition, economic reform, and women’s rights. Galatians 3:28 is Paul’s rallying cry to overcome divisions of race, class, and gender, poetically and theologically interwoven with baptism, proclaiming justice as heart of life in Christ.

Like most readers, I have attributed their lyrical and political power to Paul. However, New Testament scholar Stephen Patterson has recently offered a far more provocative understanding of the origin of these words. Paul, he insists, was not their author. Paul was quoting them from an older source. With close historical detail, reconstructing and comparing texts, Patterson argues that these words were the very first Christian creed. Paul was quoting an ancient liturgy dating from the earliest years of the Jesus movement, said by the first baptized, a credo that probably went something like this:

For you are all children of God in the Spirit.
There is no Jew or Greek,
There is no slave or free,
There is no male and female;
For you are all one in the Spirit.

This forgotten baptismal creed, with its powerful words, was perhaps shouted by some baptized on that very first day, the day of fire, wind, and water.

Patterson goes on to say: “If you are interested in the origins of Christianity, in those first ten to twenty years when the memory of Jesus was still fresh, before Paul came along and made his distinctive impact on the Jesus movement… In the earliest years of the Jesus movement it was repeated again and again by people who were baptized as followers of Jesus.”

And he continues, pointing out that this forgotten creed:

…is a statement of convictions of the Jesus people. It is not a statement about God, or about the mysteries of Christ. It is about people and who they are, really. In baptism, they were committed to giving up old identities falsely acquired on the basis of baseless assumptions—Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female—and declared themselves to be children of God. [1]

Of course, it is our “baseless assumptions” that made this week, these weeks, all the sorrows of human history, so unbearable. We assume we are better because, as our own president recently said, that “good bloodlines” make some smarter, more deserving. That breeding and wealth and blood entail status, naming some as superior and consigning others to less-than, less than privileged, less than human. This is the baseless assumption of Cain, that his offering was better than his brother’s, that he deserved more than Abel. Our baseless assumptions have dogged us since exile from Eden, we have almost forgotten how baseless they are.

Pentecost burns away those baseless assumptions in a fire from heaven. The Spirit incinerates our old identities—inherited status from our ancestors, our senses of innate superiority or inferiority, our privilege or poverty, freedom or bondage, the roles assigned to us by biology. Yet, this baptism leaves us not as ash. For the baptism of fire is followed by the more mundane one, the baptism of water. Fire is quickly followed by the flow, the pouring out of Spirit, the living water. We are washed, refreshed, and remade. We drink of one Spirit and find a new identity: Child of God.

We are named, each with our individual names, and with that familial name: Child of God. We have names. We share a name. We are fully ourselves; we are fully one with each other.

The ancient baptismal creed marked that new identity as neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. As Patterson points out, it proclaimed “a world in which...female slaves could be leaders of free men, where foreigners and native born stood with equal power and equal rights. ‘You are all one’ signifies solidarity.”

Our names are our individual beauty, uniqueness. And our Name is our solidarity.

Pentecost this year is not as much party as protest. To name is to mourn the loss of individuals with gifts and loves. But Pentecost calls us to take another step beyond our personal laments and to be found together in a shared name – child of God. In this relation, Pentecost emerges as human solidarity. We stand together, in the same family, the same name, with and for and (even) as victims of the violence sadly endemic in this broken world. We are all Ahmaud, we are all George, we are all the thousand, we all the 100,000. What happens to one, happens to us all. We are not separate, not really. The fire of God has burned into the world, reducing to ash all division. A new human family has been born: sons and daughters dare to prophesy; old and young dream dreams; and slaves, men and women alike, announce God’s justice in the world.

The great and glorious day is truly here: You are all children of God.

May we live in the reality of Pentecost. Even now. Especially now, children of God.

* * * *

A Prayer for Pentecost:

Spirit of truth:
guide us into all the truth;
consume the lies
that shroud the world in hate;
pray in us
with sighs too deep for words;
and let the victim’s voice ring out
with hope for a new world;
through Jesus Christ, who goes to the right hand of God.
Amen.

(from Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church)

[1] Stephen Patterson, The Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism (Oxford, 2018), quotes from page 29. Patterson’s book won the 2019 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion.

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.

Deanna A. Thompson 5/22/20 Deanna A. Thompson 5/22/20

The Body of Christ Made Known on Zoom: A Conversation with Diana Butler Bass, Deanna A. Thompson, Joshua Case, and Kelvin Holdsworth

What does it mean to be the virtual body of Christ in a pandemic?

Church Anew has closely followed the conversation around sharing communion through digital media. We are grateful for the generous contributions to this conversation on the Church Anew Blog by Diana Butler Bass and Deanna A. Thompson, and for the ongoing commitment of the St. Olaf Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community. The video conversation below also features Joshua Case, an Episcopal priest in North Carolina, and Kelvin Holdsworth, an Episcopal Provost and Rector from Glasgow, Scotland. This is posted with express permission from the authors.

Deanna A. Thompson

Dr. Deanna A. Thompson is Director of the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community and Martin E. Marty Regents Chair in Religion and the Academy at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Before moving to St. Olaf, Thompson taught religion for over two decades at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. Thompson is a sought-after speaker on topics ranging from Martin Luther and feminism to the intersections of cancer, trauma, and faith, and what it means to be the church in the digital age. She is author of five books, including *Crossing the Divide: Luther, Feminism, and the Cross; The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World;* and most recently, *Glimpsing Resurrection: Cancer, Trauma, and Ministry*.
Nourished by Lutheran tradition, the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community engages people of all backgrounds and beliefs in deep exploration of core commitments and life choices in ways that foster inclusive community, both within and beyond St. Olaf College.
https://www.facebook.com/deanna.thompson.140
https://deannaathompson.com/

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

Diana Butler Bass 5/1/20 Diana Butler Bass 5/1/20

On Hoarding Eucharist in a Hungry World

Can Christians celebrate the Eucharist—the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion —through technology? Is the sacrament valid if it happens virtually?

In this time of COVID-19 lockdowns and churches moving to virtual communion, Diana Butler Bass reflects on a conversation she had with Phyllis Tickle.

A decade or so ago, about five years before she passed away, Phyllis Tickle and I were talking about how technology would change the church. She was enthusiastic about the Internet, her imagination opened by the possibilities of virtual reality to form new sorts of community. She had recently joined a church in the online world of Second Life, and told me about her avatar (I had no idea what an avatar was!). I remember how excitedly she spoke about how “virtuality” would expand our sense of “reality,” and how that would, in turn, foster a new reformation in Christianity. This technology would be, she assured me, as radical as the invention of the printing press—and this emerging sense of space and time would be as revolutionary for faith as were the first widely available vernacular Bibles.

“It raises so many theological questions!” she exclaimed. “For instance, if an avatar priest consecrates elements online, is Christ really present? Is the liturgy valid?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“No one knows yet,” she said. “Because we haven’t thought about it. But pretty soon, we’re going to be arguing over these things. Maybe not about avatar church. But the first time a priest or bishop offers the Eucharist online, it will be like Luther nailing the 95 Theses on the door.”

Phyllis threw her head back, with the laugh for which she was justly famous—half joy, half a sort of gleeful anticipation of how the future was at hand.

I’ve rehearsed this conversation a hundred times in my mind over the last two months. Since the coronavirus lockdowns. Since real-life churches have moved online. The argument she anticipated has started in earnest: Can Christians celebrate the Eucharist—the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion —through technology? Is the sacrament valid if it happens virtually?

The answers to these questions are intertwined with the diverse theologies of polity and sacraments of different Christian traditions. Indeed, Baptists, Congregationalists, Disciples, free churches, and many Methodists have no problem with online communion. Their beliefs about the priesthood of all believers and (generally) memorialist ideas of the Lord’s Supper have made possible online communion with few theological questions. But more liturgical churches—many Lutherans, Episcopalians, Catholics, and Orthodox—have restricted or denied the possibility of online Eucharist. They say that “online community isn’t real community,” that “physical presence” of a congregation is necessary for the sacrament to be valid, that laity cannot be trusted with appropriate reverence of the elements, and that a priest (or duly ordained minister) must consecrate the elements in person. Indeed, some leaders in these churches have forbidden all virtual communion, warning against any form of lay presidency or consecration, instituting forced Eucharistic fasts, substituting “spiritual communion” for partaking bread and wine, or insisting that priests can celebrate the mass privately for the whole of the church.

Oddly enough, much of the argument against online communion has taken place online. Self-identified “traditionalists” have ridiculed and attacked those who see this moment as a time when churches might experiment with liturgies, including offering bread and wine virtually. On Twitter, I posted about my conversation with Phyllis Tickle, suggesting that online liturgy was not, in effect, very different than the sorts of liturgical innovations of the Reformation, and that this moment of virtual church was a perfect time to imagine church anew—to open ourselves a future where technology reshapes Christian practice as much as it was reshaped 500 years ago.

I’ve worried that in withholding communion, the church has been, in effect, hoarding the bread and wine, restraining the healing beauty of Eucharist when hungry people most need to feast. A forced fast is no fast—it is an expression of institutional power over and against God’s people in a time of emergency. And I can’t help but think the lack of theological imagination at this moment will give people already wary of church another reason to consign Christianity to historical irrelevance. The pandemic, however, has been a sort of Pandora’s box for churches and technology, letting loose the theological questions Phyllis Tickle once predicted with the fierce urgency of suffering and death. The lid is open and can’t be shut. Sadly, some denominations seem incapable of seeing this as gift and possibility, preferring instead to give into controlling impulses and fear.

Despite overall institutional reluctance to engage these questions, some clergy have been hoping their denominations would provide for online Eucharistic celebration—and have been worried and even cowed by pressure coming from those who insist that God cannot use “virtuality” as a vehicle for the sacraments. While online argument might be expected, a chilling episode moved from social media to an “in real life” space. After Easter, a bishop in the Episcopal Church gave permission for his diocese to celebrate virtual Eucharist in an attempt to meet pastoral needs and address some of these issues. He appears to have been pressed by the denomination—the same denomination of which Phyllis Tickle had been a member—to rescind the option he had given to congregations in his care.

Over the last weeks, I've been agitating for better, more creative theological thinking about the Eucharist, virtual community, and new forms of liturgical celebration—all of this in line with two decades of my own research and writing. The questions that were once speculative have arrived, and religious groups are going to have to face them with courage and creativity. The pandemic has forced the issue: God’s presence is uncontained by time and space. We are in need of the healing beauty of bread and wine, to sit at the table that exists at the hinge of time, the first feast of the Age-That-is-to-Come. All of this already exists in virtual time—the virtual reality that is the cosmic presence of God. The last thing we need right now—in a time of food shortages, lockdown, isolation, and separation—is the church shutting the people out of the banquet, unable to recognize that we live in the virtual reign of Christ. Virtuality isn’t just technology; it is theology.

A clerical-friend (who wishes to remain anonymous) shares my concerns for the bread and wine to be freed into the world, however that happens in this time of crisis. On a day after a particularly strained Twitter argument, my friend wrote this poem and sent it to me. The words capture the sense of urgency and power of Eucharist far better than my halting prose. Sometimes when the church can’t hear even the most loving critique, my hope is that it can still hear poetry.

* * * *

An Order for Communing in a Pandemic

by Anonymous

She took a loaf of bread,
broke it and gave it,
half to the hungry, the poor, the millions
whose gap-toothed pantries
are emptying,
dwindling sand racing
through the widening neck of an hourglass
and she felt the weight
of a sacrament pressing
into her soul
as the body and blood of Christ
spilled out of doors,
into streets,
into homes,
flowing as freely,
as slick and messy,
as uncontrolled,
as it did from his own tortured body,
as if God really could be present
everywhere and in everything.

Church Anew has closely followed the conversation around sharing communion through digital media. Following this blog post, Diana Butler Bass was interviewed by Religious News Service for their article, “Online Communion should be celebrated, not shunned, says Diana Butler Bass.”

Church Anew’s first blog post on virtual communion featured an interview with Deanna A. Thompson, Director of the St. Olaf Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community. St. Olaf published Deanna’s first and second blog posts engaging conversation with Christians across the globe around about Holy Communion during online worship.

Both Diana Butler Bass and Deanna A. Thompson participated in a May, 19, 2020 video conversation, “Being the Church in This Time of Pandemic,” which also features Joshua Case, an Episcopal priest in North Carolina, and Kelvin Holdsworth, an Episcopal Provost and Rector from Glasgow, Scotland. This is posted on Church Anew with express permission from the authors.

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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To read the whole piece, please continue here:

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A sermon for Pentecost,May 31, 2020

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Nourished by Lutheran tradition, the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community engages people of all backgrounds and beliefs in deep exploration of core commitments and life choices in ways that foster inclusive community, both within and beyond St. Olaf College.

In this time of COVID-19 lockdowns and churches moving to virtual communion, Diana Butler Bass reflects on a conversation she had with Phyllis Tickle.

An Order for Communing in a Pandemic

Diana Butler Bass

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A sermon for Pentecost,
May 31, 2020