Blog Posts
Unlikely Saints
All Saints Sunday gives us a very personal way to talk about the present and future by talking about the past. Who are we? Who do we want to be? Those saints from our past give us a way to talk about where we are and where we are headed.
Personal Saints
On All Saints’ Sunday, I can’t help but think about all the blessed saints who gather around me in my memories. And believe me, there were plenty of characters in my family and in my life. Looking back, I see they were saints indeed. Not officially entered into sainthood perhaps, but saints nonetheless—people who were set apart by God to make a difference in the world, as they did in my life.
I grew up in West Virginia as a PK—a preacher’s kid and grandkid. Sunday dinner was always a big affair for my family, and more often than not Grandmother and Granddaddy Yoak would join us for pot roast as my parents, two brothers and sister and I gathered around the big dining room table. My Granddaddy, Dr. J.B.F. Yoak, Jr., was a beloved Methodist minister, as was my dad; in fact Granddaddy is the one who encouraged my father to pursue ordained ministry—as well as to pursue his daughter, my mother!
Granddaddy would tell knee-slapping stories about his experiences growing up, or as a young, horseback circuit-riding preacher in the hills and valleys of West Virginia—stories he collected later in a book I treasure. And of course my parents and grandparents would have to catch up on the Methodist conference gossip with him. Granddaddy would often bring the latest issue of The West Virginia Hillbilly weekly newspaper—I was enamored of that eccentric, fascinating, unique tabloid—so much so that after I graduated from college I was thrilled to go work there—but that’s a whole other story.
Also visiting us occasionally was Aunt Grace, Granddaddy’s sister, an opinionated widow who rarely smiled, as I recall—though when she did you felt it; her deep, commanding voice often kept me behaving myself.
And Aunt Maude, who I have to say was my favorite great aunt, a sweet spinster, retired teacher, she loved to read stories to my sister and me. I prize a copy of A. A. Milne’s book, When We Were Six, which she gave me when I was, yep, six years old.
Most every summer when I was a kid, my family spent a month at Sunken Meadow beach on the James River in Virginia—and every summer we would see Dad’s side of the family nearby in Hopewell. I never knew my Dad’s father, who had passed away. Dad’s mother, my other grandmother, we called Nana.
We kids were fascinated by Nana’s oddly crossed toes and her lush, haunted back yard with an algae-tinged goldfish pond and heavy vines of fragrant muscadine grapes. Like many Virginians of the time, Nana smoked—and consequently had a gruff voice. She was a wonderful Southern cook, and she would not let you leave the table in any way hungry. “Have some more,” she would urge gruffly, and if you hesitated, “What’s the matter, don’t you like it?” Only because she loved us.
Then there was Aunt Ida, who had worked in a chemical plant whose odors permeated Hopewell, “The Chemical Capital of the South.” Ida was somewhat mystical, loved cooking, reading mysteries, and telling ghost stories in her syrupy Tidewater accent.
And Aunt Martha—she too was a widow who had worked in the plant. My sister and I would usually stay a night or two with her and our cousin Billy. We’d watch old horror movies, go to the store to get comic books and candy. She spoiled us lovingly.
Many other beloved family members come to my mind, but another saint in my life was Mrs. Robinette, a dear soul who was a member of the church I grew up in, where my Dad was pastor. When I was in elementary school, she taught Vacation Bible School one summer. She seemed ancient to me then but was sweet and full of life. And she had a big impact on my life.
One of the VBS projects she had us do was to create a newspaper as though it were published during the time of the Apostle Paul. I relished that assignment—creating news stories about Paul’s latest ruckus, ads for chariot dealers, even a comic strip. I count that experience as planting the seeds that set me on the path to study journalism in college, to fall in love with writing, and to discover a calling to communicating the faith.
All these saints, and so many more, come to my mind. I share them with you to prod your own memory of the dear saints who have blessed your life. Maybe there are some you’ve forgotten, or realize you need to be in touch with to tell them you love them.
Of course, I look back and acknowledge these saints’ flaws, peccadillos, and occasional mistakes, and I realize they were just ordinary human people like you and me. But there was something more about them. When I was a kid, they were giants to me. Salt of the earth. They truly believed and loved God. They tried to live as followers of Jesus. When I look back, I see them as saints. Saints of God.
Who are your Saints?
So, who are your saints? Who comes to your heart and mind on All Saints Sunday?
All Saints Sunday gives us a very personal way to talk about the present and future by talking about the past. Who are we? Who do we want to be? Those saints from our past give us a way to talk about where we are and where we are headed.
One huge thing I missed deeply during our pandemic worship was coming to the communion table with the family of faith and together eating the bread and drinking the wine, the body and blood of Jesus Christ. When I go to the altar rail, I always sense that the saints are with me, singing and praying, praising God; these compassionate souls who nurtured me in the faith and set me on the path of the way of love.
Think about the dear saints in your life—your family members, Sunday school teachers, mentors, those you honor in your heart.
Of course, those we remember as saints were not perfect, and often far from it—but we can relate to them because we, like they, are flawed human beings. For instance…
Mother Teresa was known for her kindness, her generosity, her monumental work on behalf of the poor, but she was also known for her sharp temper, and her personal journals reveal a woman tortured by decades of inner spiritual conflict and doubt.
The desert fathers and mothers, revered for their spiritual depth, in many cases fled to the wilderness, not because they were saints, but because they were so plagued by the gremlins of temptation that they had to go be by themselves, and even then, alone in the wild, they still wrestled with anger, pride, dejection, and depression. Even so, they were saints. Full of life and love, full of God.
Vietnamese monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh explains that, in Buddhism, the energy that helps us “touch life deeply” is known as smrti, it’s the energy of mindfulness. Jesus is full of smrti. Because Jesus knows himself. Jesus is mindful of his feelings and expresses them clearly and directly. He allows his emotions to empower his life positively. And, he invites us to join him in this authentic way of living.
Jesus began his teaching ministry (Matthew 5:1-12) on a hill surrounded by hungry, wounded people who yearned for meaning and fullness in their impoverished lives. They may not have even had a glimmer of understanding why he came and what he was about to do. Yet, they were drawn to him, and he connected directly and intimately with them as he shared the blessings of God.
In contrast to Moses, who brought the law down the mountain from on high to the people, here is Jesus, beginning his teaching ministry by bringing blessings up the mountain, to the people, where he sits down with his disciples and teaches.
“Blessed are you,” he says to the poor in spirit, to those who were mourning, to the meek who would inherit the earth, to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for the merciful, peacemakers, and others. They were all saints! Blessed saints.
These blessings, the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, focus on our emotional life—our mourning, our passion, our fear, our suffering. All the grief and fear and pain and anger we are feeling even now in our country and in our world. In the midst of all that, we hear Jesus speak to us: “Blessed are you.”
Roman Catholic priest and author Richard Rohr writes, “Suffering is the necessary deep feeling of the human situation. If we don’t feel pain, suffering, human failure, and weakness, we stand antiseptically apart from it, and remain numb and small.”
Sometimes it seems the saintliest among us are those who have suffered the most—right?
Jesus, however, refuses to numb himself from human emotions. And so should we.
Rohr goes on: “The irony is not that God should feel so fiercely; it’s that his creatures feel so feebly. If there is nothing in your life to cry about, if there is nothing in your life to yell about, you must be out of touch. We must all feel and know the immense pain of this global humanity. Then we are no longer isolated, but a true member of the universal Body of Christ. Then we know God not only from the outside but from the inside.”
So, those we remember lovingly as the saints in our lives? I think they got this. They lived their lives knowing they were beloved children of God, called to love and serve God, no matter how they struggled, no matter what pains they strove to overcome. And as a result, they made their mark on our lives and no doubt on many others.
While you’re at it, consider others in our society and history who have also made an impact on your life. For instance, the late, great Civil Rights icon and United States Congressman, John Lewis, served the district I live in. He continues to beckon us to get into “good trouble,” as he would put it, and that’s my goal. He was a hero to me and to so many others for all his good work and strong faith.
Blessed are these saints in our lives. Blessed are you. Blessed am I. Jesus himself gave these Beatitude blessings abundantly to anyone who would receive them, anyone who would open themselves up to risk experiencing them.
But, once those blessings are received, they are ours to do something with—we are blessed to be a blessing in this hurting, divided, terrifying world. One day—who knows—maybe we will be the saints remembered and honored by others, because we took the blessings we received and gave them away just as extravagantly as did Jesus, and as did all the saints who followed him.
Let’s live unafraid to honor those dear souls who helped make you and me who we are. Remember those who have come before us as a way of considering prayerfully who we are, and who we want to be.
And one day, may we be remembered for the positive influence we left in others’ lives. As impossible as it may seem to us now, may we ourselves be remembered as unlikely saints. Let’s live every day in a way that will make it so, in the power of our loving Lord.
Sources:
Peter Wallace, The Passionate Jesus (Conclusion)
Lisa Cressman, Backstory Preaching, “What Not to Preach on All Saints’ Day,” October 23, 2017
Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, "Suffering," March 27, 2012, adapted from Rohr, Radical Grace, 209.
Peter M. Wallace
Rev. Peter M. Wallace, an Episcopal priest, was for 22 years the executive producer and host of the “Day1” weekly radio program and podcast (Day1.org). He is the author or editor of 15 books, including most recently A Generous Beckoning: Accepting God’s Invitation to a More Fulfilling Life; Bread Enough for All: A Day1 Guide to Life; Heart and Soul: The Emotions of Jesus; and Comstock & Me: My Brief But Unforgettable Career with The West Virginia Hillbilly.
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.
How Parenting Is Teaching Me Notes of Rest: Lessons from the first month
What a marvel it is to have a child. There really are no words to do it justice. A few of you have expressed interest in what parenthood will do to my sense of rest. I’m sure that will be a lifelong journey, but here are a few quick insights
Photo by McKenna Phillips on Unsplash
This post originally appeared on Julian Davis Reid’s substack called “Notes of Rest,” a weekly newsletter about music, Christian faith, and rest to promote the practice of contemplation & creativity. Read more and subscribe here.
Thank you for the warm wishes on the birth of my sweet little Lydia last month. It is a blessing to write for a community that celebrates such big milestones. What a marvel it is to have a child. There really are no words to do it justice. My favorite moments to savor are when she opens her eyes for the first time after a nap, and when she makes eye contact with me as she practices lifting her head, and when Carmen, Lydia and I sit on the couch together. The list goes on, but that begins to count the ways.
A few of you have expressed interest in what parenthood will do to my sense of rest. I’m sure that will be a lifelong journey, but here are a few quick insights from the first month.
When we rest, others get to rest too.
When Lydia sleeps multiple hours a night, we all get to rest. (Ha - when.) And that reminds me of how the logic of Sabbath in Scripture is centered on the idea that when the people of Israel receives God’s gift of rest, those who work for them, the foreigners who live in their midst, the other animals, and the land get to rest too.
We tire others out without realizing it.
On the other hand, Lydia has no idea how her erratic sleep schedule tires Carmen and me. To be sure, we are happily exhausted - we oftentimes find ourselves laughing at 2 in the morning - but it is exhaustion nonetheless.
Similarly, we the writer and readers of this post exhaust others whether we realize it. Capitalism has made it such that we exhaust bodies and lands routinely, our own included, in our pursuit of fanciful fairy tales of never ending wealth (e.g., Greta Thunberg). And what’s worse, the means of our life as is often occluded from us, such that we don’t have a real sense of what life costs. (I always find it odd that we can put a price on an apple. What does it actually cost us?)
Now, Lydia is not to blame at all for the exhaustion she causes. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. The sista just wants to feed and be held. Amen to her knowing what she needs, ha.
To some extent, we are like her. We do not singlehandedly control the factories and the governments and the IG algorithms that promote our exhaustion and the exhaustion of the world. And we do not understand all that we do. However, unlike Lydia, we do have some sense of what we are doing and should be held responsible for the ways we exhaust. Let us pay attention.
Resting - truly resting - calls for faith in God’s provision.
Working in the gig economy, which is supported in part through the paid segment of this Substack (thank you, subscribers!), means that for the most part my paternity leave was unpaid. I had saved money for that, but still felt the precarity. Being off in mid-August and September meant that I was missing a big part of the music festival season. I had to turn off Instagram at some point because I just kept having fear of missing out (Fomo) as I saw my colleagues playing all over the world. It was a tension. Lydia was here! My world was forever changed with joy unspeakable. But still, the show had to go on elsewhere, and people found subs for me.
My internal struggles during paternity leave were thus an excellent revealer of my own vulnerability and need for Notes of Rest. The message I preach to all of y’all is what I needed myself. Even as a freelancer, even as a musician, even (and especially) as a new father, rest was called for, and I had to believe God would provide.
I return now to the work of Notes of Rest with increased confidence that God will provide. Just this week, I am putting the finishing touches on my debut solo project of original music, called Candid EP, and just signed a literary agent deal for my forthcoming book on Notes of Rest. (More on both of these later.) God is good and his mercy endures forever, and I am trusting God to continue providing for me and my family in the ways that draw me deeper into faith. As I have said before, Notes of Rest is more than a session or catchphrase - it is a lifestyle, one that yields and lives by faith.
Rest invites community.
As we rested as a family during this month, people came to bring food through meal trains from our church and Carmen and my families holding us down. People I speak to a few times a year, or a few time a decade, reached out to care. I was blown away by the tokens of grace. We didn’t “earn” compassion. Every meal, card, gift card, overnight stay, and onesie was a gift, and we have tried to receive it as such. I admittedly felt guilty at times for such care. I can take care of Lydia. I am present to care for her and Carmen. I will step up to the plate. But there again, I was missing the point. People weren’t assessing my capacity to care. They were celebrating the new life and offering me a gift. I was humbled by what all I needed to receive. (I wonder if toxic masculinity made it harder for me to just simply receive care.)
1 John 1:10 puts it well: If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and [Jesus’] word is not in us. I approach my career as an artist-theologian with thankfulness that my public work in helping folk hear the rest for which they were created is directly connected to my private work in hearing it myself. I’d be a hypocrite to otherwise cut off this link. When anxiety arose during paternity leave about what the future held, I could look at my sweet Lydia and realize that I, like she, was in need of constant care from God.
For all of the parents on this thread, and for all who have been parented, I pray that this new chapter of my life in Notes of Rest can encourage you to humbly seek Notes in yours. God calls and God saves, and that saving brings good rest for our souls, minds, bodies, and for the rest of creation. It’s dope that something as miraculous and life-changing as Lydia’s arrival can teach me that, again.
Abundantly,
Julian
Julian Davis Reid
Julian Davis Reid is an artist-theologian who uses words and music to invite us into the restful lives we were created to live. He is a founding member of the jazz-electronic fusion group The JuJu Exchange and hosts contemplative retreats called Notes of Rest.
Julian has performed and spoken throughout the country and around the world, and he has released three studio albums, the latest being Rest Assured, a collection of hymns on solo piano. He earned his M.Div. at Candler School of Theology at Emory University and his B.A. in philosophy at Yale University. He and his wife Carmen live and worship in his hometown Chicago.
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.
The Story of Abraham and Family Trauma Part 2
The stories, like that of Abraham and his descendants, enable us in our modern times to understand that stories of family dysfunction are not at all new. These stories give us much with which to wrestle with as we learn and ponder them anew.
Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash
The older woman was frail; months of cancer treatment had taken their toll. But she was undeterred as she made her way to a microphone, before more than two hundred family members, representing four generations. She began feebly, but her voice grew stronger with the recounting of her story. She spoke of a day –when she was no older than fifteen years of age – on which her father had taken her to a man on a nearby farm. She’d not understood that her father was selling her body for sexual favors to the man – until the man had done his deed and her father was pocketing the money the man had paid as he walked away. Violated, confused and physically hurt, she walked home with her father. But she knew that day that she would leave, and he would not continue to hurt her that way.
Her story was met with silence and tears. A sister, two years younger, stood at her seat, and with a tear-streamed face told the gathered family members that the same thing had happened to her. A child resulted from her encounters with the man. Her stepmother threw her out of the family home, and another family member took her child and refused to return him. He grew up in another household, without his mother, the man she later married, and his eight siblings.
So many lives had been affected.
This family story isn’t just any family story: It is my family’s story – the story of two of my Aunts and potentially others – perhaps even my own mother. It is a story that caused our family to reflect on all of the stories we’d heard from older family members about my grandfather. We’d all heard older relatives describe him as “evil,” “brutal,” “cruel” and “mean”; we’d heard that he’d physically harmed my grandmother, and two of my uncles told their own stories about how he’d beaten them, thrown axes at them.
What we saw that day was incomprehensible pain and suffering. As a priest and pastor who walks journeys with families who are broken, scarred, grieving, and fractured, I realize that stories of family trauma are as old as time itself – and that our scriptures tell us much about the ways in which we have struggled with one another, in the presence of a faithful God.
I wonder how the Church can be more supportive – and preach and teach the scriptural texts that have been given to us with more honesty and transparency.
7 This is the length of Abraham’s life, one hundred and seventy-five years. 8 Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people. 9 His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, east of Mamre, 10 the field that Abraham purchased from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried, with his wife Sarah. (Genesis 25:7-10, NRSV)
A short text from the Book of Genesis appears to wrap the story of Abraham and his family in a lovely package with a bow on top: He lived a long life, was gathered to his people, and was buried with his wife, Sarah, by his sons, Ishmael and Isaac.
If only Genesis didn’t offer painstaking detail about the rest of Abraham’s life, this would seem to be a lovely epitaph. But Genesis does offer painstaking detail about Abraham’s life – from the time that God calls him to leave his father’s house and go to an unknown land that God would show him, until he had become an old man full of years.
The Book of Genesis reveals much more to us about Abraham’s family. Struggles with infertility plague at least three generations of the family – and Abraham’s firstborn son, Ishmael, is the product of his relationship with a slavewoman named Hagar, who with her child become expendable – and are left to die – after Sarah bears a child of her own. Abraham’s second son, Isaac, is left to bear the scars of nearly being sacrificed by his father. After the attempted sacrifice, Sarah leaves to find a home of her own, away from Abraham. When she dies, Abraham remarries and begins a new family – at well past 100 years of age (Genesis 25).
So after his wife has died, after his relationships with Ishmael and Isaac have been fractured, after he has started another family, Abraham dies, and Ishmael and Isaac – after more than 70 years apart – come together, in spite of the scars they both bore, to bury their father in the place where Sarah had been buried.
I want to believe that these sons could, when they are reunited, share their experience of their father, learn from one another how both had suffered, find some bond in their suffering, find some way forward together. That would make for a neater and tidier ending to Abraham’s story.
Genesis doesn’t tell us that any healing takes place when these two estranged sons meet again to perform the duty of burying their father.
Indeed, the suffering in Isaac’s family doesn’t end with his near-death experience. Isaac’s own family would be torn apart when the younger of his twin sons, Jacob, would trick his infirm father and cheat his older brother, Esau, of his blessing and birthright. Jacob’s family would be torn apart with the story of Joseph (Genesis 37-50).
The suffering continued through at least three generations.
But, whatever Ishmael and Isaac believe that they have learned of Abraham, and whatever perceptions they have taken from their own final encounters with their father, they have seen something very powerful about Abraham’s God: They have seen that Abraham’s God is unquestionably faithful. Abraham’s God keeps God’s promises – showing up in the desert to renew the covenant with Ishmael, showing up at the altar to provide a sacrifice in place of Isaac. Abraham’s God is faithful – even if it might appear to his sons that Abraham has not been faithful to them. Ishmael and Isaac would go on, in their own way, to embrace the story of a faithful God and pass that story along to their offspring – a faith story that has lived on, in the faith traditions of Jews, Muslims and Christians.
More than 50 years after a father who had sold his daughters’ bodies had died, a dying daughter came to a family reunion to tell her heartbreaking story of how she had been violated and harmed. A sister was empowered to speak and tell her truth, as well. They told a story of family trauma that has no neat, tidy wrapping, a story that has affected multiple generations. They came with scars – theirs, ours, those of our ancestors – and unspeakable heartache, pain, and grieving, the reality of our humanity etched into our souls. Our family came together with great need to see those scars, and to hear and bear witness to each other’s stories.
Our hopes and expectations for neat, tidy epitaphs may be unrealistic. But in the moments that we are brought together, there is opportunity for healing: for engaging in hard dialogue, for respectfully and lovingly hearing one another’s stories, in diligently working to see the image and likeness of God in one another and in those who came before us. For indeed, it seems that it is only in coming together to share the painful truths that we can find our way forward in healing and love.
The Story of Abraham and Family Trauma Part 1
The stories, like that of Abraham and his descendants, enable us in our modern times to understand that stories of family dysfunction are not at all new. These stories give us much with which to wrestle with as we learn and ponder them anew.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Year “A” of the Revised Common Lectionary offers worshippers the chance to re-visit the stories of Abraham and the next three generations of his descendants These texts from the Book of Genesis are shared with our Jewish friends, as well, and some people – Christians and Jews alike, find these texts traumatizing. To some extent, they are. However, the stories, like that of Abraham and his descendants, enable us in our modern times to understand that stories of family dysfunction are not at all new. These stories give us much with which to wrestle with as we learn and ponder them anew.
When Abraham settled in Canaan, God entered into a covenant with Abraham and promised him more descendants than the stars in the sky and the sands on the shore (Genesis 15). There was just one problem: Abraham’s wife, Sarah, appeared to be barren. They were advancing in years, and Sarah had not conceived and borne a child.
It was probably good that Sarah didn’t conceive early in their marriage: Twice (Genesis 12 and Genesis 20), Abraham passed Sarah off to foreign kings as his sister, so that Abraham would not be harmed because he was traveling with his beautiful wife. Twice, these foreign kings took the beautiful Sarah, whom they believed to be Abraham’s sister, for themselves – for a time, that is, until their households were punished because of their relationships with Sarah. Genesis reveals quite a bit about Sarah and her opinions (She is far from silent!), but readers are not told how Sarah reacted to having been placed in the hands of Pharaoh and King Abimelech. Maybe she expected to have to commit herself to whatever she needed to do to keep Abraham safe. Maybe she felt betrayed, violated, and ashamed. Maybe she wondered if her inability to conceive might have resulted from her having been taken as the “wife” of other men.
When Sarah and Abraham continued on their way, and still no children had been born to them despite God’s promise of descendants, Sarah took matters into her own hands, offering up her Egyptian slave woman, Hagar, to Abraham so that he might have children through her. Hagar conceived and bore Abraham a son, named Ishmael (Genesis 16). But as Genesis also teaches us, humankind really hasn’t changed much over the ages, and as we might imagine, conflict quickly arises between Sarah and Hagar. Ultimately, Sarah – at age 90 – does indeed bear a child of her own, who is named Isaac. With Hagar and Ishmael’s “usefulness” having ended, Sarah demands that Abraham remove them from the encampment (Genesis 21). And, so, the last encounter recorded in Genesis between Abraham and his firstborn son, Ishmael, takes place on the fateful day that Abraham takes Ishmael and Hagar and leaves them in the desert, with a single skin of water, ostensibly to die. Ishmael is a young teen by this point – old enough to understand, and certainly to be scarred by, the fate to which his father is leaving him and his mother.
All won’t go smoothly for Isaac, either: We are told in Genesis 22 that God tested Abraham in asking that Isaac be sacrificed. The last encounter between Abraham and Isaac recorded in Genesis takes place when Abraham bound Isaac on the altar, preparing to sacrifice him to God. For all of the arguments that Abraham had previously given God for sparing the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah when God is preparing to destroy them, Abraham met God’s request to sacrifice Isaac with seemingly little to no resistance.
Hebrews 11:17-19 extols Abraham for having trusted in God when he prepared to sacrifice Isaac. Perhaps that is true. Perhaps a broken Abraham wonders the price that he must pay for what he has done to Ishmael and Hagar. However Abraham has received this request from God, we fail to ask how Isaac has been scarred and traumatized by this episode. Isaac is old enough to understand that there is to be a sacrifice – and even asks Abraham about the lamb for the sacrifice. Does he truly understand when he is bound and tied that he is the intended sacrifice – until, that is, God steps in and provides a ram? What does Isaac tell Sarah when they return home? How does a mother begin to understand a husband’s need to follow a command from God to sacrifice a child for whom she’d waited 90 years?
There are no further scenes of Abraham together with his family after the sacrifice. Sarah leaves Abraham’s encampment, and dies in another land, where Abraham purchases land for a burial place. Isaac settles in another land, as well.
The suffering doesn’t end with Isaac’s near-death experience; it continues through at least three generations.
Isaac married his kinswoman, Rebekah, who also struggled to conceive. When she finally became pregnant, she gave birth to twins who emerged from her womb embroiled in their own battle. The older twin, Esau, grew up to be an outdoorsy hunter and gatherer. The younger twin, Jacob, received his name because he literally was born holding on to Esau’s heel. Jacob’s envy of his brother as heir would ultimately tear apart their family, when Jacob (at his mother’s urging) tricked a then-infirm Isaac and cheated his older brother, Esau, of his blessing and birthright.
Jacob made a life for himself apart from Esau, and settled with his mother’s brother, Laban. Believing that he had married his true love, Laban’s younger daughter, Rachel, he had been tricked by his uncle, and had married older sister, Leah, instead (“This is not done in our country – giving the younger before the firstborn.” Genesis 29:26). Although Leah bore several sons for Jacob, his favorite son was Rachel’s firstborn, a son named Joseph. Joseph became the target of his older brothers’ jealousy and rage – and while the older brothers plotted to kill Joseph, they ultimately chose to sell him into slavery, pocketing twenty silver coins for him, and representing to their father that he had been killed by wild animals (Genesis 37:22-34). Jacob, too, would know separation from the son he loved.
All was not peaceful or happy among Abraham and his descendants. All is not happy in many families. If we tend to feel alone in family dysfunction, we remember that even the family of our ancestor most chosen and loved by God, Abraham, struggled. Faith persisted, even amid that struggle.
Off-Script Christian Parenting: On tattoos and red wagons
Christian parenting is tough. On one hand, I desperately want my two daughters to have faith in God. I want them to experience the church as a place that models the love of God. I want them to be compelled to act when they see the image of God in their neighbors. On the other, I don’t want the weight of my expectations to become an unbearable burden. And, if I’m honest, my expectations are weighty.
Photo from Nappy.co and Children Nature Network
Three days after my eldest daughter’s 18th birthday she got a tattoo. She’s always had an independent streak, and as soon as she had the legal right to get inked, she exercised it. This was no snap decision. The whole thing had been carefully orchestrated: she’d thought through what she wanted, drawn up a design, scheduled a consultation with a reputable artist, and set the appointment well in advance.
Christian parenting is tough. On one hand, I desperately want my two daughters to have faith in God. I want them to experience the church as a place that models the love of God. I want them to be compelled to act when they see the image of God in their neighbors.
On the other, I don’t want the weight of my expectations to become an unbearable burden. And, if I’m honest, my expectations are weighty.
More than anything, I want my daughters to be themselves—to live into the promise of belovedness they were given in their baptisms.
As Christian parents, my spouse and I have not followed the script when it comes to childhood faith formation. We’ve challenged the voices that prescribe a right way. And I’m confident we’ve missed the mark as much as we’ve hit it in nurturing the faith of our two daughters.
My daughters never regularly attended Sunday School or really any form of age-appropriate Christian Education. I served as a Campus Pastor at a University for nearly their entire childhood and they worshiped primarily with 18-22 year-olds. When other kids were doing Godly Play or reading stories out of children’s Bibles, ours had philosophy majors telling them about Hegel and religion majors informing them that Moses didn’t write the Torah.
Their confirmation was unorthodox, too. When a handful of seminary Interns I supervised asked how they might get experience teaching confirmation, I willingly offered my daughters as tributes for several consecutive years.
When the girls were 5 and 7, respectively, they were invited by the brothers of Taizé to sit with Brother Alois, the prior of the Taizé, for their meeting in Chicago. This meant they’d be seated on a platform with the brothers in front of hundreds of people with the expectation that they’d have the capacity to manage a 15-minute silent meditation well.
After a lengthy discussion with our daughters, we accepted the invitation. But what I remember most about the experience was the conversations my spouse and I had as we walked up to the venue where the meeting was to be held:
“Is this something that they’re okay doing? Have they really given consent to this?
They’re saying they want to do this, but how can they know what they’re getting themselves into?
Is this the kind of experience that makes someone hate the church? That makes you ask, ‘Why did my parents make me do this?’
Is this too much to expect?”
Looking back, I’m not sure I know the answer to these questions even now.
When I reflect on the job I’ve done nurturing the faith of my children, I still have more questions than answers. There are times I ponder if we should have done it all differently. I wonder if throwing out the script was the right choice.
If I reflect on this too much, I can work myself into an anxious knot. I can feel the tension in my body between the parenting suppose-to-dos I inherited and the way my spouse and I practice parenting. And I know, as far as Christian parenting goes, I’m not alone in this.
On the day my daughter got her tattoo, she unceremoniously posted a picture of it in the family group chat. I was eating Korean Barbeque with a friend when the picture appeared on my phone, and it stopped me midsentence. I was speechless.
My friend asked, “Are you okay?” as I began to tear up.
The tattoo pictured a group of three rabbits, two of whom were seated in a red wagon being pulled by a third. The rabbit farthest to the right, the one pulling the wagon, was significantly larger than the other two and was clearly wearing a clerical collar.
I am the big rabbit.
Years ago, during my first call, Mondays were my day off. Our family called them daddy days. And on daddy days the girls would get in the wagon and I’d pull them down Burlington Avenue to a playground, and then we’d go to McDonalds for a Happy Meal.
Of all the infinite possibilities, my daughter’s 18th birthday tattoo memorialized daddy day.
If the tattoo is any indication, sharing my day off with my daughters for a few years stuck. Script or not, somewhere amidst the chaos of her upbringing, she’d caught sight of the belovedness I want her to know in something ordinary: a day set apart, a parent present, a place for play and imagination, a gathering around a table, a little red wagon.
As I shared the image with my friend, I couldn’t help but catch sight of the grace in all of it. Somehow through all the moments where we miss the mark as Christian parents, it’s possible to do this well.
[NOTE: This isn’t a story I can tell without the permission of my family, especially my eldest daughter whose body is referenced in the story. My daughters and spouse read, commented on, and endorsed this blog prior to its publication.]
Rev. Adam White
Adam White is the Senior Pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Waconia, Minnesota. He previously served as the Campus Pastor at The Lutheran Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.
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.
Reading the Bible with the Webb Telescope
As my faith evolved and I began to question many of the traditions I was raised with, the memory verses sometimes stung like fresh cuts or ached like purple bruises.
Photo by James Webb Space Telescope from NASA
A version of this post was shared in a sermon at St. Andrew Lutheran Church and published at Faith+Lead and Enter the Bible from Luther Seminary.
Do you ever get so zeroed in on a project that you completely lose perspective?
A few weeks ago I was stuck in one of those spirals, looking after draft upon draft upon draft of a proposal that would mean a lot to the start-up organization that I lead. I would spend hours on a single paragraph or a few line-items in a budget. If someone snuck up on me at my desk, I’m certain I looked like this guy. The room smelled like burned coffee. I had books half opened all over the floor around me. I was muttering nonsense about footnotes and line-items.
And if you asked my friends? Or my spouse? Or my kids? They couldn’t wait for the project to just be finished.
I’ve been trying to work on getting perspective this year, stepping out of the details to see the bigger picture. I need to make sure that I’m still a present dad for my kids and don’t get too consumed by whatever pressing challenge takes a claim on me first.
I recently stumbled on a set of images that can really put things back into perspective - the images coming back from the James Webb Telescope.
These stunning photographs have returned from this school-bus sized telescope floating in the middle of space, looking as far into space as human beings have ever seen.
The images make for great screen-savers and are shared free for the world from NASA. But I didn’t start gaining perspective until I started to learn a little bit more about these images and the technology that makes them possible.
Take these two images, for example. The image on the left was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1996. It is perhaps one of the most iconic pieces of space photography and it’s titled “The Pillars of Creation.”
A strangely theological title for an image of deep space, isn’t it?
The image on the right was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope just this year. Images like this one are reframing the ways that scientists understand how stars are born. For the science-types, there is endless reading on these topics and more at NASA’s blog. But the story of how we can receive these images is just as compelling.
On December 25, Christmas Day, 2021, the telescope, roughly the size of a semi-truck, blasted off on the top of an Ariane 5 rocket. A little over a year later it arrived at its final destination, one million miles from Earth. Once there, it took nearly six months for giant mirrors to fold out into space like a giant piece of origami. Eighteen hexagonal mirrors, each roughly height of my six-year old folded out into this massive mirror pointed out into space. If you want to learn more about this feat of engineering, take a listen to its coverage on The Daily.
It is the size of this mirror and the fact that the Webb Telescope is in the cold of space that allows it to peer into the deepest, darkest corners of the universe.
The Pillars of creation, for example, in the Eagle Nebula, is roughly 6.5 billion light years away. For perspective, if we imagine the distance between Earth and the Eagle Nebula were shown as the distance between New York and Los Angeles, the Earth would be roughly the size of the point of a pencil. For reference, the James Webb Space Telescope can see more than twice as far as the Eagle Nebula to nearly 14 billion light years away.
It gives us perspective. If we are just one tiny point of a pencil, on this tiny planet called Earth, in all the Webb Telescope can now witness (and beyond!), how might we endeavor to hear God speaking to you and to me?
Well, it happens in a story we call the Bible, this collection of ancient texts passed down from generation to generation. Like Psalm 78 sings, “We will not hide them from their children; we will tell to the coming generation, the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might and the wonders that he has done.”
For many folks raised in Mainline (Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, etc.) or Roman Catholic traditions, the Bible was something that the professional Christians talked about. Or as Jacobson, Jacobson, and Wiersma say in their delightful and Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Biblical Terms, “a book that Christians believe is so holy and inspired that they almost never read it for fear that it might draw them closer to God and neighbor or change their lives in some other inconvenient way.”
The Bible was that family heirloom on the coffee table that grandma told you never to touch. Or it was that book that the priest (or pastor) hauled out into the middle of church with all the reverence and pomp and circumstance that comes with it. I didn’t grow up with this understanding of Scripture.
For me, and perhaps for you if you were raised in a more evangelical world, the Bible was a constant companion. It was the rule by which we were judged. It was a manual for morality. It was a script to be rehearsed and memorized over a lifetime.
I attended a conservative parochial (church-based) elementary and middle school. I loved this school. The teachers knew me and loved me, prayed for me and my classmates, corrected me gently when I would get disrespectful (sometimes with lines to write, old-school), and taught me the state capitals, the times tables, and the classics of literature. But as I grew up, I realized that some of this upbringing was unique.
For example, at the beginning of eighth grade I received a full sheet of paper printed on both sides with three columns on each side of all of the scripture verses that I would be expected to memorize by the time the year was finished. We had a verse for each day, a set for each week, a section for each month, and a cumulative test at the end of the year with every single verse on it. My kids will certainly call this my “walking to school uphill both ways in the snow” story.
Not quite that dusty tome on grandma’s coffee table.
At times this long list of Scripture verses has felt like baggage to me, hauling around the bumps and bruises from the constant reminder that “the wages of sin is death” or the strange and disquieting stories from the Old Testament. In eighth grade, it was hard work, and though I frequently rose to the challenge and achieved an “A” in religion or in memory work (what a strange thing to ace!), I just as often resented it.
As my faith evolved and I began to question many of the traditions I was raised with, the memory verses sometimes stung like fresh cuts or ached like purple bruises. I vividly remember Paul’s edicts against “homosexuality” (a word that a new documentary suggests never occurs in the New Testament, at least in any semblance of our contemporary understanding). I can remember highlighting portions of my leather-bound Bible, “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it from you.” While it wasn’t only the words of judgment that were marked with orange highlighter, those are the ones that still seem to sting.
“Genesis Quote at memorial site,” George Floyd & Anti-Racist Street Art , accessed March 14, 2023, https://georgefloydstreetart.omeka.net/items/show/1720.
But as I have walked a little further down the road that many are calling “deconstruction” these days, I am starting to understand how generous this inheritance can be. Some of those edicts of judgment call me out of apathy toward the ache of justice: “What does the Lord require of you, O mortal? But to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Or from the words from the Genesis story of Cain killing his brother, Abel, painted on Chicago Ave in Minneapolis, the summer of 2020 after George Floyd was murdered.
Scripture still has something to teach and is still speaking to me, even if I have tried to outrun it at various times in my life.
I’ve come up with my own definition of scripture so that I can be clear with people I teach how I understand its role in my life and the world: “Scripture is our witness to the living voice of God.” Not quite as witty as Jacobson, Jacobson, and Wiersma, but it helps me stay focused on listening for God amidst these ancient verses that indict, dream, haunt, surprise, and prod me.
When I bump into things in my life, seemingly out of nowhere a passage will smile at me, mid-conversation, mid-thought, mid-dish-washing.
(Ask my spouse, it can be annoying!) Here’s an example.
We bought this hibiscus tree at Costco this summer, watered it diligently, rotated it for sun exposure, and eventually brought it inside for our cold, Minnesota-winter. At that point, I completely forgot about it for more than a month. It’s a miracle anything can live close to my gardening incompetence. After all the leaves fell and the tree looked all but dead, I decided to try watering it for once. With a little attention and love, the leaves started to sprout, and the first bloom came out, just like the prophet Isaiah, dreaming of the lineage that was all but chopped down, “A shoot shall come up from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”
How many places in our lives do we leave behind, lifeless, devoid of meaning, just a chopped off stump? But with a little warmth, a little love and attention, and perhaps the call of a gardener present at the first whispers of creation, blooms might just come forth. God gardens in the lifeless places in our lives and in the world, bringing forth possibility where there was no hope for tomorrow.
And for another example.
My mother-in-law is obsessive about the condition of the roads in the upper-midwest where we live. Dissatisfied with the Department of Transportation’s classifications of pink, blue, and green, she is wont to say, “They say blue, but these roads are definitely pink!” Every Friday, my mother-in-law sends a family text message with a little encouragement, some thoughts on the weather, and often, a verse or two from Scripture. Just before Christmastime, she sent this one:
“It's almost Friday. This weather drove Grandpa Jim absolutely bonkers. He'd be yelling, ‘Just stay home.’ And he loved his whole family together more than any gift. I have no advice for this kind of winter driving because I'm in the passenger seat with my eyes closed. But I'm praying for your wisdom and safety and your travel ahead whenever, wherever you go. If grandpa were here, he'd do the same. He might also share with you how as a child they'd hook up the horse and sleigh, wrap up in blankets and ride the maybe four miles to Emanuel Lutheran Church. It was here that the live trees were decorated with lit candles. Sounds dangerous. Anyway, amidst all the planning, changing and unpacking and stressing, let's not lose sight of the amazingness, of the birth of Jesus and all that has brought to us all hope, love, peace. You are loved. You are blessed.”
That text message isn’t a dusty family heirloom sitting untouched on a coffee table. It isn’t a list of to-do’s or a manual for morality. It isn’t the pomp and circumstance of a beautiful volume floating out into the assembly.
It’s alive. It’s a living, breathing, active word.
Active in the absolute mundane moments of deciding whether or not to drive in a snowstorm; alive in the haunted hallways of a new diagnosis; moving in the daring dreams of a child who wants more for this world; singing in the final breaths of a matriarch who looks back on a life well-lived and greets death with the smile of an old friend.
These passages knit my stories together as much as they stitch my sinews. They’ve rattled around in my bones long enough that they seem to spring out when I least expect them and perhaps when I need them the most. But they only crawl out of my body because I’ve dusted off that volume, spent time wrestling, and walked away, like Jacob did in Genesis, with a bit of a limp.
Contending with Scripture is a bit countercultural these days. But, in my estimation, it’s worth it.
It’s worth it to have hope on the tip of my tongue.
It’s worth it to see a story that stretches long before I’m here and will be around long after I’m gone.
It’s worth it to dance with the generations of witnesses who have written, wrestled, dreamed, and dared to speak of God.
It’s worth it because it’s how we can hear this living voice of God, still speaking to us today.
You might be thinking what all this has to do with the James Webb Space Telescope?
Well, a bit of something.
When they were looking to give a title to this, one of the most famous photos of deep-space, astronomers looked nowhere else than someone I can’t believe I’m quoting: Charles Spurgeon. A lion of fundamentalism, full of all sorts of problems that I could list, but preached a sermon featuring this image in 1859. My late grandmother, Phyllis Fleming, who knit Psalm 1 into the first stole I was given, would be proud of me for quoting Spurgeon! The astronomers knew they needed a bigger story than the precise science of how stars are formed.
The Pillars of Creation sparkle with the love of God that shimmers in every moment of our existence. It swings around every corner of creation from the microscopic speck of a point of a pencil all the way to the edges of the universe that we can't even imagine. These Pillars of Creation sing of a God who is breathing in the Eagle Nebula and singing at my corner bus stop.
The New York Times commented that this image looks like the very fingers of God, reaching out of the heavens. I think I see it too, God daring to breathe creation into being, to spark change in our pencil-point-of-a-world, and to trust the frailty of human language to speak to us still today.
Rev. Matthew Ian Fleming
Matthew Ian Fleming is a recovering evangelical who opens up his Bible bruises with curiosity, wonder, and a fair amount of irreverence. He is the founding director of Church Anew, an international platform equipping church leaders to ignite faithful imagination and sustain inspired innovation. With four colleagues, Matthew launched Alter Guild, a podcasting network with over 350,000 downloads that now features four shows including Cafeteria Christian with Nora McInerny and New Time Religion with Andy Root. Matthew is ordained in the ELCA and serves as teaching pastor to St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. At home, Matthew sings unrequested car-duets with his spouse, Hannah, jams on banjo with their two daughters, and religiously bakes sourdough bread.
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.
Disabled…I mean, Home for the Holidays!
Photo by Ysaias Martinez on Unsplash
It’s the most wonderful time of the year for most. At the same time, others are caught in a wintery mix of emotions, while navigating our greatest traumas and fears. Many of us sit with the fear of abandonment, the fear of rejection, the fear of judgment, and the fear of lack every year around the holiday season.
In 2019, AAA estimated a record-breaking 115.6 million Americans traveled during the holiday season. This year, we are set to break that record! The CDC is already nervous about the “burden” of the flu due to Covid and its lingering impact. Family members do not always have the compassion and sensitivity to meet the needs of loved ones with chronic conditions of the body and mind. Rather, we get lumped into a one-size-fits all onesie, or Santa hat, or holiday meal.
People in the disability community feel the weight of these realities in an intense way. Often folks with disabilities are forgotten when arrangements are being made, while meals are being carefully crafted and sometimes rendered invisible when it comes to harmful language and dialogue being used amongst family and friends. The holidays can feel like the most broken, most obnoxious, and most triggering time of year. However just as we celebrate joy, peace, and faith during this season…may we also celebrate hope.
Hope is defined in a number of ways:
to cherish a desire with anticipation : to want something to happen or be true
trust
to desire with expectation of obtainment or fulfillment
to expect with confidence : trust
I am praying we lean into a hope this year, where we cherish and desire to be in right relationship with the people around us. A hope that is anchored in a newfound trust in one another. A hope that is rooted in all God’s children living more wholly this season; while in the workplace, enjoying festivities outside or simply kickin’ it at home by the fire.
James Baldwin wrote in a 1962 article, As Much Truth as One Can Bear, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” While those of us in the disability community may not be able to change our conditions, the people who love us can shift their perspective, actions and focus to create more accessible home environments. The more accessible home environments created, the more accessible our communities become. The more accessible our communities become, the more accessible the world becomes. This for me, and so many others living with chronic conditions of the body and mind, would be A Christmas Miracle!
Here are some ways for all of us to stay safe(r) this holiday season:
Remember YOU are the authority on your experience. No one has the right to critique your experience of joy, pain, discomfort or grief.
Practice agency in moments you normally would not. Some of us lose the power of our voices when placed in uncomfortable situations. Not this year!
Have grace for your internal experience AND the experiences of others. Perhaps, they didn’t show up for you as a child because they didn’t know how to show up for themselves. We don’t have to allow abuse anymore, but who can we view with new eyes filled with grace this season?
Take a break. Take a few moments away from the larger group. Take a breather from that heavy conversation. Take a break from the monotonous Christmas tunes. Take a break from your own nervousness around the holidays. Breathe in and take a break!
Let us all, no matter our physical ability, shift our focus to accessibility. Accessibility is how we reach more people with the love of God and the good news that there is in fact room in the Inn. The great news that none of us have to be left out (in the cold) or in subpar conditions because space wasn't prepared for us.
The word nativity is defined as: on the occasion of a person’s birth. What if we transform the “Nativity” scene from an ancient festive occurrence to a modern-day miracle for family and friends? This holiday season let us celebrate the light and life of Jesus by birthing safe(r) spaces for community to gather. Let us become deeply mindful of our words and how we do harm, even when we have everyone’s best interest at heart.
Remember these are holy days, or as I like to think of them, the Wholly Days. The greatest gift may not be peace on earth this year, but rather, keeping peace within.
Sources:
Emma Edmonds, Director of Communications, 2019: AAA Says 115.6 Million Travelers will Break Holiday Records | AAA Newsroom
Definition of Hope: Hope Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
CDC: 2022-2023 U.S. Flu Season: Preliminary In-Season Burden Estimates | CDC
Baldwin Quote: Justice Quote: James A. Baldwin — Justice Innovation Lab
Rev. YaNi Davis
Iyana “YaNi” Davis, is a graduate of Claremont School of Theology with her Masters of Divinity. Rev. YaNi received her B.A. from Spelman College, with an English degree. YaNi has always been passionate about the impact of words, storytelling, truth-telling and the therapeutic nature of writing one’s words and sharing one’s story. YaNi believes firmly in our power as storytellers and sets this example everyday of her life as a coach, creative and community leader. YaNi’s methodology is known as “Wholly Hip-Hop Hermeneutics” and includes the power of Nommo, Black liberation theology and is intermixed with the culture of Hip-Hop!
Rev. YaNi, is a minister with The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and has been a featured speaker, poet and teaching-artist around the United States, throughout Europe and across Asia. YaNi uses her words wisely as a Hip Hop artist, an inspiring speaker, an effective educator, a profound poet, a modern day prophet and griot. She has shared the stage with top performers, theologians, creatives, and healers around the world, an honor that she does not take lightly. YaNi is the founder of, My SupaNatural Life, an organization that provides education and wholistic care for people living with disabilities and their caregivers.
YaNi has founded several spiritual communities/churches around the country, is the author of, Love Poems for Peace, is a kidney transplant survivor and near completion of a second masters (Professional Studies-Business of Art and Design) via Maryland Institute College of Art. YaNi is the essence of peace personified!
Website
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.