Blog Posts
Lenten Hope in a Pandemic
A photo of leaves on snow with green buds sprouting out of the ground signaling spring and hope. Image courtesy of Dr. Erin Raffety.
I had a visceral reaction to the coming of Lent this year. I’d never felt like this before. But apparently my body remembered that it was this time last year that fear of a highly contagious virus drove us into our homes, cloistered from other people. And then there were the killings, the protests, the political unrest. I couldn’t help but think we had had enough Lent already. Anymore just seemed cruel.
But we are still waiting. We had hope, of course, a year ago that this would all be over in the blink of an eye. As the year progressed and more uncertainty appeared, our hopes flitted from one thing to the next. Hopes delayed, hopes dashed — hope became nearly as unstable as suffering.
Waiting, without hope, is unbearable.
My family knows a thing about uncertainty or two. When my daughter was diagnosed with a rare neurological disease for which the prognosis is death in early childhood, it seemed futile to hope for things like developmental milestones or even birthdays. When she was hospitalized frequently and even doctors did not know what was going on, it was left up to us to manage our emotions. On a daily basis, Lucia has unexplained neurological and gastroenterological symptoms. Sometimes we get to find out what’s going on, but oftentimes we don’t.
Practicing loving her through that uncertainty has taught me that human hope can be a bit of an imposition, with its cathecting toward certainty, its insistence on its own way, its hubris in always knowing better. I don’t always get to know better with my daughter, I don’t even always have the power to make her pain go away, but choosing to be with her in that pain, even when it hurts, reminds me that acceptance is the part of love we’d rather not choose.
But for Christians, this just may be the kind of hope we need.
Will the vaccine make my daughter’s life more accessible? I doubt it.
While the world clamors for a miracle shot, I struggle to pin my hope on a vaccine that may so exacerbate my daughter’s fragile immune system that it leaves her permanently weakened, or may not fully prevent the spread of Covid-19, leaving her vulnerable in the future, unable to go to school, we unable to return to work.
More importantly, though, our society’s beliefs about the exposable quality of disabled lives have revealed themselves (yet again) under these conditions of pandemic: it’s not that disabled bodies present irresolvable challenges to life as we know it, it’s that we refuse to accept disabled lives as viable and valuable. The recent lack of attention to the accessibility of vaccine locations, the lack of prioritization for disabled people and their caregivers in vaccine distribution, and the lack of provisions for people now disabled and living with the long term effects of Covid-19 are just a few ways we prefer to sweep disability under the rug, even wish or hope it away, rather than recognize its importance to humanity.
My point is not just that hope and disability can coexist, but that experiences of pain, uncertainty, and disability cultivate a different, faithful kind of hope that we Christians need.
After all, we serve a God whose resurrection did not leave him without wounds or scars, but whose ultimate fulfillment of hope challenged and transformed our very images of who God is. Yet, here we are, a year out from the beginning of the pandemic, and we are still relying on our own hopes to save us.
Out here in the perpetual wilderness, Jesus reminds us that acceptance is paradoxically crucial to resurrection hope. All throughout Lent, Jesus tells his disciples he must suffer, he must be rejected, he must be crucified, and he must die.
When petulant Peter tries to have it otherwise, Jesus tells him to get out of his way, to stop setting his mind on human things (Mark 8:31-33). Just a few verses later, Jesus tells the crowd, that “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)
Gospel hope, Gospel living is not about self-preservation and self-sustenance, but about radical acceptance of both the realities of our human lives and the foolish, earth-shattering difference the resurrection makes.
So this Lent, I’m calling for hope.
It often feels too tender, too raw, to hope when everything is uncertain, but perhaps that’s because we’ve put our hope in human things in an effort to distract us, to forgo the suffering and the pain.
I don’t want a hope that skips over Lent and its harsh reality, because we clearly can’t escape that. But I’m advocating for hope that anchors itself firmly in the resurrected God no matter what comes, as a taking up of one’s cross rather than a futile wish that life were otherwise.
We will still wait, of course: but let us not wait with our hope in lawmakers, returns to “normalcy,” school openings, vacations, or even vaccines. Rather, let us wait with hope and conviction in the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Our hope often insists on able-bodied dreams and futures; thus, it falls apart in the face of uncertainty. But Jesus’s hope, God’s hope finds us in the wilderness, bidding us to abundant life in the Spirit. This is where we all belong, if we could only let go of human hopes.
Erin Raffety
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.
Midwives of Life
“The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded all of us of the vital role health workers play to relieve suffering and save lives,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General. Around the world, acts of violence related to the pandemic take place against the background of escalating ‘social untouchability’ and bigoted behaviors against anyone suspected to have been in contact with the coronavirus (‘newer untouchables’). Health resources, patients, healthcare providers, and their immediate family members are at principally high risk of experiencing physical bouts due to the misinformation (‘infodemic’) that they have become points of contagion in a community.
The healthcare professionals who have stood out as the ‘courageous midwives,’ as in the book of Exodus (1:15-22), in todays’ tough times save humanity from a possible ‘health collapse.’ During this time of unprecedented and unparalleled upheaval, they hold the life of humanity in their hands just as a mother holds a newborn baby. They reach out to those who are suffering and save their lives at the cost of their own peace, security, and dreams of their dear ones. They have revealed that ‘fear and pain’ itself is possibly a pandemic even among the frontline workers. The lack of adequate personal protection, poor working conditions, long working hours, constant threat of infection, and subsequent risk to their family and friends worsen the situation.
One of the most riveting chronicles in the Hebrew scripture — the account of the escape of bonded laborers from bondage to freedom — begins in carnage of newborn sons. For his gigantic building projects, Rameses II preferred to conscript foreigners in the area, rather than native Egyptians. This was reported by the Greco-Roman historian Diodorus Siculus. The enslavement of the Israelites falls into the category that Diodorus describes.
Although the people of Israel were a “cheap” labor force, their unbridled growth in population became a major threat to the Empire. The language used to describe the high birth rate of the people of Israel (“fruitful” and “multiplied”) is perhaps an echo of the fertility of humanity of creation (Genesis 1:28) and at the new creation after the flood (Genesis 9:1,7). The Hebrew verb râbâ (“to be/become great, numerous”), translated “multiplied” in verse 7, repeated in verse 9 (as part of the phrase “more numerous”), verse 10 (“increase”), verse 12 (“multiplied”), and verse 20 (“multiplied”). Pharaoh must have thought that the massive populace of Israelites would join his enemies and destabilize his Empire.
So Pharaoh devised a strategy to deplete the Israelites by subjecting them to insufferable working conditions. What the people of Israel are dealing with is state slavery, the organized imposition of forced labor upon the male population for long and indeterminate terms of service under humiliating and ruthless conditions. Organized in large work groups, they became an unnamed biomass, depersonalized, losing all individuality in the eyes of their persecutors.
However, their population continued to grow and were an ongoing perceived threat to Egypt. At this point, foiled in the effort to lessen the Israelite population, another ploy was added to the repertoire of tactics for demographic control: elective infanticide.
Pharaoh ordered Shiphrah and Puah, who served as midwives in Egypt, to kill every baby boy born to a Hebrew woman. In issuing his decree to the midwives, Pharaoh perceptibly trusted upon the ease with which the baby could be killed at the moment of delivery by means not effortlessly noticeable in those days. Some advocate that Pharaoh, dreading an uprising, tried to dupe the Hebrew mothers into believing their children are stillborn. If so, Shiphrah and Puah are simply repaying Pharaoh in his own false coin. What is not clear is whether these midwives were Israelite or Egyptian women, for the Hebrew text can yield the renderings “Hebrew midwives” and “midwives of the Hebrew women.” It would have been strange for Pharaoh to have expected the Israelites to kill the males of their own people.
Another oddity is that only two midwives are mentioned for such a huge population. Either they were the supervisors of the practitioners and were directly accountable to the authorities for the women under them, or the two names, Shiphrah and Puah, are those of guilds or teams of midwives called after the original founders of the order. The conflict between Pharaoh and the Israelites began to take shape as a conflict between life and death.
But Shiphrah and Puah “feared God” more than the mighty Pharaoh. They refused to do the king’s bidding. In not killing male newborns, they engage in what might be termed civil disobedience. They displayed incredible courage. They fought against the agent of death on behalf of the God of life. Like other biblical acts of insubordination, the midwives’ noncompliance involves an element of ducking and diving. Ostensibly powerless, they do not openly defy Pharaoh, but deceive him. The Bible tells many stories in which a weak party tricks a stronger or in which characters engage in reciprocal, even competitive, trickery.
In today’s context, the frontline COVID-19 workers are the Shiphrah and Puah whom the God of life has appointed for our times. Their fear and pain are genuine, but like that of a woman in labor. When a woman goes through labor, she can withstand her agony as she is aware that a new life is about to deliver. They are not just saving the lives of COVID-19-affected people but saving humanity itself. God used the two midwives to redeem his people. Health workers are also few in numbers, like Shiphrah and Puah, but God has now placed the life and future of humanity in their strong and caring hands. It is their pain that shoulders humanity. It is in their sweat and tears, a seed of their untiring commitment that gives birth to a rainbow of hope. We honor them when we wear a mask, social distance, and deter the spread of the virus.
Rev. Dr. Mothy Varkey
Rev. Dr. Mothy Varkey is an ordained priest of the Malankara Mar Thoma Church, India. He is the Professor of New Testament at the Mar Thoma Theological Seminary, Kerala, India. He is also the visiting fellow at the Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. Among his many and influential works are Concept of Power in Matthew: A Postcolonial Reading (CSS, 2010), Salvation in Continuity: Reconsidering Matthew’s Soteriology (Fortress, 2017), and Church and Diakonia in the Age of COVID-19 (ISPCK, 2020), Inheritance and Resistance: Reclaiming Bible, Body and Power (CWI, 2020).
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rev.Mothy
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https://anchor.fm/mothy-varkey
Website: https://murdoch.academia.edu/MothyVarkey
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Christ | Christmas | Covid
Thursday, November 19 | 10:30am Central
Providing space for grief and lament, while reclaiming the prophetic hope of this season.
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.
Break the Rituals, Break the Chain
In every human community, there are religious, cultural, and political ‘normals’ pertaining to human behavior, body ethics, and cultural codes. These ‘normalcies’ are not divinely ordained but constructed by the elite and the powerful with their seemingly consensual discourses and ritual practices. Those who control this process of manufacturing what is ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ eventually determine ‘who’ and ‘what’ are ‘normal.’ Divinization and absolutization of such ‘Babel normalities’ make alternative voices and imaginations marginal and ‘abnormal’. The absence of liturgical alternatives and counter-practices not only deprive people of their agency but, more importantly, reduce them to mere biomass.
People are not biomass, but free persons/individuals created in the imago dei (Genesis 1:26-27). For Walter Brueggemann, this means that humans are to be understood as being situated in the same transactional process with the holiness of Yahweh, as in Israel. The covenantality of human personhood reimagines ‘new normals’ that transcend ritualized ‘normalities.’ It decapitalizes the essence of the privileged and makes the ‘image of God’ the ontological capital and democratic alternative of all human beings.
Sabbath was a covenantal alternative to the imperial and cultic ‘normalities’ that ruled the ancient world (Exodus 20:9; Deuteronomy 5:13).
Through the institution of sabbath, God denaturalized and deritualized ‘normalcies’ that reinforced the interest of rulers and kings. As an alternative to the ‘normals’ of the then empires, sabbath was a disruptive ‘new normal’ which provided the possibility for a new covenantal social space. The ‘new normal’ (sabbath) disillusioned the naturalized ‘normals.’ In the first century Graeco-Roman world, it was seditious and subversive even to envisage a ‘new normal’ because Caesar was the ultimate embodiment of normality. Caesar was normalized as the ‘divinely ordained’ being. This naturalized the imperial power of Caesar. On the contrary, Jesus invited the people of Israel to reimagine the kingdom of God as a new possibility wherein their freedom and dignity would be defined not by Caesar but by the image of God, justice and compassion.
In Luke 13:10-17, Jesus reinforces the original meaning and liberative purpose of the sabbath by disenchanting its ritual priorities.
As Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on a sabbath day, there ‘appeared’ a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years (Luke 13:10–11). As Joel Green rightly contends, “bent-over” (συγκύπτω) is not a sign of humility (cf. Sir 12:11), but a metaphor for her ignominious position in the social ladder. Her physical condition was not so terminal that her presence would be noticed. This is what happens when church becomes a mere ambulance.
Jesus ‘saw’ her and called her over to him (Luke 13:12). The deixis of the word ‘saw’ (ὁράω) may be understood as an eschatological gaze as in “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6). Through Jesus becoming flesh (John 1:14), God took the ‘flesh’ of the entire humanity upon himself. In this respect, the ‘flesh’ which Jesus took in incarnation is not a male/white/brown/black/Jewish flesh, but the very flesh of humanity itself. By laying his hands on the crippled ‘flesh’ of the woman, Jesus materialized her flesh which is otherwise immaterial and invisible to the people in the synagogue.
The crippled woman now stands ‘straight’ in the synagogue (Luke 13:13). For Jesus, contrary to that of the religious leaders who saw the woman’s ‘crippled status-quo’ as ‘normal’, it is not ‘normal’ to be (or to remain) ‘bent-over’ on the sabbath. Jesus consciously disturbs their liturgical obsessions and ritual rigidity by healing the woman. Jesus “releases” her from the chain of ritual credulity and sabbath scrupulosity (Luke 13:15), which fulfills his mission manifesto (Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 45:16 [LXX]). When ‘binding’ is ‘normal’, “releasing” becomes the ‘new normal’. Breaking the ritual is the norm in the new normal. New normal is an eschatological straightening up of the naturalized ‘bent-overs’ and normalized ritual priorities. The posture of ‘straightening up’ of the crippled woman (Luke 13:13) is the anticipation of the eschatological redemption (ἀνακύπτω-Luke 21:28); “All flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6).
Jesus called the religious leaders in the synagogue “hypocrites” because they twisted his healing activity into an issue of breaking the sabbath laws (Luke 13:15).
Healing on sabbath was already an issue (Luke 6:6–11). Meeting the needs of the ox or donkey on a sabbath day in no way mitigates its sanctity. “All flesh” must be protected and taken care of, including all of creation. For Jesus, hypocrisy meant the prioritization of wrong things (Matthew 23:23). Jewish leaders domesticated sabbath rituals and rubrics in such a way that it ‘normalized’ their priorities and ‘naturalized’ their privileges. Consequently, instead of a day of ‘rest’, the sabbath became a day of ‘arrest’ for the weak and weary.
The juxtaposition of Jesus’ healing (Luke 13:10–17) and the parabolic teaching of the mustard seed (Luke 13:18–21), which is achieved by the conjunction “therefore” (οὖν) in 13:18, is very relevant in the age of COVID-19. Jesus’ disruption of the sabbath normalities and priorities by ‘seeing’ the woman (S), ‘moving’ her to his side (M) and making her ‘stand’ straight (S) are like ‘mustard protocols’ of the kingdom of God. Like the organic process of the growth of the mustard seed to a ‘nest of rest’ for the birds of the air, Jesus’ kingdom of God interventions would eventually become a ‘nest’ for the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the blind and the bruised (Luke 4:18-19).
Although the World Health Organization protocols (SMS) such as social distancing (S), using mask (M), and sanitizers (S) to curb the coronavirus might look inconsequential like a mustard seed, it is through such mustard seed-like intercessions that we endeavor to flatten the genocidal curve. Like the kingdom of God protocols in the healing of the crippled woman, WHO protocols also paradoxically inverse our understanding of ‘normals.’ ‘New normal’ means ‘new protocols.’ New protocols break conventional rituals. It is by breaking the ‘normalized’ practices and ‘naturalized’ rituals that we can “release” people, whether from the chain/bondage of Satan or from COVID-19.
Rev. Dr. Mothy Varkey
Rev. Dr. Mothy Varkey is an ordained priest of the Malankara Mar Thoma Church, India. He is the Professor of New Testament at the Mar Thoma Theological Seminary, Kerala, India. He is also the visiting fellow at the Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. Among his many and influential works are Concept of Power in Matthew: A Postcolonial Reading (CSS, 2010), Salvation in Continuity: Reconsidering Matthew’s Soteriology (Fortress, 2017), and Church and Diakonia in the Age of COVID-19 (ISPCK, 2020), Inheritance and Resistance: Reclaiming Bible, Body and Power (CWI, 2020).
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rev.Mothy
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MothyVarkey
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/user/31msdhkqxmsosderdr2o54wl445a
https://anchor.fm/mothy-varkey
Website: https://murdoch.academia.edu/MothyVarkey
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Christ | Christmas | Covid
Thursday, November 19 | 10:30am Central
Featuring provocative, imaginative, and engaging short talks from both world-renowned speakers and emerging voices, we will provide space to grieve and lament, while reclaiming the prophetic hope of this season.
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.
Church Anew Unequivocally Denounces White Supremacy
Church Anew unequivocally denounces white supremacy.
We value diversity of opinions and believe deeply in setting a table of mutual learning across political and confessional boundaries through our blog, events, and connections with others. And hate, discrimination, and corrosive, violent ideologies such as white supremacy have no place at Church Anew. Opposed to the teaching, embodiment, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, these ideas should have no space in the walls of the church, or anywhere in God's world. We at Church Anew are dedicated to continuously rejecting and dismantling racism wherever it appears in pursuit of God's vision of beloved community.
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.
Anger in the Service of Justice: Following Jesus’ Example
I am angry, and I am not alone.
The multitude of injustices perpetrated against Black Americans by police – spotlighted just now by the complete lack of appropriate justice regarding the grievous death of Breonna Taylor – is infuriating. Also infuriating are the blatant efforts on so many levels by elected “public servants” to deny simple access to the vote for all, to stifle economic equality and protect the wealthy, to remove much needed health care protections, to avoid responsibility for COVID-19 pandemic alleviation, to scheme in order to protect their own small-minded views in the federal courts, to ignore if not vilify the poor and cut off their safety net provisions, to intentionally deplete our hurting planet of active environmental protections – well, I could go on and on. My anger feels bottomless.
These combined tragedies are, at least, waking up a vast number of people of faith, who are channeling their anger into seeking just responses to these and other crises.
We find a perfect example for doing so in the person of Jesus. Because when we read the Gospels with open eyes, we may be surprised to find Jesus getting angry at injustice — and doing something about it.
Of course, we are ceaselessly bombarded by anger in our society: vicious arguments about political and moral views on radio and cable news programs; honking horns and rude gestures in mall parking lots; maskless minions fomenting terror in the name of freedom in supermarkets; mean-spirited, vulgar and often anonymous comments blowing up our Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, or blogs; a silly disagreement with a family member or co-worker that becomes fueled by deep stress or fear and explodes into a nearly violent altercation. We face more than enough anger in our lives.
Yet, there’s a category of anger that we must recognize as distinct and necessary: moral or righteous anger. Such anger can give us courage to do what we might otherwise not be able to do, helping us to overcome the paralysis of fear. It can fuel outspokenness to rebuke evil or injustice, giving force to reproaches that otherwise we’d keep to ourselves or simply mumble in complaint.
As Scottish Presbyterian devotional author, Robert Law, wrote a century ago that anger “is merely a force, a gunpowder of the soul which, according as it is directed, may blast away the obstructions of evil, or defend us from temptation as with a wall of fire, or which again may work devastating injury in our own and in other lives.”
Time after time throughout the Gospels, Jesus angrily challenges the hypocritical religious authorities, mocking them for their self-serving, self-promoting ways. He drives the elite crazy by spending time with and showing favor to the poor and marginalized. He questions assumptions and challenges the status quo. And as a result, he becomes the target of those in authority. Ultimately, those authorities tried to satisfy their hurt feelings by killing him. You know how that turned out.
Nevertheless, Jesus showed us that there are times when we must stand up and express truth to power in constructive, meaningful, unyielding ways despite the possible consequences.
Consider how often, and in how many ways, Jesus expressed anger in the Gospels. He was clear and direct, possessing a particular purpose: to bring about justice or reveal malice or ignorance. He made no personal attacks, but rather sought to uncover the evil behind the actions. There is no record of Jesus being angered by a personal offense no matter how wrong, unjust, or violent it may have been. He lived and taught that the one who is persecuting us is also created in the image of God and loved by God, and in that reality we can love our enemy.
Just as God is righteously angered over oppression and injustice, so should we God’s children be. Learning how to balance these teachings and actions is a lifelong process for those who choose to follow Jesus’s ways.
Jesus’s mission is to liberate human souls into a loving way of life. He is all about going after what matters to God. And so he reveals dishonesty, fights injustice and subjugation, causes change, sets thing right.
Undergirding every expression of his anger is love – Jesus speaks the truth in love.
In every case the anger of Jesus is the passion of love. His love of God, his zeal for the ways of God, his mission to open the way of God to all, together make him indignant at whatever dishonors God and whatever impedes others from knowing and experiencing life as God intends.
To simplify the matter to the extreme, we might say there are two kinds of anger: natural anger, or the anger of fear and selfishness; and holy anger, the anger of love and justice. When we witness wrong done to others, particularly those who do not have the strength or means to defend themselves, then as people of faith we need to express the anger of love — the anger that gives us boldness and outspokenness in defense of what is right.
As Robert Law put it:
“Holy anger… is one of the purest, loftiest emotions of which the human spirit is capable, the fiery spark that is struck by wrongdoing out of a soul that loves what’s right and just. When a person is destitute of such emotion – when there is nothing in them that flames up at the sight of injustice, cruelty, and oppression, nothing that flashes out indignation against the liar, the hypocrite, the swindler, the betrayer of sacred trusts—there is much lacking for the strength and completeness of moral personhood.”
There are numerous ways people of faith can be involved in helping set things right. For one thing, as we wrestle with, for example, the impact of a shooting tragedy, we can advocate for stricter, common-sense gun laws, or work toward offering much-needed services for those suffering with mental illness. Or we can take on another needed effort — whether it is helping to shelter the homeless, feeding those in poverty, visiting women or men in prison, helping to clothe children in need, volunteering to serve in voting precincts or get out the vote, serving those with special needs, working with youth who need an adult mentor. The needs are endless, the inequities abound.
Above all, we can vote, and do whatever we can to make sure others can vote.
As Election Day approaches, this is a good time for each of us to ask ourselves: How might my anger be channeled into loving action? For this is how we make our anger holy and righteous.
Jesus’s example and teachings reveal to us that anger, channeled and directed in love, can proclaim a better way and fuel positive acts. At this time of anger-fueled soul-searching, of disturbed grief, as we prepare for whatever is next, may we open ourselves to the guidance of the Spirit of peace to determine how best to express our moral anger, and, in all matters, how to speak and act in love.
Adapted from an article that originally appeared at HuffingtonPost.com/Religion and Day1.org. Republished with permission.
Peter Wallace
The Rev. Peter M. Wallace, an Episcopal priest, is executive producer and host of the “Day1” weekly radio program and podcast (Day1.org). He is the author of 10 books and editor of 3; the most recent are Bread Enough for All: A Day1 Guide to Life (2020, Church Publishing, Inc.); Heart and Soul: The Emotions of Jesus (2019, Church Publishing, Inc.); and Comstock & Me: My Brief But Unforgettable Career with The West Virginia Hillbilly (2020, Amazon).
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pwallace
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Website: https://day1.org/
Website: https://petermwallace.com
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.
Trading Our Ropes for God’s Faithfulness
At the beginning of the pandemic, it was inevitable that we’d all come to the ends of our ropes. By now, however, we’ve all come to the ends of our ropes over and over and over again—people continue to die, whether from police brutality or this deadly virus, there’s no safety net, no childcare for working parents, no school for kids or support for people with disabilities, there’s no security, no hope in sight, it feels like what we give is never enough, and then the day starts over.
What do you do, how do you live, when there is no rope left?
You know the story where Jesus is walking on water and Peter wants to do it, too? Jesus commands Peter to come, and Peter’s doing it, he’s walking on water until the wind comes along, he becomes frightened, and he begins to sink. Just as Peter begins to sink, Jesus immediately reaches out his hand, pulls him into the boat and says to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:28-33) We often read this story as a cautionary tale about Peter’s lack of faith, but I wonder if we’re too quick to judge and our judgment clouds what God is showing us.
After all, we have all been faithless before.
A few weeks ago, not being able to be with a few of my dearest friends who were experiencing death and life transitions and challenges, began to break me. I felt so helpless and worthless and horrible. If I’m honest with myself, maybe I felt as upset about not being a good friend as I did about being apart from them and watching them suffer.
You see, I wanted to swoop in — I get a lot of satisfaction from swooping in — from helping people, especially helping them to solve their problems. Take that away from me, and maybe I’m not such a good pastor, maybe I’m not such a good friend, or even a good Christian.
It seemed to take proud, self-sufficient, busy, self-important me a long time to get to the end of my rope, but eventually, because there was literally nothing left to do, I cried out to God in prayer. I sat on my porch, morning after morning and just because there was nothing else I could do for anyone, I prayed.
Isn’t it ridiculous that it took a pandemic for me to lay down my work, my ministry, my problem-solving abilities, and call on God to help?
Isn’t it ridiculous that it took me getting to the absolute end of my rope to see my need for God’s faithfulness? Isn’t it ridiculous that we often think that ministry as primarily about our faithfulness rather than God’s faithfulness to us?
I think we’re often very proud that we never get to the end of our rope, but isn’t that somewhat the same thing as not truly letting God rescue us? I wonder how many of us are there on the water—sinking, flailing, drowning—yet too resolved to admit our weakness, our helplessness, our need for God.
The point of this passage is not that Peter is faithless—we’re all faithless at times—but rather that God is faithful. And that no lack of faith on Peter’s part, your part, or my part can screw up God’s ministry. When Peter cries out, “Lord save me!” Jesus immediately reaches out his hand and catches him.
He would never not catch him. God’s faithfulness endures even when ours falters.
But that is also not the end of the story. Out of heartbreak and helplessness, mercy ministers and hope is birthed. Out of the heart-wrenching book of Lamentations comes the promise, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23)
We’ve been cooped up like you all in quarantine, perhaps even a bit more because my daughter has multiple disabilities and is immunocompromised. But she and her nurse have also been walking the neighborhood morning and afternoon and by now, they’ve met neighbors who we never knew existed in ordinary times. The older man just down the street from us told us recently that now that he has to move, the thing he will miss most about the neighborhood is seeing Lucia everyday, especially her smile.
As we walked home from a short visit with our neighbor my husband mused, “I wonder why it is that so many people respond to Lucia that way, that they feel like they have a special connection with her even when they’ve only just met her.” Lucia neither walks nor talks: she doesn’t see well and she can’t really move her arms or legs purposively. I try on a few explanations for Lucia’s magnetism until I finally reply, “I think that when Lucia interacts, she doesn’t hold back. Like when she laughs, she chortles and cackles and carries on, and when she smiles, she’s not stingy, she gives you a huge, effusive, effervescent smile. She doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. And to feel like you can make someone that happy in an instant, and to receive that kind of abounding love from someone is something none of us can get enough of.”
The glorious truth of the gospel is that we don’t need to save ourselves: God’s already done that.
And although the human condition is depraved and arduous and painful and really sucks a lot of the time, there are these antidotes to it, these gifts of joy and hope that we know are from God, because they bubble up like laughter, the break forth like smiles from somewhere well beyond, outside ourselves. The faithfulness of God meets us in our most faithless hour, pulling us up and out of the water, where the steadfast love of the Lord engulfs us in seemingly impossible ways.
Who would have thought that in despair, God would meet me in prayer? Who would have thought that in a pandemic, my daughter would bring joy to the neighborhood? Who would have thought that God can restore us in our very helplessness, if we only let go of our own ropes and reach out for Jesus’s hand? Who would have thought that God’s mercies would be new, even this very morning?
“You of little faith,” I hear God saying. “Through it all, I am faithful. I will never, ever forsake you.”
Erin Raffety
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.
Leaning into Disability, Lamenting with Freedom
I remember how it felt to choke out those words. I remember how my teeth clenched around them. I remember how my chest tightened as I stammered in our living room to my spouse.
“I’ll be dammed if after all Lucia has been through, this virus is what kills her.”
It surprised me a bit when the words came tumbling out. I thought I had made peace years ago with my young daughter Lucia’s medical fragility and especially with her terminal diagnosis. But the global pandemic—especially the shortage of PPE and other medical supplies, the overwhelm of physicians and hospital staff, and the increased vulnerability for individuals who rely on full time nurses and caregivers—has created new challenges for people with disabilities.
On the one hand, the rest of the world is gaining a glimpse into the many challenges people who live with chronic pain, disease, and disability face every day. The world has also benefited tremendously from people with disabilities’ ingenuity in confronting such challenges through the use of technology, universal design, and creativity. People with disabilities have always utilized a combination of online and in-person platforms to network strategically, protest boldly, and adapt courageously in an able-bodied world.
But the pandemic has also revealed how deep the roots of ableism run and how intertwined they are with sexism and racism.
People of color and people with disabilities are dying at much higher rates than average citizens. Plus, the medical needs of some are so often positioned as an additional burden for the country rather than an invitation to justice or care.
Indeed, as churches especially are clamoring to return to face-to-face worship, nostalgic for the simplicity and straightforwardness of ministry in the pre-Covid days, it often feels as if they presume all their challenges will be erased with this return to “normalcy.” Sometimes it feels like we want to sweep aside any perceived weakness or suffering if only we could get back to the “good old days.”
We incessantly talk about the pandemic. We try to control the logistics of returning to worship. We so rarely talk about how it feels to be terribly, utterly afraid.
Sometimes it’s easy to get the idea in the church that being fearful is a sign of faithlessness. If “perfect love casts out all fear,” you certainly can’t be scared and trust God at the same time.
But squashing our fears with logic or brute strength doesn’t seem to make us more faithful. Ironically, as we bury, stifle, and stuff down our fears, we drive more social distance between us than this virus ever could. We shut ourselves off to real relationship. We become numb before God.
In mid-March, a class I was co-teaching with students with intellectual and developmental disabilities at The College of New Jersey and master’s students at Princeton Seminary had to go online like all others. As we fumbled through our new virtual ways of relationship, we figured we at least knew how to pray together. The other instructor, the seminary students, and I carefully crafted beautiful, theologically astute prayers for patience, healing, resilience, and strength in the face of a global pandemic. These prayers were abruptly punctuated by the TCNJ students’ cries against the injustice of those they knew who were getting sick (“It’s not fair! This is scary!,” they said), their hurt from being alone (“I’m sad at home. I miss my friends”), and their fears about what might happen in the future (“What if this never ends?” they worried).
It was not only a profound teaching moment for my seminary students who were taken aback yet strangely comforted by the earnest expressions of emotion that poured out of their friends and classmates. This moment was also a powerful reminder of how the ritual of lament in the Bible provides a container for our seemingly out-of-control emotions to be honored, held, and known by God. With lament, God essentially says, “Let it all out, I can take it. Faithfulness is not about keeping it all together when the going gets tough.”
In light of these laments, I can now see clearly how my clenched teeth and tightened chest were but an attempt to control my own anger, frustration, fear, and trembling. I didn’t want to open up to the possibility, yet again, of losing my daughter. If I stood before God and others in my deepest fears, would I not become utterly powerless, defeated, and obsolete?
Leadership and lament are not about us. Leadership and lament are about God’s faithfulness—about how God crouches down in the dirt with us, envelopes us precisely when we let go, grieving with us, laboring with us, growing us back toward one another. What if in leaning into chaos and fear, we don’t lean away from, but into God? Where can we flee from God’s presence? Even in our powerlessness, won’t God find us, even more so?
God has promised to turn our mourning into dancing. But maybe we who refuse to mourn also cannot dance.
A country that remains numb to its pain, fear, and injustice cannot feel God’s comfort. Churches that do not have the courage to open themselves up to the deep-seated fear of their people will never preach hope.
But God will not forsake the broken-hearted. Would that we would bear our broken hearts with one another in faith so that God’s Kingdom and God’s justice might come quickly to this earth. Would that we would be known to the world as a sanctuary for the broken-hearted so that no one would have to be afraid alone.
Erin Raffety
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.
Torah, Darsheini, and Black Preaching in Response to the Killing of George Floyd
Photo courtesy of Deanna Thompson at the memorial site for George Floyd, 38th and Chicago in Minneapolis
I offer these words on the murder of George Floyd as a “d’varTorah” – words of Torah, in the broadest sense of the word. Torah is not only what’s in the scrolls in the synagogue, though I will draw on them. Torah is also life, our lives today, which, like what’s written in the scrolls, cry out ‘darsheini’ – explain me, interpret me, dig deep. The African–American Christian preaching we heard at Floyd’s memorial service and funeral also drew both on our shared sacred texts and our lived experiences, in the effort to bring comfort and find meaning.
I was moved by the preaching of Rev. Al Sharpton at the memorial in Minneapolis. I know Sharpton is a problematic figure for many in the Jewish community. I acknowledge this, but also want to dispose of it for the moment and talk about his preaching.
[Sharpton] spoke not only about Floyd’s death but about death itself, about his belief in a world beyond this one, where justice and peace already exist, a place where the wicked have no power.
Sharpton used the well-known verse from Ecclesiastes – “There is a season and a time for every purpose … ” urgently charging listeners that now is the time to address meaningfully and courageously both racism and police practice. He spoke not only about Floyd’s death but about death itself, about his belief in a world beyond this one, where justice and peace already exist, a place where the wicked have no power. “Go on home, George”, he said; “Get some rest, George;” words spoken with love and anguish, offering a pathway from the horror of Floyd’s murder, to an exquisite and eternal peace that we on earth can only imagine.
Sharpton’s sermon went from real time to the timeless and eternal nature of God. By the end he was shouting the words God is, God has, God shall. It was powerful; he had me. These words are part of the Hebrew hymn Adon Olam, a hymn sung at the conclusion of Shabbat services; v’hu haya, v’hu hoveh, v’hu yihiyeh – He was, He is, He shall be. Jews who join in Shabbat communal prayer sing those words regularly but I’m not sure we feel the words as an urgent statement of faith that could bring great comfort, especially when this world seems so broken.
By the end he was shouting the words God is, God has, God shall. It was powerful; he had me.
Like many of you I’ve been going over in my mind the scene of George Floyd’s killing, wondering what I might have done had I been among the onlookers. I’ve been fixated on the two rookie cops sitting on Floyd’s back and knees. Why didn’t they stand up and say, “This is wrong, I won’t be part of this”? If I’m honest with myself I can imagine a partial answer. While I think of myself as strong and courageous, I know there have been times when I’ve chosen, whether out of fear or uncertainty, to not question the chain of command (though not with catastrophic consequences like here). It takes role models, experience and maturity to find one’s voice and use it. It has taken me years to find mine, and I’m still a work in progress.
The scene of Floyd’s dying brings me back to the scene of Joseph and his brothers when Joseph was nearly murdered. People love to say of the young Joseph, “He was spoiled, clueless, and arrogant.” But his flaws pale next to the murderous actions of his brothers.
Yet those ten brothers were not a monolith. The original plan was to murder Joseph and throw the body in a pit. But oldest brother Ruben intervened, saying, “Don’t kill him, throw him in this pit alive, so we won’t have blood on our own hands.” Hard to know why he didn’t simply stand up and say, “Don’t do this, it’s wrong.” Nonetheless his intervention saved Joseph’s life. He accomplished what we are hearing from parents of Black children, who teach them, “Your job is to survive the encounter. Do whatever you have to do to survive the encounter.”
Then we hear from Judah. Joseph is crying out from the pit when a caravan is passing by, and Judah gets the idea, “Let’s not leave him to die, let’s sell him. After all he is our brother, our flesh and blood.” His words are often interpreted as morally flimsy; I hear in them a spark of moral awakening. And some courage: he dares say to a mob bent on murder, that the intended victim is a human being and their brother. “We are connected,” he seems to realize. Selling Joseph was an imperfect intervention, but the result was that Joseph survived. Maybe there is a hint of divine help in Judah’s awakening – after all not one but two caravans just happened to come by.
[Judah’s] words are often interpreted as morally flimsy; I hear in them a spark of moral awakening. And some courage: he dares say to a mob bent on murder, that the intended victim is a human being and their brother.
One of the preachers at Floyd’s memorial services referred back to this very story, quoting Joseph’s words to his brothers later in life: “You meant to do me harm, but God has used this for good.” The preacher continued, “God doesn’t make everything happen, but God knows how to use what happens.” This is just how Joseph evaluated his own suffering, which ultimately brought about good for his entire clan. The preacher at Floyd’s funeral carefully expressed a similar sentiment: Floyd’s killing was a very bad thing, but what God does with it, what we do with it, need not be.
I’m grateful to have been brought into the world of these African American Christian preachers these past few weeks. I will appreciate Adon Olam more now. And I share with them a passion for our timeless stories, mirroring as they do aspects of our own realities: the dynamics among the brothers, the hierarchies, the hatreds, the naïve but perhaps genuine yearning on Joseph’s part to be one with his family; Judah and Ruben, who despite growing up with some violent brothers still had the flame of humanity alive in them, and were able, however imperfectly, to raise their voices and save a life.
Violence and hatreds persist; in every generation we are called upon anew to stand up to bullies, to listen, and to develop the skills and the courage to raise our voices.
Violence and hatreds persist; in every generation we are called upon anew to stand up to bullies, to listen, and to develop the skills and the courage to raise our voices. We each must work hard to recognize the humanity in each other, so that when conflict arises, no one has to die in order that what God intends for good can come about.
These words by Rabbi Shosh Dworsky, Associate Chaplain for Jewish Life at St. Olaf College, were originally delivered at Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, MN. Rabbi Dworsky’s position at St. Olaf is funded by The Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community, and the open-hearted interaction she models between Jewish Torah study and Black Christian preaching in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death embodies the kind of interfaith engagement the Center hopes to foster at St. Olaf and beyond.
Used with permission from The Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community at St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN.
Rabbi Shosh Dworsky is the Associate Chaplain for Jewish Life at St. Olaf College and the Associate Chaplain for Jewish and Interfaith Life at Carleton College.
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.