Blog Posts
Acts 1:1-11 in Uvalde
I wonder how the disciples felt.
They walked with their friend and heard him bless the poor, saw him heal the sick.
They found themselves confounded by his hard teachings about a kingdom of the weeping and stories about an unjust judge. They were uplifted by the words he spoke.
And so they had hoped. They had hoped he would deliver them from the weight of grief and death and loss and conquest and demonic forces. They had hoped for life in the midst of death. They had hoped for freedom in the shadow of an empire.
And then their hopes were dashed. Their friend was arrested and killed. Empire flexed its muscles and its most terrible weapon. Their hope was no more. Their hope died on a Roman cross, a sacrifice to empire’s arrogant power.
I wonder how they felt.
When he was with them once again. When his scars matched their grief. When they felt their hopes rising again, though perhaps more tentatively than before. Maybe this time things will be different, they might have thought
I wonder how they felt.
When they saw him lifted into the skies. When he promised they would receive a gift from God.
But, most of all, I wonder how they felt when he told them they would be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.
I worry that too many of us have made a mistake: a witness is not a spectator. There is a difference between bearing witness and looking on to a scene as an onlooker. There is a difference between the kind of witness that enters the pain of a hurting world and a spectator who gawks from a distance.
Witness is a high calling; often it is a burden. For witnesses to the ends of the earth will see stunning instances of God’s expansive grace but also crushing visions of death’s cruel rule.
I wonder how they felt.
I wonder how they felt when their feet were pointed out to the ends of the earth, about to strive through an unjust world, a world riven by empire and warfare and death. I wonder how they felt when only 120 of them were called to proclaim a kingdom that promises to set right an upside-down world.
I wonder if it felt like a hard-won hope, a hope honed by the realities of death and loss, a hope that had been dashed over and over again, a hope that persists not because we choose to be naive but because God has made a promise. And because God has made a promise then we cannot stay in one place gazing into the heavens waiting for Jesus to return. No, we are called to be witnesses to a kingdom we can barely begin to imagine, one where death and violence and grief are no more. One where the weapons of war give way to the generosity of God’s grace.
I wonder how they felt. I wonder how they felt taking that first step into a world so familiar yet so strange.
Perhaps they wondered if they could really believe that this time would be different. Perhaps they wondered if life would once and for all conquer death. They had seen it happen once before.
Could it really happen again?
Dr. Eric Barreto
Eric D. Barreto is the Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. His passion is to pursue scholarship for the sake of the church, and he regularly writes for and teaches in faith communities around the country.
Twitter | @ericbarreto
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.
It Takes a Village, or Perhaps a Nation, to End this Epidemic of Gun Violence
This post was included in a collection we shared several weeks ago in response to the tragic shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX. We share it now as a stand alone piece in the hope that it will spark dialogue as our nation continues to wrestle with the epidemic of gun violence.
Yet another mass shooting in a long list of massacres that have marked an epidemic of gun violence in the U.S. Can anything be done to end this cycle of violence, and who has the power to do it? As with many other issues, Americans have been responding to these questions in vastly different ways.
Many have been insisting, rightly so, that our elected officials have the power to tame the gun lobby and limit people’s access to deadly weapons. Many politicians who have been refusing to act are quick to suggest that the blame lies elsewhere: mental illness, lax security, our failure to arm more people, etc. So much deflection, but really, who has the power to end this crisis?
The story of John the Baptist in Luke 3 offers some insights. John was ministering in the context of a very different crisis—extreme poverty in the first century—and encountered people who professed a desire to alleviate the crisis even as they were likely perpetuating it to varying degrees. They collectively asked John, “What then should we do?” The question assumes that they didn’t know what needed to be done, or that they might lack the agency to resolve the crisis.
John places the onus solely on them and highlights their agency in remedying the crisis. He asks some to give away one of their shirts or share food, others to not collect any more than what they absolutely had to, and yet others to not abuse their power in order to accumulate wealth. John’s point is that remedying a major crisis is not about making grand, abstract commitments, but about committing to specific, concrete steps.
John also suggests that everyone has agency to varying degrees. Even as John critiques people in power, he called upon individuals to undertake changes at the individual and community level. And he offers specific suggestions they can undertake within their contexts.
Many of us are rightly angry with politicians who seemingly express a commitment to end the gun violence but deflect blame during each crisis only to continue with business as usual once the public outrage abates. We should certainly hold them accountable for their failures in preventing the epidemic of gun violence, but we should also focus on our own potential complicity in perpetuating a culture of gun violence.
Specifically, there is the rampant ethos of violent imagination that stems from a culture of violence and in turn perpetuates a culture of gun violence. And we have become a nation that encourages, or at least, condones violent imagination at an early age. Recently, I was at a birthday party for my son who is eight. Many kids were passionately discussing a violent video game called Fortnite. At one point, when a kid used a cuss word, many parents were appalled but none of them, myself included, said a word about the violent imagination in which the kids were engaged.
We cannot normalize violent imagination at age eight and hope that none of it will translate into lethal violence at age eighteen. We should perhaps actively explore ways of stigmatizing anything related to gun violence. What if we respond with disgust and horror at the very mention of violent video games just as we do when we hear of a shooting incident?
While our elected officials have a moral obligation to enact stringent anti-gun laws, the rest of us too have the power to make a difference. May we not become numb to a culture of violence. May we cringe and be disgusted when we hear the words “guns” and “shooting” at birthday parties, schoolyards, and playdates.
Yes, it takes a village, or perhaps a nation, to end this epidemic of gun violence.
Dr. Raj Nadella
Raj Nadella is the Samuel A. Cartledge Associate Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. His research and teaching interests include postcolonial biblical interpretation, migration and New Testament perspectives on economic justice and their ethical implications for the Church and society. He is the author of Dialogue Not Dogma: Many Voices in the Gospel of Luke (T&T Clark, 2011) and an area editor for Oxford Bibliographies Online: Biblical Studies. He is the co-author of Postcolonialism and the Bible and co-editor of Christianity and the Law of Migration, both forthcoming in 2021. He has written for publications such as the Huffington Post, Christian Century and Working Preacher.
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.
Uvalde: Church Anew Writers Respond
Photo by Jose Alonso on Unsplash
Following the horrific shootings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX we invited our contributors to share their thoughts and wrestle with the continuing epidemic of mass shootings in America. We pray their words guide you in your own lament and push us all to consider how we might be part of writing a new more peaceful future.
Sincerely,
The Church Anew Team
Acts 1:1-11 in Uvalde
Eric D. Barreto
Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary
I wonder how the disciples felt.
They walked with their friend and heard him bless the poor, saw him heal the sick.
They found themselves confounded by his hard teachings about a kingdom of the weeping and stories about an unjust judge. They were uplifted by the words he spoke.
And so they had hoped. They had hoped he would deliver them from the weight of grief and death and loss and conquest and demonic forces. They had hoped for life in the midst of death. They had hoped for freedom in the shadow of an empire.
And then their hopes were dashed. Their friend was arrested and killed. Empire flexed its muscles and its most terrible weapon. Their hope was no more. Their hope died on a Roman cross, a sacrifice to empire’s arrogant power.
I wonder how they felt.
When he was with them once again. When his scars matched their grief. When they felt their hopes rising again, though perhaps more tentatively than before. Maybe this time things will be different, they might have thought
I wonder how they felt.
When they saw him lifted into the skies. When he promised they would receive a gift from God.
But, most of all, I wonder how they felt when he told them they would be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.
I worry that too many of us have made a mistake: a witness is not a spectator. There is a difference between bearing witness and looking on to a scene as an onlooker. There is a difference between the kind of witness that enters the pain of a hurting world and a spectator who gawks from a distance.
Witness is a high calling; often it is a burden. For witnesses to the ends of the earth will see stunning instances of God’s expansive grace but also crushing visions of death’s cruel rule.
I wonder how they felt.
I wonder how they felt when their feet were pointed out to the ends of the earth, about to strive through an unjust world, a world riven by empire and warfare and death. I wonder how they felt when only 120 of them were called to proclaim a kingdom that promises to set right an upside-down world.
I wonder if it felt like a hard-won hope, a hope honed by the realities of death and loss, a hope that had been dashed over and over again, a hope that persists not because we choose to be naive but because God has made a promise. And because God has made a promise then we cannot stay in one place gazing into the heavens waiting for Jesus to return. No, we are called to be witnesses to a kingdom we can barely begin to imagine, one where death and violence and grief are no more. One where the weapons of war give way to the generosity of God’s grace.
I wonder how they felt. I wonder how they felt taking that first step into a world so familiar yet so strange.
Perhaps they wondered if they could really believe that this time would be different. Perhaps they wondered if life would once and for all conquer death. They had seen it happen once before.
Could it really happen again?
A Little Life After a School Shooting, a Mother’s Prayer
Angela Denker
Minnesota Pastor and Veteran Journalist
God,
He came from you to me.
Tiny, writhing, mouth open wide in a primal scream.
I remember the first time he blinked.
Eyes staring up into mine.
“I’m here.”
“I need you.”
Instinct merged with anxiety
Those first long hours
Then days
And chaotic, screaming nights
Exhaustion curled up together on the dark green couch
He fit next to me cozily, molded against my stomach like clay
Where he once had all he needed
I couldn’t put him back in
He got bigger
Huge
2 then 4 then 6 then 8
Big snow boots stomping off
Kindergarten and recess
And COVID lockdowns
He gave me morning hugs
He ate so many little bags of Goldfish crackers
I sent him back gingerly
He leapt onto the football field
He dashed around the playground
He laughed uproariously with his friends
He ate three pieces of pizza
The torn-up toes of his worn shoes flapped in the wind
The snow melted and the rain fell
He pulled up his hood and walked to school, unafraid
He’s only 21 inches taller
Than an AR-15, stood on its end
A little life can’t outlast
A little bullet
Propelled by the latest technology
And a country’s bloodlust
And our leaders’ cold calculations
Of little lobbyists and big donations
So many little bullets
Sprayed out over little lives
Little lives that are no more
No more backpacks or books
No more school drop offs or pickups
Just casings on the ground
All we have left
Of little lives
I wanted him to make 3-pointers
I wanted to go to his piano recital
I wanted to send him to college
And cry alone under the covers when he was gone
Proud. So proud.
I wanted to dance with him, poorly, on his wedding day.
To music I didn’t know.
And smile as he laughed again.
Mostly, though.
I wanted the little things.
End-of-school picnics.
Slip-n-slides.
Popsicles melting down his chin.
Letting me smooth petroleum jelly on his scrapes.
Hugging me.
With two arms.
Ma .. ma
Mama
Mommy
Mom
Mom
Mom
I wanted so much for him
And so little
A childhood
Books
Games
Gloves
Tests
Tennis shoes
Lemonade
Long legs
A little life
A little boy
Please, God
Let him grow old
Let him have
His little life
AMEN
Poem inspired by John 10:10
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
I Believe the Children
Luke Powery
Dean, Duke University Chapel and Associate Professor of Homiletics at Duke Divinity School
“I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be”—from “Greatest Love of All,” sung by Whitney Houston
We don’t believe the children are our future when we kill them in the present in their elementary schools, robbing them of innocent laughter and flourishing lives. When we live in one nation under guns, we can’t see the beauty inside the victims nor victimizers. This violent, virulent ugliness is not of God but reveals how many bow at the throne of the trigger and inhumane evil at the expense of others, especially children.
This is nothing new. At the time of the New Testament, children of the Greco-Roman world were held in low esteem, lacking status, being vulnerable, and socially and physically powerless. Some estimates are that half of 1st century ancient near eastern children died before their 16th birthday. They were there but not there for long in presence, voice or perspective.
Even the disciples of Jesus are dismissive towards children because we learn in the Gospel of Mark that when “people were bringing the little children to [Jesus] in order that he might touch them,” “the disciples spoke sternly to them” (Mark 10:13). Sometimes, many times, followers of Jesus miss the mark, too, when it comes to the role of children in the world. To scold the people who bring children to Jesus for a blessing is a sign of how we can dismiss children. It’s not enough that we never hear their voices in the Gospel of Mark or that we sometimes get antsy if they make too much noise in a church service, the disciples have to scold the constructive attempt to bless them.
In contrast to the mores of his day and also the impulses of his own disciples, Jesus says, “Let the children come” (Mark 10:14). Jesus is a child advocate extraordinaire. He responds to his followers and doesn’t want the children to stop coming to him. He welcomes them and holds them up as models for the kingdom. Jesus then goes one step further. “He took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them” (Mark 10:16). Jesus literally, “blesses fervently.” It’s an intense force signifying his intense love for children. One translation says Jesus “hugged the children.” If so, his hugging is a form of holy resistance to hate-filled violence against children.
We need to follow the way of Jesus. He embraces children as a sign of his own self-identification with the least of these (Mark 9:33-37). He reveals that how we treat children is an indication of what we think about God and who God is and how close we are to God.
We need to imagine and re-imagine what it means to be a child because welcoming children is a way of welcoming the Christ Child into our midst. We need to “Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be,” as Whitney Houston sings, or as poet Michael Coffey writes, “Take our sticky adult minds and thin our thick thoughts until our flowing childhood wonder returns at every cricket and we are moved by every chocolate kiss…”
Our treatment of children is a test of the truth of our faith—a faith in the God who came into the world as a child. If we hate and kill children, we hate God and our life is a lie.
It Takes a Village, or Perhaps A Nation, to End this Epidemic of Gun Violence
Raj Nadella
Associate Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary
Yet another mass shooting in a long list of massacres that have marked an epidemic of gun violence in the U.S. Can anything be done to end this cycle of violence, and who has the power to do it? As with many other issues, Americans have been responding to these questions in vastly different ways.
Many have been insisting, rightly so, that our elected officials have the power to tame the gun lobby and limit people’s access to deadly weapons. Many politicians who have been refusing to act are quick to suggest that the blame lies elsewhere: mental illness, lax security, our failure to arm more people, etc. So much deflection, but really, who has the power to end this crisis?
The story of John the Baptist in Luke 3 offers some insights. John was ministering in the context of a very different crisis—extreme poverty in the first century—and encountered people who professed a desire to alleviate the crisis even as they were likely perpetuating it to varying degrees. They collectively asked John, “What then should we do?” The question assumes that they didn’t know what needed to be done, or that they might lack the agency to resolve the crisis.
John places the onus solely on them and highlights their agency in remedying the crisis. He asks some to give away one of their shirts or share food, others to not collect any more than what they absolutely had to, and yet others to not abuse their power in order to accumulate wealth. John’s point is that remedying a major crisis is not about making grand, abstract commitments, but about committing to specific, concrete steps.
John also suggests that everyone has agency to varying degrees. Even as John critiques people in power, he called upon individuals to undertake changes at the individual and community level. And he offers specific suggestions they can undertake within their contexts.
Many of us are rightly angry with politicians who seemingly express a commitment to end the gun violence but deflect blame during each crisis only to continue with business as usual once the public outrage abates. We should certainly hold them accountable for their failures in preventing the epidemic of gun violence, but we should also focus on our own potential complicity in perpetuating a culture of gun violence.
Specifically, there is the rampant ethos of violent imagination that stems from a culture of violence and in turn perpetuates a culture of gun violence. And we have become a nation that encourages, or at least, condones violent imagination at an early age. Recently, I was at a birthday party for my son who is eight. Many kids were passionately discussing a violent video game called Fortnite. At one point, when a kid used a cuss word, many parents were appalled but none of them, myself included, said a word about the violent imagination in which the kids were engaged.
We cannot normalize violent imagination at age eight and hope that none of it will translate into lethal violence at age eighteen. We should perhaps actively explore ways of stigmatizing anything related to gun violence. What if we respond with disgust and horror at the very mention of violent video games just as we do when we hear of a shooting incident?
While our elected officials have a moral obligation to enact stringent anti-gun laws, the rest of us too have the power to make a difference. May we not become numb to a culture of violence. May we cringe and be disgusted when we hear the words “guns” and “shooting” at birthday parties, schoolyards, and playdates.
Yes, it takes a village, or perhaps a nation, to end this epidemic of gun violence.
Lamentations in the Night
Char Rachuy Cox
Program Director for Congregational Thriving at St. Olaf College
Like many of you,
I found myself unable to sleep last night.
My heart literally ached within my chest.
My thoughts could not be stilled.
The images in my mind’s eye
Played like an unending,
Ever-expanding reel -
On repeat.
The news images from Uvalde
Intermingled in my memory
With those of Buffalo
And Parkland
And George Floyd
And Mother Immanuel
And Sandy Hook
And Breonna Taylor
And San Bernardino
And Aurora
And Ahmaud Arbery
And on, and on and on …
An idolatrous love of violence
That invades
And pervades
And degrades.
In the deep of the night,
I recalled another time of
Tragedy
And violence
And loss –
That time it was poignant and personal –
Painful in its particularity -
Holding my dearest friend in my arms
As the sobs rose from within her
Like bitter incense
When her son was murdered by police –
And last night,
In remembering that night -
I felt again her sorrow,
And I wondered who was holding
The parents of murdered children
Amid the strangling sobs of this night.
I found myself hoping –
And wanting to trust –
But not completely believing that it was so –
Hoping –
That the Spirit was indeed interceding
And pleading
Amid the bleeding
And the grieving
But wondering –
Wondering –
If perhaps,
Amid our own collective, cultural obstinance
That the Spirit has taken a sabbatical,
Turned God’s back -
And left us to live with –
And continue to die with –
Our choices,
Our idolatry,
And our inaction.
But then,
I believe –
(statement of faith) –
That the Spirit whose presence –
And providence –
I was questioning,
Prompted me to turn
To the only place within our Sacred text
That my heart –
In the deepness of the night,
In the depth of despair –
Was open to both
Voicing and hearing,
Uttering and understanding –
Lamentations.
While I know that these words
First arose from a past-tense-time
And amid a past-tense
Profound circumstance
And need –
They both spoke to me
And for me –
Amid this present-tense sorrow.
How lonely sits the city…
She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks….
When her people fell into the hand of the foe,
and there was no one to help her,
the foe looked on mocking
over her downfall….
O Lord, look at my affliction,
for the enemy has triumphed….
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
My children are desolate,
for the enemy has prevailed.
On and on I read,
And as I read,
My tears
And my anger
And my sorrow
And my helplessness
Mingled with the generations
Upon generations
Of voices
that rise in lamentation
and supplication
amid that which is beyond
comprehension,
beyond control,
beyond consolation.
And as I found
Not necessarily comfort –
But shadows on the edges of solidarity –
In the echoes of these ancient words,
I came once again
And anew
Upon an assurance that
Has sustained me at other times
Of confusion,
Sorrow,
Grief
And disbelief:
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….
Therefore I will hope.
God is faithful;
Therefore, I will hope.
I.
Will.
Hope.
I will hope in the comfort of God
For all who grieve.
I will hope in the strength of God
For all who suffer.
I will hope in the restoring power of God
For all who are despairing.
And I will hope for the people of God
To take up space on this earth
That does not destroy,
But that gives life.
I will hope that the fire of the Spirit
Will fall again from heaven –
Fill us,
Move us to repentance,
Stir us from our complacency,
Blow through us
On the rush of a mighty wind –
And provoke us to act.
I will hope that prayers will rise up
In an embodied defiance
Of words-become-deeds
That value life more than weapons of war.
I will hope that God –
The Author and Giver of Life –
Will compel in us
A will
And a resolve
To cast out
Faux outrage
And cast off
Fear –
So that
Hope becomes more than wish.
Peace becomes more than a possibility.
And life abundant edges out
A resignation that
The way things are
Is the way things have to be.
Because we do
Trust and believe
(statement of faith)
That Jesus does make all things new.
God is faithful;
Therefore,
I will hope.
I.
Will.
Hope.
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.
From An Elementary School Teacher
If you have ever been in an elementary school at the end of the school year; it is well contained chaos. Sometimes, also, not very well contained.
Yesterday was no exception. On a near-perfect Minnesota spring day, I sat outside, in front of 50(ish) of my Kindergarten students, as they sang in their Kindergarten graduation program.
Their voices, often out of tune, and rarely in the same tempo, sang:
The future is lookin’ good to me! I’m ready to go, I’m ready to go, yeah, the future is lookin’ good to me!
AND
Nothing’s going to bring us down! Never gonna quit, gotta go! Because I know I’ll keep getting stronger.
As I climbed into my car at the end of the day, a smile on my face, I turned on the news, only to hear of yet another school shooting.
Laying in bed last night, my kindergarten students’ voices were echoing in my head, singing of the future, and of saying goodbye to friends. I thought of 19 children (and countless more) who have no future to sing of, no goodbyes to be said, and an end of the year chaos of a horrific kind in Texas.
This morning, I woke up, and got ready. In the rain, I put my 6 and 8 year old on the school bus, reminding them as I do everyday, to be “safe, kind, and responsible”.
I drove to work at an elementary school, and walked down the hallway to my classroom as I do everyday. But the silence was deafening. No chat about weekend plans. No counting of days left in the year. No bemoaning another day of indoor recess.
At 8:25 AM, the bell rang. Excited students ran down the hallway. The third graders were dressed up for a field trip to see a play. The fifth graders were bummed their track and field meet was canceled due to rain.
At 8:40 AM, the bell rang again. My 4th graders streamed into class. We played an online trivia game (which they love), and we talked about nothing in particular. We laughed, joked, and lovingly teased each other, as only a class at the end of the school year can do. It was as if we all had a silent understanding that this was our duty. Treat today as a normal day. Treat these walls, halls, classrooms as the safe places we (want to) know they are.
My brain knows we have all become too accustomed to this. That is being a student, a teacher, or school staff member in America. Greeting each other normally and calmly after trauma after trauma after trauma after trauma. My brain knows we have just become too desensitized. Used to emailed talking points and links to resources. Used to the anger, the fear, the sadness, and inaction.
My heart however, isn’t so sure. How many collective traumas can one system tolerate? I watch colleagues resign, retire early, and at the bare minimum, consider aloud “why do we do this?”
This year, I’ve had many conversations with my students surrounding resilience. I know they are tired too. My coworkers and fellow teachers everywhere are having the same conversations. Kids want to give up when things get hard, because life is harder than it was before. Last night, in talking with my 8 year old daughter about school, I asked her about resilience.
Do you sometimes get frustrated or cry when things are hard?
Yes, but if that’s all you do it doesn’t really do any good?
Why?
Because then you just get stuck.
Because then you just get stuck. We are stuck. As a country, as a people, as a system. STUCK.
In the Bible, Job says “nevertheless the righteous keep moving forward”. And this is the only way out.
The only way to become unstuck is forward.
And so, I tune out my social media, and turn off the news, and pointing fingers, and screaming voices.
I wipe my tears, and greet a new bunch of students. Giving out hugs, band aids, reminders, and calm. Making joyful (though not always pleasant) music.
Not because I am desensitized. But because I’d rather move forward to action in hope, love, and faith. Than be STUCK in a cycle of hate, fear, and anger.
As a music educator; my mind is usually cycling with some song to guide me throughout my day.
Today I’m left singing words from Stephen Sondheim, and remembering that little eyes and ears are watching and listening. So we mustn’t be stuck too long.
Guide them along the way,
Children will glisten
Children will look to you for which way to turn
To learn what to be
Careful before you say, listen to me.
Children will listen.
Hannah Fleming
Hannah Fleming has been teaching elementary music teacher for the South Washington County Schools for twelve years. She is a graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota and holds a Master’s degree from Minnesota State University. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Eden Prairie where they spend most their free time chasing them around, cleaning up messes, and laughing together.
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.
America’s Blood Moon: Do not look away
Late last Sunday night, almost midnight, I found myself stumbling around my half-lit backyard, barefoot in pajamas, squinting up into the sky.
I’d been restless for hours, scanning mindless reality TV, trying to get my brain to turn off and stop the ugly thoughts from racing through my brain.
I live in a major city, but the neighborhood was mostly quiet that night, and nobody saw me when I walked from the backyard to the front: ratty gray threadbare sleep shorts, a white t-shirt whose neckline was encrusted with drool.
I had taken a melatonin gummy, and my body was achy and exhausted from the travails of the day and the years, and it was a miracle I didn’t walk right off my front steps and fall into the bushes, where rabbits and squirrels and probably hordes of mice were scampering around, eluding their midnight intruder.
The city lights made the sky bright, even on a clear night, and so while I saw a few stars I couldn’t find the one thing I was looking for that May evening.
I forced myself to walk further in front of my house, feet padding over the cracked and rough sidewalk and onto the smooth, asphalt-covered street. A police car rolled down the main thoroughfare, blazing through the stoplight.
I sighed in frustration.
I craned my neck upwards one more time, twisting backwards and almost losing my balance … “ah!”
A sharp intake of breath. My lungs filled with air. My mouth opened agape.
The Blood Moon.
It had been hiding in the corner of the sky, tucked in a sliver of sky between our slanted roof and the neighbor’s deep red maple tree, whose leaves had just begun to open again to the sky after our frigid spring.
I had missed the full lunar eclipse, but I marveled anyway at what I saw. A sliver of light, a crescent moon illuminated, while the rest hung, craggy and angry in the sky, a muddy red color I’d never seen before on the moon or anywhere in the sky above.
People with better cameras than me posted images on social media where the moon looked like a fiery orb, the red light caused when the earth moves between the moon and the sun, creating a total lunar eclipse, where the moon is completely submerged in the earth’s shadow, according to almanac.com. Like so much of our experience here in the world, what we appear to see (a bright reddish orange moon) is not exactly what exists in reality. The solar rays that bend around the moon to reach Earth are of all wavelengths, but Earth’s atmosphere scatters the shorter blue/green waves, leaving only the orange/red colors to reach our eyes.
I stood in awe, in the road, for a few seconds. To see the Blood Moon was to be reminded of how utterly small I am; a tiny speck in a universe grander than I could ever comprehend.
I wanted more. I walked quickly inside, locating the 1950s era binoculars we stored in our boys’ bedroom. I woke up my husband; he came outside and viewed the moon.
But it was midnight, and we had to work in the morning, and the kids would need breakfast and the Earth would keep on rotating and revolving. So relatively quickly, after a few more mindless minutes of reality TV, I pulled a sleep mask over my eyes and went to sleep.
I woke up the next morning to real reality. Backpacks to gather together for sleepy elementary-school-aged boys. A last-minute request for “home lunch.” A cavalcade of ants, marching through the left-open kitchen window above the sink, massing for battle all over our kitchen countertops.
Inside me was a sluggishness. I had looked to the heavens, but I was firmly rooted on earth. Feet strapped firmly to the ground as though they were fastened with leather buckles to a pair of sandals made from bricks. Each step felt heavy, ponderous.
As I said above, the Blood Moon isn’t really bloody at all. It’s what our eyes see when we look at it; the result of what happens to light when it comes down here to earth. Some of it dies, before it even has a chance to be mourned.
That moon, blood red in the sky, hung over America like a shroud. Our light has been dimmed for far too long.
I thought about Roberta A. Drury, age 32. Margus D. Morrison, age 52. Andrew MacNeil, age 53. Aaron Salter, age 55. Geraldine Talley, age 62. Celestine Chaney, age 65. Heyward Patterson, age 67. Katherine Massey, age 72. Pearl Young, age 77. Ruth Whitfield, age 86.
Say their names.
Pearl Young still worked as a substitute high school teacher at age 77. Ruth Whitfield was stopping by the grocery store after caring for her husband of 68 years, who lived in a long-term care facility. Andre Mackniel was going to get a birthday cake for his son.
Katherine Massey reminded me of my mom. She was an avid letter writer, a person who cared deeply about the civic life of her community, who wasn't afraid to speak out and say unpopular or controversial things, doing so with irrepressible love and spirit.
Celestine Chaney was a survivor of brain aneurysms and breast cancer, the youngest of four sisters. Margus D. Morrison was a school bus aide, the kind of too-often underpaid and thankless jobs filled by the very people who impact kids’ lives the very most.
Heyward Patterson was a dedicated church member, often driving people to the grocery store and helping them load groceries into his car. He served as a deacon and loved to sing.
Aaron Salter, a retired police officer turned store security guard, lost his life protecting others, even though when he fired at the gunman, the gunman’s bulletproof vest meant Salter died instead. Two guns, two men, one dead, one a killer of 10, who would have killed more if not for Salter’s courage.
Roberta Drury had just moved to Buffalo to care for her brother, who had been diagnosed with leukemia, and his children. Geraldine Talley was a baker, and according to the Washington Post, her friends called her “the sweetest.”
I hope you didn’t skim those last six paragraphs. If you did, go back and read them again. Say their names.
On Tuesday, the U.S. marked 1 million COVID deaths. Across the U.S., one person dies every 5 minutes from a drug overdose, according to the L.A. Times.
Life has become cheap in America. If you stopped and thought about all the kids who never got a chance; all the unfair cancer diagnoses and car accidents and gunshot deaths and heart attacks, it would knock you over. You wouldn’t be able to pay your insurance or your credit card bill because it wouldn’t matter to you anymore. You’d be sucking down life, deep into your lungs, as fast and as hard as you could because you knew it wasn’t going to last.
There’s big business in obscuring death. Add collagen powder to your coffee. Try CrossFit. Buy this $400 air purifier. Botox. Fillers. Hair plugs. Hair extensions. Filters. Moisturizers. Life insurance. Fences. Walls. Guns. Armor. Ignorance.
Maybe that’s why some White people this week seemed utterly determined to look past the 10 Black lives murdered in a Buffalo grocery store last week. Some people placed an inordinate amount of attention trying to make sure we all heard about the other shootings. The other deaths. As if more death meant these lives could mean less, if only ours could mean more.
Black Lives Matter.
Do they?
Did they matter in your church on Sunday morning? On your talk news radio show? Around your dinner table? In your kids’ school?
I am talking here to my fellow White Christians, who make up the largest religious and racial group, population-wise, in our country. Too often we have imagined if we shut and scrunch our eyes up tight enough, the Blood Moon will vanish into the night. The pain and death of racism won’t have to be real to us. We can drink in the rhetoric that makes us feel better about the jobs we didn’t get, the college we didn’t get accepted into, or the money we don’t have (in our minds) without acknowledging that that same rhetoric led an 18-year-old boy/man to jump into his vehicle and drive from rural New York over 200 miles to the Blackest ZIP code he could find and start killing people because of the color of their skin.
I protested with fellow clergy in Minneapolis after George Floyd was killed. Last year, former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck until he killed him, was convicted of murder. It mattered. It matters. But none of it brings anyone’s child, parent, nephew, friend, mother, son, daughter, aunt, sister, brother, back to life. And just because lots of other people died last Saturday does not mean we can stay silent while Black Americans are being murdered because of the color of their skin.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians that “all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” but even then it was more of a prayer than a reality. That is the job of of pastors and prophets and theologians, after all, to paint a vision of the world that God desires for us, and call us into it.
More powerfully today, I hear God’s call to repentance again to rebuke and renounce white supremacy and Christian nationalism.
Like Cain killing Abel, we are tempted to turn away, hiding our eyes behind our hands while the Blood Moon shines eerily above.
“Where is your brother Abel?”
“Where is your sister Pearl?
Where is your sister Ruth?
Where is your sister Katherine?
Where is your brother Heyward?
Where is your sister Celestine?
Where is your sister Geraldine?
Where is your brother Aaron?
Where is your brother Andre?
Where is your brother Margus?
Where is your sister Roberta?
“We do not know. Are we our brothers’ keeper? Are we our sisters’ keeper?”
I do not know what replacement theory is.
I don’t see color.
There were shootings in Milwaukee, too.
There was a shooting in California.
My friend is sick.
I am tired.
“What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”
Angela Denker
Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump (Fortress: August 2019), is a Lutheran Pastor and veteran journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Christian Century, and Christianity Today. She has pastored congregations in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orange County (Calif.), the Twin Cities, and rural Minnesota.
Twitter | @angela_denker
Facebook | @angeladenker1
Blog | http://agoodchristianwoman.blogspot.com
Website | https://www.angeladenker.com
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.
Prayers for May 22
Photo by Joshua Eckstein on Unsplash
I am finding that writing prayers of intercession on behalf of the whole community can be more challenging than preaching sermons these days. People are listening for specific headlines while others are hoping the petitions stay general and broad. Martin Luther famously said that a theology of the cross calls a thing what it is, but so often calling a thing what it is means using language already claimed by one partisan group or another.
How do we pray on behalf of the whole assembly after a mass tragedy and while collective traumas still compound? How do we pray when everyone in the space has a different expectation of what we should speak aloud, how we word it and why? How do we pray when it feels more like keeping score and ticking boxes?
I don’t have certain answers to these questions, but I am clear about a few things. Like preaching, public prayer is not meant to be performative. It is not meant to leave us right where it found us. It is not meant to center the individual or the faction. And it does not have to be perfect for God to hear and know us, and love that we are trying.
My prayer for you, worship leaders, is that we keep trying. And my prayer for you, assemblies of people, is that we hold generous space for practicing together. And when we hear something that doesn’t land the way we thought it would, we stay in a posture of prayer. We trust God to do more than we can imagine with what we have to offer.
Prayers for Sunday, May 22
Creative God, we give thanks for the signs of spring and new life all around us. Birds sing and trees bloom, gentle reminders that we do not have the market cornered on right worship and praise, that you delight in our being more than our doing, that resurrection cannot be measured or contained.
Merciful God, this Easter season we remember the authority you grant to disciples of every generation: your Holy Spirit gives us the power to forgive and retain sins. You call us to participate in the work of liberation of people, communities, and all of creation. And yet, we struggle to repent with our whole hearts and trust your grace. We still get nervous and hide behind locked doors. Keep coming to look for us and renew our call to embody life beyond death.
Saving God, we seek your presence among all who bear the weight of oppression, all who experience harm and hatred, and all who suffer the sins of systems built to serve some and not others. We lament with (places). We pray for all who listen a little longer, for all who seek to understand, for all who struggle to hold the tension when the culture prefers to paper over pain and call it peace. Make a way where we cannot.
Loving God, you know our whole hearts and inmost thoughts, the deep wells of our beings. You know what has become dry and brittle, jaded and mutinous. And you know the gifts we have in plenty, nourishment for the world you love. Mend us with mercy. Quench the thirst of your people. Make us generous with the good things you have entrusted to our care.
Living God, we grieve with the families of Ruth Whitfield, Roberta Drury, Aaron Salter, Heyward Patterson, Pearl Young, Geraldine Talley, Celestine Chaney, Katherine Massey, Margus Morrison, and Andre Mackneil, killed last week at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Fathers, grandmothers, retired police officers, activists, substitute teachers, food shelf founders, church deacons - reveal yourself in their stories and the tears of all who mourn. May their memory be a blessing and their life in your good care last forever.
Tender God, we say so many things in worship and still others by way of omission. Today we acknowledge how many mass shooters are young white men who were raised in the church. We acknowledge that, in trying to avoid politics at church, we allow false prophets and racist ideologies to convolute the gospel of Jesus. Help your church to be courageous and clear about power, authority, value, and life for the sake of young white men wrestling with their place in this world.
Holy God, we pray for this congregation and every community that prays together. It’s hard to find words on behalf of the assembly when so much of our common language has been corrupted by partisan factions. It feels both radical and impossible to pray aloud in community these days, but we keep trying. Meet us in every petition with grace that pulls us out of our own agendas and earthly allegiances. Help us practice being frustrated and freed by the call to pray together. And may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Healing God, this season we recognize the risen Jesus’ wounds - and remember how much you care for ours. Show us how to offer words that cool and protect like a buttery salve; simple deeds that tend to what hurts; patient presence that is balm for bodies, minds and spirits. We pray for those who feel loneliness or despair, that you would send another alongside them for company and strength. Keep giving us back to one another and refueling our hope in you.
Meta Herrick Carlson
Meta Herrick Carlson (she/her/hers) is a pastor and writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She serves a two campus congregation all learning how to let go and lean in for the sake of a shared future. Meta’s first book Ordinary Blessings: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Everyday Life proves a worthy gift in these uncertain times. Her second book Speak It Plain: Words for Worship and Life Together with more ordinary blessings and resources for church nerds and liturgical communities was released in December 2020.
Website | Instagram
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
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.
A Pastoral Statement on the Shooting in Buffalo
The following is the text of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s statement following the shooting in Buffalo:
My heart is heavy with the news that a white supremacist gunman took the lives of 10 children of God in Buffalo on Saturday. I grew up walking distance from the scene of this hateful crime, and my friends and I used to ride our bikes around the neighborhood. Buffalo’s Black community raised and formed me. I grieve with the city and people I love.
The loss of any human life is tragic, but there was deep racial hatred driving this shooting, and we have got to turn from the deadly path our nation has walked for much too long. Bigotry-based violence—any bigotry at all—against our siblings who are people of color, Jewish, Sikh, Asian, trans, or any other group, is fundamentally wrong. As baptized followers of Jesus of Nazareth, we are called to uphold and protect the dignity of every human child of God, and to actively uproot the white supremacy and racism deep in the heart of our shared life.
Please join me in prayer for the shattered families in Buffalo. Please also join me in expressing profound gratitude for the intervention by Buffalo police that likely saved many other lives. Even amid tragedy, even when manifestations of evil threaten to overwhelm, let us hold fast to the good. It is the only way that leads to life.
Shared with permission by the Office of the Right Reverend Michael B. Curry, The Episcopal Church, in its entirety. The Most Rev. Michael Curry is the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and the author of the book "Love Is the Way: Holding On to Hope in Troubling Times".
Bishop Michael Curry
The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry is Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church. He is the Chief Pastor and serves as President and Chief Executive Officer, and as Chair of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church.
Facebook | @PBMBCurry
Twitter | @BishopCurry
Twitter | @episcopalchurch
Facebook | @episcopalian
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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.