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

Lent Devotion: Everyday Holiness

1. Everyday holiness is bread and wine.

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

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

2. You don’t have to tidy up first.

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

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

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

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

3. Holy hospitality and a family meal

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

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

This is the gift Communion offers us.

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

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

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

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

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

5. Pandemic Communion

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

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

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

I miss those conversations.

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

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

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

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

Laura Jean Truman

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

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

Photo by Eric Sun

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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 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.

Laura Jean Truman 1/5/22 Laura Jean Truman 1/5/22

Epiphany: When God Speaks Our Language

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

Psalm 139:7-10 NIV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the Gospel, beginning to end.

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

Laura Jean Truman

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

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

Photo by Eric Sun

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Angela Denker 4/22/21 Angela Denker 4/22/21

The Faith of the Floyds

On June 1, 2020, after commanding law enforcement officers to use tear gas and riot control tactics to clear a group of peaceful protesters seeking justice for George Floyd, a Black man who was killed in Minneapolis on May 25 by former police officer Derek Chauvin, then-President Donald Trump marched to the front of St. John’s Episcopal Church holding a Bible.

Standing with Trump in front of the church for a staged photo op were members of his family, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and members of the military, including the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Trump’s Attorney General William Barr also joined him.

Trump did not mention George Floyd on that day, nor the legion of other Black men and women killed by American law enforcement since the days of slavery and Civil Rights. Trump did not mention the ugly history of racism and the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist ideology infiltration into American law enforcement, including the Minneapolis Police Department where Chauvin worked, notably its union president, Bob Kroll.

Trump didn’t mention these things because Kroll and his ilk were among Trump’s greatest supporters. And though he stood in front of a church holding a Bible, the only Gospel that mattered that day was the Gospel of Donald Trump, and of power.

Trump did not pray. He did not open his Bible. He walked away after the photo was taken, leaving in his wake injured protesters with burning eyes, crying children in the streets.

***

For a majority of white Americans, particularly white Christians, this was their “Christian” president. He brought megachurch pastors and Evangelical Christian musicians into the White House. When I traveled across the country to interview Christian Trump voters for my book Red State Christians, in 2018, people told me again and again they were so glad to have a “Christian” President in the White House again, that they believed Trump was praying.

His comments about his lack of need for forgiveness and his “little white cracker” and “2 Corinthians” notwithstanding, for a majority of white American Christians, Trump’s wealth, his white skin, his conservative social politics, these were enough to consider him their Christian President. Some white Christians told me that they assumed former President Barack Obama had been a Muslim, despite a well-documented track record of attending a Black church in Chicago, and Obama singing Amazing Grace at the funeral of a Black pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed during Bible study by white supremacist youth Dylann Roof.

The white Christians I interviewed never mentioned Roof, that he’d been confirmed in an overwhelmingly white denomination (the same one I serve in as a Pastor), and they never mentioned America’s history of terrorizing Black people, particularly Black Christians in Black churches.

On June 1, 2020, an American faux-Christianity was on full display: a Christianity that had forgotten its brown-skinned Savior, who died poor and forsaken and killed by his own government as an enemy of the state, for daring to proclaim liberation and justice for the poor, and in doing so getting crosswise with the religious leaders of his day.

***

Somehow, just as the stone was rolled away against all odds that first Easter morn, the Gospel finds a way to endure nevertheless. After four years and many more decades and centuries of a whitewashed Christianity that abuses women and practices financial grift of its church members, on April 21, 2021, a more ancient Christian Gospel elbowed its way to the forefront of American Christianity.

It did so without overwhelming political power or money or a whole cottage industry of Christian books, music, and culture. It did so against all odds, in a family rooted in Houston’s Third Ward, a historically Black neighborhood where residents like George Floyd faced growing up with “aging housing, underfunded schools, health-care disparities, high unemployment, and other forms of systematic inequalities,” according to an April 10 article in the Washington Post.

Much of the popular white Christianity voiced in America in recent years has oozed with bitterness: the idea that Christians were under attack from the “culture wars,” that they couldn’t say “Merry Christmas,” that their beliefs and traditions were being squelched, that their liberties and freedoms were being trampled upon, most recently by government edicts requiring the use of facemasks during a global pandemic.

George Floyd’s family could have easily swallowed this same pill of bitterness. And inside, I’m sure they did feel bitter: bitter at the ways American law enforcement targeted people of color, especially those living in neighborhoods without a lot of options. Bitter at the ways that America criminalized addiction. Bitter that their brother, their cousin, had gone North to find better opportunity as an ex-felon, only to die at the hands of the police for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill.

I’m sure the Floyds felt bitter when politicians who could not bear to utter their brother, their cousin, their nephew, their friend’s name instead chastised the millions protesting over his violent death to “go home” and “be quiet.” They condemned the riots but did not condemn George Floyd’s death, even though the world had watched Chauvin kill him on cellphone video shot by a 17-year-old girl.

Many white Christians across America went to church that week after George Floyd’s murder and heard sermons that called for peace but ignored Biblical edicts for justice; they read passages about quietism and calm but did not listen to the command of Genesis 4, when God hears Abel’s blood crying out from the earth and God will not be calmed, because Cain had betrayed his responsibility to his brother by killing his brother.

Too many white American Christians never saw Black Americans as their brother or sister or sibling in Christ.

The Bible has always been holy words in human hands, interpreted in human minds, and the Bible is too-often twisted to support a narrative that defends an American status quo that keeps white Christians comfortable.

Anyway, the Floyd family did not owe America its grace. They had every right to return bitterness with bitterness, the bitter fruit of a poisoned tree.

As Paul writes, “I will show you a still more excellent way,” however.

On April 21, 2021, Philonise Floyd reacted to the Minneapolis jury’s finding of Derek Chauvin guilty on all counts with words like these, as I quote from memory: “The name we lift up this day is Jesus. Thank you Jesus!”

Philonise Floyd had prayed silently in the courtroom: without a photo op, without a prop Bible, without tear gas or riot control. He’d prayed alone and without his brother. He bowed his head and simply prayed, even though he’d been told in America that the Christian God was not for him. That God’s justice was not for Black lives.

Philonise prayed anyway, and in his words he resurrected again the Savior who rose 2,021 years ago on Easter morning. Jesus was not at the Law and Order photo op after all. Instead he was wounded, crucified, and eating with so-called sinners, speaking to Samaritan women, and proclaiming for all to hear that he had come to “proclaim release to the captives … to let the oppressed go free.”

This Jesus — the God who humbled Godself and took on human form to save the world through weakness — this Jesus spoke in America this week, through the faith and the grace of a Floyd family who white Christians in America didn’t quite deserve.

Philonise’s prayer was a protest; his words a proclamation.

No, God did not ignore my brother’s death. No, God is not on the side of violence and human power and wealth. No, God does not ignore the cries of the oppressed. No, God does not tell us to help ourselves. No, God does not wield a gun. No, God does not silence those who cry out for justice. No, God does not claim peace where there is no peace.

Again and again, in their grief and in their brief moment of forcing accountability in American policing, the Floyd family talked about prayer, about faith, and about Jesus. In doing so they issued a challenge to the prevailing wisdom about Christianity in America, about those lily-white paintings of Jesus that hang in churches where Pastors once claimed enslaved people were less than fully human because of the color of their skin.

It is that pernicious lie, the lie of racism, that is destroying the American church, wrapping itself around and squeezing the life out of parishioners, fostering the seeds of hatred and sexism and homophobia and abuse.

Standing in the breach is the faith of the Floyds: the irreproachable witness of centuries of African American Christianity, a protest against the hijacking of Jesus, and a reminder that an America that was truly rooted in the Gospel would never have done the things it did to Black people.

To view America through the lens of the faith of the Floyds was to see both a desolating sacrilege and also an almost impossible hope for justice, love, and maybe finally peace.

The guilty verdicts were not justice. But Philonise Floyd called upon the name of Jesus anyway, because in this truthful telling about America, and in this final honoring of the value of his brother’s life, Philonise Floyd heard Jesus speak.

And then, as they had since May 25, 2020, and long, long, before, Black Christian leaders in America, Black Lives Matter protesters, and people from every race, faith, and ideology all over the world, grounded their movement for justice and equality in the power of prayer.

They reminded all of us, as we stared at an America so devastated by sin, a reflection of an America too long ignored by white eyes, of Jesus’ words to the disciples in Luke 9:14-29.

Jesus’ disciples had tried everything to heal a boy who was brought before them. But they could not do it. They believed the boy was dead. Then, Jesus took the boy by the hand, and suddenly he lived.

Jesus’ disciples asked him why they couldn’t cast out the demon.

“This kind can come out only through prayer,” Jesus said, and in these words I think about a country and a Christianity we sometimes think is dead — and an original American sin we are trying so hard to cast out.

May we learn anew to pray, in the wake of a tiny step toward justice, in the powerful example of a family whose faith turns American Christianity upside down, and reverts it back to Jesus.

Angela+Denker.jpg — Rev. Angela Denker

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

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Nekima Levy Armstrong 4/21/21 Nekima Levy Armstrong 4/21/21

Healing Our City Reflection

Editor’s Note: Church Anew is honored to share the words of Nekima Levy Armstrong spoken on April 13, 2021 at the Healing Our City Virtual Prayer Tent. On April 21, she reshared the video on social media with the following introduction. Used with permission by CLNE.

Our partner Center for Leadership and Neighborhood Engagement (CLNE) continues to offer the Healing Our City Virtual Prayer Tent. Each morning at 8:00 AM Central Time join with people from all over the country for approximately 20-minute prayer experience which begins with a timely reflection by a different religious/spiritual leader each day and followed by a period of 9 minutes and 29 seconds of silent prayer/meditation.

Friends, Good Morning. I feel as if I can breathe a little better in light of yesterday's powerful and historic guilty verdict against Derek Chauvin on all three counts. For those who are people of faith and/or those who could use some inspiration, here is a video of a short message I gave last week during Healing Our City, in which I referenced the circumstances surrounding the murder of George Floyd, and the spiritual insights that were present.

I hope this message provides you with further encouragement as we remember the life of George Floyd and as we press forward in the fight for justice.

Nekima Levy Armstrong

Nekima Levy Armstrong is a civil rights attorney, national expert on racial justice, former law professor, activist, and legal scholar. She previously served as a Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas Law School for thirteen years, where she founded and directed the Community Justice Project, an award-winning civil rights legal clinic.
In 2017, she was named 100 People to Know by Twin Cities Business. In 2016, she received the Distinguished Service Award from the Governor’s Commission on Martin Luther King Day. In 2015, she was named one of “40 Under 40” by Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal. In 2014, she was named a “Minnesota Attorney of the Year” by Minnesota Lawyer and recognized as one of “50 Under 50 Most Influential Law Professors of Color in the Country” by Lawyers of Color Magazine. She previously served as president of the Minneapolis NAACP, and ran for Mayor of Minneapolis in 2017.

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

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 4/12/21 Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 4/12/21

We All Have Something

My son wanted to talk about the death of rapper, producer, and actor Earl “DMX” Simmons. He reminded me of the various number one, platinum albums from this prolific artist. I noted that DMX, “Dark Man X,” even wrote music detailing his relationship with God. Yes, he struggled with drug addiction, but his walk with the Divine was just as pronounced. He was in and out of prison, but he never understated the presence and power of the Holy One in his life. “Lord Give Me Sign,” “Jesus Loves Me,” and “Prayer” are just a few of the songs boldly revealing his spirituality. DMX also declared he was a deacon and later a minister.

As a New Testament professor, I often interrogate of how the Bible appears in pop culture. Movies, literature, poetry, art, and music pepper my course syllabi. I engage these sources as means of connecting a historical document to this current context.

I also seek to find synergy between the past and present. While not an aficionado of rap per se, I admit DMX helped do some of this heavy lifting. His rough tone, verbal gravitas, and intense lyrics not only provided a path for connecting in the classroom, but opened a door to peeping into his own struggles. As artistry does, there was space to contend with my own challenges and idiosyncrasies. Say what you will, DMX reminds us that we all have something.

We all have something with which we are struggling. There is an addiction Achilles heel or an issue that is not a reflection of our best self." In II Corinthians 12:6-7, Paul calls it a “thorn in the flesh.” We may not wrestle with repetitive cocaine or crack engagement, but it could be anger, domestic violence, or alcohol use proclivities. We all have something. It is pointless to parallel life circumstances or equate personal vicissitudes. Such existential Olympics is unnecessary.

The bottom line is there is an issue that makes us triangulate individual shame, guilt, and embarrassment. If we are honest, on our best days the matter or matters lie just beneath the surface. On our worst days they erupt in volcanic fashion spewing fire and singeing all in our paths whether intentional or not.

The past year’s Covid-19 context has no doubt exacerbated whatever was and is the troubling in our soul. Isolation, social distancing, limited forms of connectivity, and the loss of loved ones due to the virus have been sources of emotional, mental, and spiritual agitation and dishevelment. An increase in domestic abuse, assault, and other acts of violence, particularly in the home, attest to this.

Yet, the coronavirus condition has provided a place of pause and pensive positioning. The forced abating of some activities has coerced us to slow down and think on many matters. Even in the midst of the chaos, there have been opportunities to creatively reconsider who we are as a people and as individuals.

We have had time to ponder the something rubbing like sandpiper in our lives.

The death of DMX proved to be another personal and theological watershed moment. May his words call us not to judge each other, but to lean in and lead with gentleness. For the truth is, we all have something.

“Life or death, live or die (Uh)
I will never live a lie (Uh)
I'm gon' get because I try (What!)
I won't quit until I die (What!)
I'm gon' make it, wrong or right (Yeah!)
And make it through the darkest time (Yeah!)
And when the morning comes, you'll see
That all I have is God in me (Lord give me a sign!)”
-“Lord Show Me A Sign” by DMX

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, author, speaker and teacher, is a Baptist and Disciples of Christ minister who holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Vanderbilt University. Her latest book is *When Momma Speaks: The Bible and Motherhood from a Womanist Perspectiv*e. This #WomanistMomma currently serves as Associate Professor and Academic Dean at Chicago Theological Seminary.
Facebook: Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder
Twitter: @stepbcrowder
Instagram: StephBuckhanonC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Raj Nadella

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

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

Lent: Being Human with Our Human God

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

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

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

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

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

Lent is grittier, earthier, and more human.

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tillich continues,

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

We are tired, but we are not alone.

Laura Jean Truman

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

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

Photo by Eric Sun

One Year Changed: Faith in Pandemic

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

The Lent I Didn’t Want

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks Pastor Joseph Graumann Jr.!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I lay out tiny tins of ashes we bought online.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Angela Denker

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

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

Morning and Mourning in America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 1/19/21 Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 1/19/21

Pondering Black Women’s Bodies

As a Black woman prepares to become the first Black, first woman, first South Asian to occupy the U.S. vice presidency, Black women’s bodies have been on my mind. My own body has been on my mind. I have been thinking about self-care, wellness, and the importance of never negotiating boundaries. I am aware that not all hold my beliefs about my body in such high regard. Society at large tends to devalue and diminish Black women’s bodies. Who we are and what we represent and how we re-present remain cause for celebration and consideration.

I watched the television series P-Valley. Judge all you want. Say what you will. I was glued to the tube for every episode. The show about a strip club captured me because of its Southern flavor and flair. Its setting is just miles from my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. The show’s creator, Katori Hall, hails from the Bluff City as well. Episodes are peppered with dialogue and cultural references to this area in the Mississippi Delta.

To say P-Valley is about Black women in a strip club is a gross understatement and artistic interpretation. Its messaging centers on self-provision and agency. It pivots around a place where Black women can use what they have and make it work for them and their families. At The Pynk, Black women’s bodies is business. This gentleman’s (and gentlewoman’s) club in Chucalissa is also the source of theological ecstasy and spiritual release. The club owner, a Black transgender woman named “Uncle Clifford,” acts as priest using the strip mainstage as altar.

Sexuality. Theology. Sociology. Pecuniary Security. Black women’s bodies have been on my mind.

Whatever affirmation and existential prowess P-Valley depicted, reality quickly took away. The images of Anjanette Young’s naked body surrounded by numerous Chicago police officers is well … arresting. In a botched raid, men in blue broke into a Black woman’s home while she was undressing. Fearing for her life, Young did not have or take time to cover her body as officers rushed her and her home. For over two minutes, there was this Black body exposed while police rummaged her personal belongings looking for something, someone not there. The police disregarded Young’s more than 43 shouts of “You have the wrong house.” Even more painfully, they disregarded her nude Black body.

Unlike the women in P-Valley who freely, unashamedly share their physical giftedness as they choose, Young believed she had no option. Stand there stark naked or lose your life. The Mayor of Chicago, a Black lesbian, has promised accountability, more than likely fiscal compensation. However, what can pay for Young’s humiliation in what is supposed to be her place of safety? Breonna Taylor too reminds us of a recurring theme that a Black woman’s house is not always her home.

Sexuality. Police brutality. Sociology. Accountability. Black women’s bodies have been on my mind.

The United States stands on the cusp of another historical presidential inauguration. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will become the first woman of African descent to walk the halls of the White House. While Michelle Obama resided there, Harris will be in the room — the room where deliberations of national impact are made. Her Black female body will grace 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue also known as 1600 Black Lives Matter Plaza.

There were other Black women who put their bodies on line to pave the way for Vice-President-elect Harris. Charlotta Spears Bass was the first Black woman to run for vice president of the United States. In 1952, she ran on the Progressive Party ticket with Vincent Hallinan after rescinding her Republican affiliation. Post becoming the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968, “unbought and unbossed” Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm became the first Black person to seek the Democratic party’s nomination for president in 1972. The present state of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris pivots from the past activism acumen and the political prowess of these two Black women.

Sexuality. Politics. Gender. Possibility. Black women’s bodies have been on my mind.

Of course, the biblical scholar in me would be remiss not to draw from this textual well. The story of the Queen of Sheba is worth noting. The narrative in 1 Kings 10 and 2 Chronicles recounts her traveling to see King Solomon. She does not come hat in hand, but with a great caravan and spices, gold and precious stones to boot. What is intriguing is that this Ethiopian woman comes to Solomon and “tells him all that is on her mind” (1 Kings 10:2). She has been wondering if the word about Solomon is true and wanted to see for herself. Ancient texts attest to the power of Black women having something on their minds.

When moments of imposter syndrome seek to wash over me, I am reminded that it is my Black woman presence folks are reacting against. It is their overreaching into me that instigates my wanting to question me. It is their confusion about what I embody that strives to make me doubt me. Nevertheless I persist. Black Cinderella has left the building and refuses to be belle of the diversity, equity, and inclusion workplace ball.

Black women’s bodies, my body have been on my mind. I want this body to be around to hug and nurture my children’s children. I want to be eye candy for Black girls and yes, Black boys to not just dream, but see what is possible. With the self-sufficiency and curiosity of the Queen of Sheba, in the spirit of Bass, in the legacy of Chisholm, with the audacity of the women at The Pynk, steeped in the anger over Young and Taylor, in the hope of Harris and from the womb of my Black grandmother and Black mother — may it be so.

Brown girl brown girl
How are you so strong
'Cause I got Queens in my blood
To help push me along
-Lesle Honore

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, author, speaker and teacher, is a Baptist and Disciples of Christ minister who holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Vanderbilt University. Her latest book is When Momma Speaks: The Bible and Motherhood from a Womanist Perspective. This #WomanistMomma currently serves as Associate Professor and Academic Dean at Chicago Theological Seminary.

Facebook: Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder
Twitter: @stepbcrowder
Instagram: StephBuckhanonC

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

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

Law and Morals

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

Law and Order.

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

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

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

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

Law and Morals.

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Ulysses Burley III

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

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

Christ | Christmas | Covid

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

On-Demand Access

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

Reflection on Terror in Washington D.C.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raj Nadella

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

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 1/14/21 Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 1/14/21

More Pandemonium in a Pandemic

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

The acts of insurrection last week proved the refrain is still true: “Black people cannot do what white people do. The consequences will be different.”

In June 2020, innumerable armed guards phalanxed the Capitol ready to pounce Black Lives Matter protesters. However, this past Wednesday was a stark contrast as white seditionists overpowered police officers, desecrated legislative halls, disrespected federal offices, and demoralized congresspersons and senators alike. With the statue called “Freedom” looking down, extremists took much liberty, looted, and ran amok on Capitol Hill. The images of mayhem and chaos from that white, pristine edifice are quite different from those in Ferguson and Baltimore. Why? Race in America makes the difference. Race in America is the difference.

Before some of us could celebrate historic victories in the Georgia senate races, our attention was diverted to efforts to circumvent and upend democracy.

While thousands of Americans were dying, still dying, from COVID-19, a narcissistic, political sickness begged our focus. As the liturgical calendar turned the page to Epiphany, a manifestation of mayhem, madness, and selfish motivation demanded center stage. And yet, this is the messiness of humanity. This is the messiness of the season.

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

“I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom.”

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

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Facebook: Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder
Twitter: @stepbcrowder
Instagram: StephBuckhanonC

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

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

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

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

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

May You Be Brave

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

May God Strengthen You for Adversity

A blessing for today:

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

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

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

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

Reflection on Terror in Washington D.C.

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

Dr. Greg Carey
Professor of New Testament
Lancaster Theological Seminary

Preaching When It’s Broken

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Pandemonium in a Pandemic

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

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

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

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

Law and Order.

Law and Morals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s consider anew the gravity of this question.

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

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

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

The magi celebrated.

But Herod quaked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what do we do?

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

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

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

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

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

Rev. Angela Denker
Pastor, Author, and Veteran Journalist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A blessing for grieving terrorism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Racial Equity as Spiritual Healing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this is not easy work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You might ask, “how?”

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

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

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

Naaima Khan

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

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

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

Coming Back Together: Church and Consent Culture in 2021

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

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

What is Consent Culture?

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

Normalize Options

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honor Personal Space

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

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

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

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

Recognize Whole People

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

I asked my kids for a few ideas:

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

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

I have a few more:

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

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

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

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

Meta Herrick Carlson

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

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

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

What Kind of Neighbor Are You?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Ulysses Burley III

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

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

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

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

Renouncing State Violence

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

The stories of their crimes make for harrowing reading.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LAW AND ORDER!

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

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

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

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

Death is shameful business.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christ | Christmas | Covid

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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.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 12/17/20 Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 12/17/20

Kamala and Her Converse

I have been thinking about my mother quite a bit. This is her birthday month. She was only 44 when she committed suicide over twenty years ago. The older I get, the more and more I look like her. I have her complexion, her eyes, and her nose. I have her intellectual drive. I also have my mother’s feet — flat, fat, and stubby.

My mother and I share the same foot structure. Yet, our paths were quite different. The roads we traveled and traversed were quite different. She did not live to reach my age. We have the same DNA, but our destinies were distinct. I am clear that I would not have walked this road were it not for her clearing a way.

There is much conversation about Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her affinity for Converse sneakers. Yes, the first Black, first woman, first South Asian to hold the second highest office in the United States dons Chuck Taylors. Not Louboutins, Ferragamos, Louis Vuittons nor even my favorite, Nike Air Maxs, but tried and true All-Stars. Perhaps this adds to her list of firsts.

Harris contends she wears the sneakers for comfort. Pictures showed her on the campaign trail and at various rallies in either black leather, white, or tan low tops and occasionally blinged out high top Converse gear. A more dressy platform style would pair with pantsuits. I imagine this shoe game will be a staple once she takes the oath of office. After all, the White House and Number One Observatory Circle are pretty spacious with very extending hallways.

One cannot forget the uproar over Harris stepping off a plane in Timberlands. She was not wearing tiny, kitten heels or stilettos from hell, but beige rugged boots. I surmise Madam VP-elect is embodying the dawn of a new shoe day. When it is time to get to work, lead with your mind and your feet. The professional can also be very practical.

Nonetheless, I consider Harris’ footwear as more than a call for women to rub against sartorial mandates. Political history compels us to call the names of Black women who paved the path for Harris. Looking over America’s shoulders, we must summon the sisters and herald the matriarchs on whose shoulders Harris stands, and yes, in whose shoes she now walks.

Charlotta Spears Bass was the first Black woman to run for vice president of the United States. Disgruntled and giving up her Republican affiliation after thirty years, Bass was nominated to the Progressive Party ticket in 1952 with presidential candidate, Vincent Hallinan. Bass had a vibrant career as a newspaper editor for The California Eagle. The Eagle sounded Bass’ platform of social justice related to housing and education discrimination. In her acceptance speech for the Progressive nomination, Bass declared:

We support the movement for freedom of all peoples everywhere—in Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East, and above all, here in our own country. And we will not be silenced by the rope, the gun, the lynch mob or the lynch judge. We will not be stopped by the reign of terror let loose against all who speak for peace and freedom and share of the world’s goods, a reign of terror the like of which this nation has never seen.

The road to a Harris vice presidential election also advances through Shirley Chisholm. Chisholm holds a double first. Representing a district comprised of Brooklyn and Bedford-Stuyvesant, she was the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968. Four years later in 1972, Chisholm became the first Black person to run for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. “Unbought and Unbossed” Chisholm bulldozed doors that had been closed not only to Black women, but to Black people in general.

As a New Testament scholar, this metaphor of feet-walking-paths summons a particular biblical passage. Hebrews 12:1 states, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us…” The phrase “run with perseverance the race that is set before us” is striking. It could mean to run or pursue a path that is one is facing. I posit it references that which has already been established. The interpretive lenses are mutual. What is in front or is set infers someone or something had to assist in putting it into place. The present state relies on past activity.

The present state of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris pivots from the past activism acumen of Charlotte Spears Bass and the political prowess of Shirley Chisholm. Bass and Chisholm labored and sacrificed to “set before us” and set before Harris the race for Harris to run. In the spirit of Ubuntu, she is because they were.

The Converse sneakers Kamala Harris wears are made from the soles and souls of Black women who ran the race before her — and for her. Here’s to running to see what the end will be.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

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

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

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

Advent: When Waiting Is the Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

During Advent, the waiting is the work.

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every time.

Laura Jean Truman

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

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Christ | Christmas | Covid

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

On-Demand Access

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

Blog Posts

1. Everyday holiness is bread and wine.

2. You don’t have to tidy up first.

3. Holy hospitality and a family meal

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

5. Pandemic Communion

Laura Jean Truman

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

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

Laura Jean Truman

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Photo by Eric Sun

Lent in a Box

Rev. Angela Denker

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Nekima Levy Armstrong

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

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

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

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

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

Dr. Raj Nadella

Lent is grittier, earthier, and more human.

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

Laura Jean Truman

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Photo by Eric Sun

One Year Changed: Faith in Pandemic

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

Angela Denker

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Angela Denker

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Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Dr. Ulysses Burley III

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Christ | Christmas | Covid

Raj Nadella

Before some of us could celebrate historic victories in the Georgia senate races, our attention was diverted to efforts to circumvent and upend democracy.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

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

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

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

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

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

Naaima Khan

What is Consent Culture?

Normalize Options

Honor Personal Space

Recognize Whole People

Meta Herrick Carlson

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Dr. Ulysses Burley III

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Angela Denker

Christ | Christmas | Covid

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Christ | Christmas | Covid

Laura Jean Truman

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Photo by Eric Sun

Christ | Christmas | Covid

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