Blog Posts

Church Anew 5/25/22 Church Anew 5/25/22

Two Years Later: Racism In America

National visionaries, professors, and pastors provide biblical wisdom to help make sense of the world today.

Two years ago today George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis. We continue to mourn his death and the racism that permeates this country. We offer the following words from our network of contributors shared after Mr. Floyd’s death in the hopes they would continue to provide a witness for your proclamation and our living together in a more just and peaceful world.

We are currently collecting thoughts from our contributors regarding the mass shooting in Uvalde, TX and will be sharing those shortly.

Sincerely,

The Church Anew Team

Dr. Walter Brueggemann
Professor Emeritus
Columbia Seminary

The church is in the “Love Business.” That is what we do. We dare make the claim that “God is love” (I John 4:16). Our come back to that wondrous passion of God for the world is to love back…love God…love neighbor. Indeed the way we love God is to love neighbor. When we receive the love of God and act it out toward God and neighbor, we are not afraid. We are not afraid because

Perfect love casts out fear! (I John 4:18)

That is the strategy we use with our young children. Our love for them overrides their fears. We may pause over this stunning statement. When we are secure in a long reliable faithfulness fear, has no power over us; we are free to live grace-filled, unencumbered lives without looking over our shoulder. As we face this immediate brutality in our midst, it seems that the gospel proposition in the epistle is completely reversed:

Perfect fear casts out love.

What a mouthful! “Perfect fear!” Fear that is totalizing, all encompassing, redefining everything! Our society is now occupied by perfect fear:

The virus lands us in fear;
The disabled economy leaves us in fear;
Elementally we may be fearful that the old familiar which is precious to us is evaporating before our very eyes. The old certitudes don’t count for much.
Fear mongering has become a political strategy, because frightened people are easier to manipulate.
And of course there is always the old fear of the other, fear of everyone who is unlike us, fear of people of color.

Fear makes love impossible. Love moves us toward the other; fear draws us away from the other. Fear turns to anger under threat. Fear turns to hate; fear easily morphs to violence. Anger, hate, violence are forms of fear that we imagine will make us safe.

The community in the love business might well pause over fear, name it, pay attention to it, notice it, and dissect it. We might do well to have prayers and litanies that name, in dramatic ways, the fears that summon us and notice their power for us. It is our work in love to outflank fear by greater evidence of love, by outrageous gestures and policies of love, by foolish give-aways of life’s resources with nothing held back. Love is “the great give-away” that can be acted out in terms of health, wellbeing, education, and housing.

We are in a contest between love and fear. It is counter-intuitive for us to bet on love but that is the bet we have made in baptism. The epistle ends with an admonition:

Keep yourselves from idols. (I John 5:21)

Idols are false forms of assurance. To trust such false forms of assurance is to live in fear because we know the idols cannot keep their promises to us. Every day we are in process of deciding whether love or fear is the order of the day. Now is the time for love to make a stand against fear. We make that stand by implementing our baptism in neighborly ways. Fear cannot win against love that is bold and wise for the neighborhood.

Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Methodist Theological School in Ohio

Pentecost Sunday easily is one of my favorite days on the Christian liturgical calendar. The pageantry of fiery red banners and glorious music to remind us of the Spirit among us always encourages me. But as it has approached this year, I have not been excited. We are not going to gather in person for the pageantry, so we will not be able to reenact the spilling out of hiding into the full light of God’s grace and the boldness of witnessing the great power of God. We won’t be able to practice that pageantry that reminds us we are empowered and prepared to tell the story of God in Christ. But though I will miss the pageantry, that is not really why I’m not excited. The level of grief and rage that has encompassed me and so many justice seekers and workers I know has made it hard to turn toward the festival. What can we say about the power of God “fully come” to the gathered disciples in a season of sustained and increasing racialized terror? What can we say about spilling out into the streets, empowered beyond fear, in an age of sheltering in place and hunkering down? What can we say about rushing wind and little fires when Minneapolis is burning?

Acts 2:14 and following, where Peter—the one who had denied Jesus on the night of his arrest—found his voice to interpret the clamor the people in the streets were seeing arrested me while I was pondering those questions. “These people are not drunk.” Drunk didn’t make sense, especially since what was happening was that the people from the upper room, the once-hiding disciples were emboldened to speak about God’s deeds and more importantly, the people heard “in their own language.” Jerusalem was about as multinational and multicultural as they come, but these disciples were not. And maybe Pentecost in the midst of my sorrow can remind us that this gift is not nationalistic; it does not belong to one place or one people. For me, trapped in an North American nightmare, today that thought helps me say, “come, Spirit, come!”

The other piece that has me struggling is that Peter quoted the prophet Joel. “All flesh.” It’s the “all flesh” that I’m struggling with today, too. The Spirit comes and blows upon and ignites “all flesh.” That would mean that all flesh is holy, touched, anointed, called—no matter their gender, ethnicities, or economic status. It would mean that, like the scene to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, we are compelled to love our flesh. The spirit comes to “flatten the curve” of inequalities and differences in flesh, so to speak. But today—sitting in my living room, wondering about the fires alit in Minneapolis or the broken hearts of family members who have lost loved ones to COVID19, I want to both hold hope that that flesh is empowered, too, and scream to the top of my lung.

The Day of Pentecost in Acts is a hopeful scene. Today, I hope beyond the raging fires of frustration, the Spirit will blow on our embers and remind us what power we have to change the world for good.

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

On a Pentecost Sunday far too reminiscent of far too many Sundays for African American communities, I would start preaching this weekend by first going back to Jesus’ commission of his disciples in Acts 1:8. There, Jesus calls his followers to be witnesses, to bear witness to what Jesus has done until our feet reach the farthest extent of our imaginations. Before the gifts of Pentecost, a crucified victim and resurrected conqueror of imperial violence teaches us to witness, to see, to speak, to move, to be.

Witness, you see, is not just a verbal activity. Witness is not characterized solely by words or speech or language or even a tweet.

Witness is a bodily act. Witness walks alongside the oppressed. Witness looks into the eyes of the dying, not as a spectator but as if our lives are intertwined, for they indeed are.

Witness notes the thin, capricious, unjust line between the living and the dying. Witness marches on the streets. Witness votes with love.

Witness says, “Enough,” but then does something about it with the power some of our hands wield, the persuasion some of our voices are given, the places where privilege lets some of us stand without the threat of state violence.

The kind of witness Jesus calls for here includes our mouths and our eyes, of course, but also our ears. Witness trusts the testimony of those who have been oppressed, even without video evidence. Witness trusts those who have been harmed.

Such witness is necessarily costly. Such witness makes demands upon our lives. And let’s be clear: if we seek to be witnesses of what Jesus has done and experienced, the burden of witness is amplified.

For in the Gospel of Luke, we bear witness to an innocent man hung up on empire’s arrogance, sacrificed at the altar of law and order, vilified for the cause of the Pax Romana, executed because the powerful can get away with murder, killed to preserve the perception of social safety and economic prosperity. And in his innocent death, we ought to see that if we happen to sit in the shadow of empire’s protections, that shadow is fleeting as the whims of empire shift. And if that protection is something we never assumed, then we are reminded that Jesus lived that trauma right to a Roman cross.

My friends, hear Jesus say to us, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” And now hear him say, “You will be my witnesses in Ferguson and and Waller County, Texas; Baltimore and Staten Island; Cleveland and Louisville; Falcon Heights and Minneapolis; and to the ends of the earth where we imprison the masses and cage children because of profit and fear and the nation’s collective complicity in racial injustice.”

Before the flames of Pentecost, the call to the disciples was already clear: witness, see, speak, move, be.

That ancient clarion call could not be any clearer today.

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

There is a demon in this land. A demon, whose name is legion, who has infected our collective soul since even before our birth, a demon whose logic, whose power, whose method is degradation, subjugation, death. The demon possessed souls throughout the land, well dressed, respectable, scientific, religious, passing lies as truth to make profits for a few. It is a demon that quotes scripture to mimic divine sanction, that is taught, like Gospel, passing one generation to the next, delighting in the crucifixions of innocents that need no cross to make their point.

There is a demon in the land, its power is fear, its weapon is violence, its method is lies, its name is racism. This demon has passed from generation to generation taking new forms, resulting in the same violence. “I am legion” the demon warns, “I am slavery, I am lynching, I am prisons, I am policing. You cannot kill me, for I am with you always.” The demon is certain of its survival, because we, as a country, refuse to name it, refuse to expose the demon for what it is, refuse to do the spiritual and reparation work to cast it out. Until we do, it will throw us again and again into the fire, until we are consumed.

Will we cast out this demon of white supremacy? Will we send this demon into the herd of pigs to be drown? All things are possible with God. I believe Lord, help me with my disbelief. The Lord calls to this sinful generation: Repent of the racism that corrupts your body and repair the destruction of slavery that has been rent for the centuries. Cast out this demon, and be saved.

Dr. Kimberly D. Russaw
Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible
Christian Theological Seminary

On Monday, May 25, 2020 a police officer asphyxiated Mr. George Floyd.

As one of the human body’s reflex processes, breathing seems to be one of life’s most natural abilities. I heard one yoga instructor say that our bodies were made to breathe. Nevertheless, a police officer cut off Mr. George Floyd’s airway and denied him his natural ability to breathe.

On Memorial Day officers of the peace stood by as their colleague strangled Mr. George Floyd. On the day many paused to remember those who breathed their last breath in military service, those charged to protect and serve the citizenry suffocated Mr. George Floyd.

Breathing is so critical to human life that medical technologies have been developed to aid those who have trouble breathing on their own. Asthmatics and those who suffer from bronchitis, or emphysema know quick-relief inhalers and medications can ease restrictions to a person’s airways. Under extreme cases, breathing machines or ventilators blow air into the lungs, helping a person breathe when they are unable to do so on their own.

On May 25th, anyone with access to social media or network television heard Mr. George Floyd plead that he could not breathe. He could not breathe because his lung function was compromised. Lung function is important because, according to the American Lung Association, alongside our heart, our lungs pump oxygen-rich blood to all the cells in the body. The lungs move breath through our bodies.

This important work of moving breath through a system is not new. According to the biblical writers, when The Divine began to create, “the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters” (Gen 1:2, Common English Bible).

The Hebrew word translated “wind” in this verse may also be translated “spirit” or “breath.” The verse may therefore read: God’s breath swept over the waters. Before God spoke and there was light, God’s breath moved. Before there was Sky and Earth, God’s breath moved. Before there was sun, moon, or stars, there was the breath of God. It seems in the beginning, the one thing active was God’s breath.

The American writer and civil rights activist, James Weldon Johnson renders a poetic account of the origin of humanity and offers that breath is what makes us living.

“This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in his own image;
Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.”[1]

God blew God’s breath into a lump of clay formed in God’s own image. On May 25, 2020 a police officer denied that same breath to Mr. George Floyd who (though formed in God’s own image) lay on the ground like a lump of clay. How is it that one human can so callously undo what which God has done?

Gen 1:2 reminds the reader that even when darkness covers the face of the earth—God’s spirit, God’s wind, God’s breath moves. And when God’s breath moves, chaos acquiesces to order. When God’s breath flutters light appears in darkness. When God’s breath moves without restriction, humanity transforms. We become living souls again. The question for believers is, “Will we move with God’s breath or will we restrict God’s breath?”

[1] James Weldon Johnson’s poem “The Creation.”

Rev. Angela Denker
Minnesota Pastor and Veteran Journalist

Did we lock the front door?

Where’s your mask?

Are the sirens far enough away?

My son looked out his window last night and said he saw a dark orange light, and his dad told him it was the sun, setting, but then we realized it was fire.

Flames engulfed our city of Minneapolis last night. Angry fire, purifying fire, destructive fire, devastating fire.

In the midst of a fire, the smoke gets so thick that you cannot breathe.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breath keeps us alive.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Don’t breathe my breath, or I could give you Covid, or you could give me Covid, and we both could die.

People who die of Covid often die because they can’t breathe, the virus engulfing their lungs and suffocating them. Sometimes a machine breathes for them, for long enough that their lungs can heal and gather strength again.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Shove a tube down his throat, he coughs, saliva enters the air, the virus doesn’t care: it comes only to kill and destroy, using the breath that gives us life.

George Floyd couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t the virus but a knee, a white police officer’s knee, kneeling onto tall, strong, dark-skinned George Floyd with the full weight of racial anger and prejudice and corrupt systems and segregated neighborhoods and institutions built in liberal Minnesota that weigh heavily on all our chests.

It all came to bear on George Floyd that sunny day.

George Floyd was big, strong, black. But in Minnesota we don’t have problems with race. We pretend it doesn’t exist. We support African-American rights and privileges. Just not in my neighborhood. In theory we love black people. We wish they’d come to our churches, sit in the back and sing our white hymns and not make too much noise.

In reality we choose a different park. We ask if they have a permit for that barbecue. We say it’s about “good schools” and “crime” and “drug abuse.”

We love diversity. Below a certain percentage. Talking a certain way. Staying in our sanctioned box.

The air we breathe itself has always been racist and contaminated and threatening death and destruction. Now we can’t ignore the death in the air any longer. It burns bright orange.

Fire needs oxygen to burn. First the fire then the air clears, and you can breathe life again.

This weekend is Pentecost: the day the church celebrates holy fire, flames that brought understanding and unification and new hope.

The flames of Minneapolis these past few days signify death and destruction. No neighborhood deserves to be destroyed. George Floyd did not deserve to die.

Only God can take flames of death and transform fire into new life and hope for the future.

First Jesus enters into a locked room filled with fear. He enters into a people who have begun to give up hope, to ask if all they believed was merely a mirage.

He breathes on them. The Holy Spirit is fire. It’s also breath. Breath is life.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

The Holy Spirit is among us.

Dr. Shively T. J. Smith
Assistant Professor of New Testament
Boston University School of Theology

This Sunday, I am seated before a mirror viewing the Paradox of Pentecost. Today should be a Sunday that reflects back on us a fresh vision of hope, expectation, and power. But, for many, we stand before our mirrors trembling with other emotions:

FRUSTRATION… because yet another white person feels entitled to censure a black and brown body in a public, open space
GRIEF… because “nearly 23% of reported Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. are African American as of May 20, even though black people make up roughly 13% of the U.S. population”
FEAR… because attacks on Asian and Asian American communities and individuals are on the rise
HELPLESSNESS… because protecting inmates and employees within incarceration facilities from the virus is low priority since African Americans and Hispanics comprise approximately 56% of all incarcerated people, though we collectively constitute only approximately 28% of the U.S. population
RAGE… because of George Floyd’s death when law enforcement took a knee on his neck.

This 2020 Pentecost Sunday, I am not in the upper room receiving an infusion of the Holy Ghost and power. Rather, I find myself returning to the foot of the cross on “Long Friday,” standing alongside Mary Magdalene and other women “looking on from a distance” (Mark 15:40) as Jesus “breathed his last” (vv. 37, 39).

This past week, we have lived our own modern version of that ancient crucifixion story. We watched the story replay again. We viewed the spectacle of death created by the racist actions and proclivities of those living under the delusion that they are the most powerful, chosen, and righteous of us. Yet, in our faith story, those most chosen are not the ones inflicting pain and death, mocking and blaming the victim as life leaves his innocent body.

Standing as one among the Marys and Marks of today, watching helplessly as “they” kill again, I see Jesus crying out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani; My God, My God why have you forgotten me” (Mark 15:34).

When the Bible ceases to be sufficient for capturing my lament this week, I reach for the Prophet Marvin Gaye when he crooned “Inner City Blues” in 1971:

Oh, make you wanna holler
The way they do my life
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life
This ain't livin', this ain't livin'
No, no baby, this ain't livin'

Be clear, my friends. Though we ask, “My God, why have you forgotten us?” or we bellow Marvin’s declaration, “This makes me want to holler”—this week is NOT God’s doing. This moment is the theater and pageantry of empire that stares in the face of God’s creation and destroys anyway.

When I think about all the Floyd’s—male and female—who breathed their last and the countless witnesses that have watched in despair with little hope of recourse or justice, I return to today’s Paradox of Pentecost. During this day in which I am supposed to feel most powerful and hopeful as a person of faith, I instead feel powerless. Yet, I am animated by the random outbreaks of mixed emotion and the cacophony of sounds rising from within me and outside me. Today, I hear Jesus’ cry. I hear Marvin Gaye’s song. I hear Floyd saying, “I can’t breathe.”

I stand enveloped by the sounds of protest from every color, creed, and class challenging censorship, erasure, dismissal, divestment, and slaughter. People cry out in many forms to be seen, heard, and counted as human beings with the right to justice, equity, and flourishing. Today, I hear clearly. I see plainly. I feel deeply. Perhaps here is the Pentecost moment.

I also sense the lamenting vibrations of my ancestors running through my head, heart and hands. When they had no words, they sang a lament of truth and questions, facing death-dealers who wielded rhetoric of God and state for their own perfidious ends. Theirs is a song bubbling up from a grieving, yet defiantly resilient people. When I sing it, I remember that together, there is more than just watching we must do and my ancestors showed us the way… “Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Ooh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble …

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

Now when Adam and Eve knew each other, she conceived and bore a son they named Cain, which means their sum (to produce). Cain grew up to be a farmer who cared for the land. His brother Abel watched over the flocks of animals. When the young men made sacrifices to God, Abel's was regarded but Cain's was not received with the same appreciation. And this was deeply disturbing to Cain.

While Cain knew how to produce and strive, he did not know how to feel or fail or ask for forgiveness. This lesser appreciation for his sacrifice was enough to unravel his sense of self, his loyalty to kin, his faith in God, and his stewardship of creation. You see, when you are named for what you produce, your output can become confused with your identity and inherit value.

Cain internalized God’s silence and decided that Abel was the problem. Scripture says he acted out of his mind.

So the LORD said to Cain, “Why is your body so angry, your face downcast, your mind keeping score, your spirit justified by fear? Evil waits where your insecurities fester. Turn away from these things and live.”

But Cain’s paranoia outweighed his fear of the LORD. He lured his brother to the fields and murdered him in a jealous rage. Cain chose being right over and against being in relationship while Abel’s blood soaked into the earth.

When God asked after Abel, Cain told the LORD “I am not responsible for my brother. What does his suffering and death have to do with me?”

And God wept. God wept for the brother whose breath and beats were stolen. And God wept for the brother whose breath was wasted on violent apathy and lies.

The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. You will toil and wander and struggle to produce in this land that knows your brother’s blood.”

Unacquainted with confession and empathy, Cain defended his actions and played the victim. His only concern was protecting his own breath and beats from revenge. And so he wandered away from family and farm and faith, marked by the curse of his own insecurity and isolation for generations.

Some say he still wanders, still seeking salvation without repentance, reparations, and reconciliation for the murder of his brother Abel. The fear is still breathing. The hatred is still blowing. Violence still swirls in the air between blood soaked earth and heaven’s banner.

Ms. Rozella Haydée White
Owner, Coach, and Consultant
RHW Consulting

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” John 20:21-22

Peace be with you.

I send you

Receive the Holy Spirit.

In these two verses, Jesus provides a framework for people of faith to embody life-giving and justice-seeking faith.

The Promise: Peace.
Our imagination of peace has to expand beyond a state that is defined as the absence of conflict or a sanitized, surface level understanding that doesn’t fight to create a new reality. In the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”[1] The promise of peace to always be with us; the peace that surpasses human understanding; peace that flows like a river all point to peace that is marked by justice. That which is just is that which breeds life. We have no peace because we have no justice. Lives are being taken because we have not justice. Peace and justice coexist to create a new reality that reflects the promise of God - a world where there is no more dying and no more tears; where there is no more grief and no more disconnection. The promise of peace makes way for us to do the work that God has sent us to do in Jesus’s name - the work of liberation.

The Assignment: Liberation.
I’ve been participating in an online conference this week called The Wellness of We. One of the presenters said, “I am not interested in allies. I’ve erased this word from my vocabulary. I am interested in folks who understand that our liberation is interconnected.”[2] When I heard these words, my spirit leapt and I was instantly reminded of a quote that is credited to Lilla Watson, an Aboriginal activist from Australia. “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”[3] I don’t need you—White people—to help me. I need for you—White people—to recognize your sinfulness; your brokenness and woundedness, and to repent. I need you to turn away from the sin that is White Supremacy and the lies that fear and scarcity pedal; lies that lead you to continue to invest in whiteness rather than divest from whiteness. I need you to be born again, into your God given humanity, a humanity we share and one that reminds us that we belong to one another. I need you to understand that you have nothing that can help me. Rather, we share a reality that is dependent upon our shared liberation in order to see the Kingdom of Heaven, here on earth. And our ever faithful Creator, the Triune God, has gifted us with the sustenance and power we need in the Holy Spirit.

The Sustenance: Spirit.
Famed Gospel artist, Hezekiah Walker has a popular song, “I Need You to Survive.” The words are simple and straightforward. They speak to our bound liberation and the importance of recognizing that we are inextricably linked. Spirit reminds us of this relationship and empowers us to continually seek out the restoration, healing, and wholeness of our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls. Spirit provides the insight and wisdom to engage in the ongoing work of tending to our individual and collective wounds in order to find holistic, embodied healing. Spirit isn’t concerned with our intellect. Spirit is concerned with Knowing that is deeply rooted in our bones; Knowing that is tied to feelings of empathy, compassion, and love. Spirit calls us to nurture these feelings, to practice them, and to live them. We dive deeper until we meet ourselves again, as new beings who can see each other through Spirit lenses, ones that remind us of the promise, the assignment, and ultimately, the sustenance to be the people of faith that God invites us to be.

Our most faithful response is to trust the promise, engage the work of liberation and lean on Spirit. To not do this work is an affront to our Creator and a repudiation of Jesus our Lord.

[1] Stride Toward Freedom, 1958.
[2] Anasa Troutman
[3] Aboriginal Activist Groups, Queensland, 1970s.

Dr. Brennan Breed
Associate Professor of Old Testament
Columbia Theological Seminary

George Floyd’s was killed when a police officer knelt on his neck in plain view for over five minutes until he died. In the church, kneeling is often a symbolic act of worship, of reverence and humility in the face of the divine. But George Floyd's death was caused by someone who knelt in deference to a different authority: he bowed at the altar of white supremacy. To him, and to those who looked on and supported him, it seemed apparent that some lives do not deserve breath. We who have witnessed this brutal act are all now faced with a choice: what do we worship? At what altar do we kneel?

On the Christian calendar, this Sunday is Pentecost. The story of Pentecost as told in Acts 2:1- 41 describes a day of celebrating and witnessing to God's blessing of all the nations of the world. The nations heard the gospel preached in all the myriad languages that together in their multifaceted beauty reflect the glory of the God who created and sustains them all. Peter quoted the book of Joel to explain what had happened: “God says, ‘I will pour out my spirit on all people’” (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28).

Pentecost is a day to remind ourselves that the God who created the world inhabits the breath and speech of all of our siblings throughout the entire earth. As Dr. Eric Barreto teaches us, Pentecost reveals that God cherishes our diversities, and that God is present in the gathering of diverse people who love and care for each other.

Pentecost is a day to celebrate God's breath, the spirit, as she renders God present in our diverse midst. In the Spirit, we understand that we are all the manifold, multifaceted image of God.

It follows, then, that Pentecost must also be a day to denounce white supremacy and the antichrist actions that it empowers. George Floyd, like Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland and so many other African-American victims of white supremacist violence, cannot breathe any longer. They cannot raise their voices. But like the earth itself (Gen 4:10), we can use our breath to cry out on behalf of the blood of the innocent and demand a reckoning. On the day of Pentecost, Peter told the crowd assembled the story of a man unjustly executed by the state —namely, Jesus—and then pleaded with them to repent and seek forgiveness for their sins, and to strive to separate themselves from the corrupt generation in which they found themselves immersed (Acts 2:38-40). We, too, must take a hard look at our complicity in our own culture’s corruption that time and again manifests in an event of anti-Pentecost: that is, the taking of breath from the image of God.

Ashon Crawley has written a beautiful book on the life-giving and liberatory role of breath and the spirit in the Black Pentecostal tradition that has sustained many individuals and communities who have emerged from this tradition in the midst of a world hell-bent on destroying and subjugating them. It begins with Eric Garner’s dying words: “I can’t breathe.” As Crawley shows us, the whooping and singing and speaking in tongues that one finds in Black Pentecostal spaces create a social space of shared breath and power.

But the time has long passed for the white churches in the United States to stand alongside our African-American siblings and refuse to be complicit bystanders in a system built to suffocate them. We must commit to making spaces for all of God’s children to breathe and exist, even flourish, in peace. This is the work to which the Spirit calls us. We must respond.

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.

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

Learn more

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

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

Learn more

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

Erin Raffety 3/30/21 Erin Raffety 3/30/21

Lenten Hope in a Pandemic

A photo of leaves on snow with green buds sprouting out of the ground signaling spring and hope. Image courtesy of Dr. Erin Raffety.

I had a visceral reaction to the coming of Lent this year. I’d never felt like this before. But apparently my body remembered that it was this time last year that fear of a highly contagious virus drove us into our homes, cloistered from other people. And then there were the killings, the protests, the political unrest. I couldn’t help but think we had had enough Lent already. Anymore just seemed cruel.

But we are still waiting. We had hope, of course, a year ago that this would all be over in the blink of an eye. As the year progressed and more uncertainty appeared, our hopes flitted from one thing to the next. Hopes delayed, hopes dashed — hope became nearly as unstable as suffering.

Waiting, without hope, is unbearable.

My family knows a thing about uncertainty or two. When my daughter was diagnosed with a rare neurological disease for which the prognosis is death in early childhood, it seemed futile to hope for things like developmental milestones or even birthdays. When she was hospitalized frequently and even doctors did not know what was going on, it was left up to us to manage our emotions. On a daily basis, Lucia has unexplained neurological and gastroenterological symptoms. Sometimes we get to find out what’s going on, but oftentimes we don’t.

Practicing loving her through that uncertainty has taught me that human hope can be a bit of an imposition, with its cathecting toward certainty, its insistence on its own way, its hubris in always knowing better. I don’t always get to know better with my daughter, I don’t even always have the power to make her pain go away, but choosing to be with her in that pain, even when it hurts, reminds me that acceptance is the part of love we’d rather not choose.

But for Christians, this just may be the kind of hope we need.

Will the vaccine make my daughter’s life more accessible? I doubt it.

While the world clamors for a miracle shot, I struggle to pin my hope on a vaccine that may so exacerbate my daughter’s fragile immune system that it leaves her permanently weakened, or may not fully prevent the spread of Covid-19, leaving her vulnerable in the future, unable to go to school, we unable to return to work.

More importantly, though, our society’s beliefs about the exposable quality of disabled lives have revealed themselves (yet again) under these conditions of pandemic: it’s not that disabled bodies present irresolvable challenges to life as we know it, it’s that we refuse to accept disabled lives as viable and valuable. The recent lack of attention to the accessibility of vaccine locations, the lack of prioritization for disabled people and their caregivers in vaccine distribution, and the lack of provisions for people now disabled and living with the long term effects of Covid-19 are just a few ways we prefer to sweep disability under the rug, even wish or hope it away, rather than recognize its importance to humanity.

My point is not just that hope and disability can coexist, but that experiences of pain, uncertainty, and disability cultivate a different, faithful kind of hope that we Christians need.

After all, we serve a God whose resurrection did not leave him without wounds or scars, but whose ultimate fulfillment of hope challenged and transformed our very images of who God is. Yet, here we are, a year out from the beginning of the pandemic, and we are still relying on our own hopes to save us.

Out here in the perpetual wilderness, Jesus reminds us that acceptance is paradoxically crucial to resurrection hope. All throughout Lent, Jesus tells his disciples he must suffer, he must be rejected, he must be crucified, and he must die.

When petulant Peter tries to have it otherwise, Jesus tells him to get out of his way, to stop setting his mind on human things (Mark 8:31-33). Just a few verses later, Jesus tells the crowd, that “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)

Gospel hope, Gospel living is not about self-preservation and self-sustenance, but about radical acceptance of both the realities of our human lives and the foolish, earth-shattering difference the resurrection makes.

So this Lent, I’m calling for hope.

It often feels too tender, too raw, to hope when everything is uncertain, but perhaps that’s because we’ve put our hope in human things in an effort to distract us, to forgo the suffering and the pain.

I don’t want a hope that skips over Lent and its harsh reality, because we clearly can’t escape that. But I’m advocating for hope that anchors itself firmly in the resurrected God no matter what comes, as a taking up of one’s cross rather than a futile wish that life were otherwise.

We will still wait, of course: but let us not wait with our hope in lawmakers, returns to “normalcy,” school openings, vacations, or even vaccines. Rather, let us wait with hope and conviction in the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Our hope often insists on able-bodied dreams and futures; thus, it falls apart in the face of uncertainty. But Jesus’s hope, God’s hope finds us in the wilderness, bidding us to abundant life in the Spirit. This is where we all belong, if we could only let go of human hopes.

Erin Raffety

Erin Raffety is a Presbyterian pastor, a Cultural Anthropologist, and Research Fellow in Pastoral Care & Machine Intelligence at the Center for Theological Inquiry. She is currently working on a book on the ministry and leadership of people with disabilities in the church.
Facebook
Twitter
Blog

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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

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

On-Demand Access

Christ | Christmas | Covid

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.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 11/24/20 Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 11/24/20

Stacey Abrams: A Reversal Through Rejection

Win or go home. This is most every competitor’s mantra. Whether in the arena of sports, academics, or politics, defeating one’s opponent is not optional. It is a mandate. No one enters a race eyeing second place or a participant’s trophy. Bring on the gold with all its glitz, glamor, and glory. Better yet, a platinum prize will take it up a notch.

In 2018, the nation watched and the state of Georgia more closely as Gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, lost by 55,000 votes. In a heated race that would have made her the first African American woman governor, Abrams did not win the prize. Neither did she concede. Allegations of voter suppression at the hands of her opponent saturated Abrams’ comments some ten days post the election.

Still, Abrams did not fade into political oblivion. She did not leave the scene sulking and licking her wounds. Instead, this founder of The New Georgia Project rolled up her sleeves and went back to work. Rather than merely harboring on what she deemed was Georgia’s systematic voter displacement, Abrams made a concerted effort to do something about the matter. She engaged in never again praxis. While not throwing her hat into another political race, she labored to correct the system that denied her. Abrams turned a personal rejection into purposed rigor so to ensure future candidates would have a “fair fight.”

Forward to 2020, for the first time in 28 years, the state of Georgia turned blue. Not since 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected President, had The Peach State voted for a Democratic candidate. So profound was the political prowess and reach of Abrams and millions of African Americans that President-elect Biden paid homage to this demographic during his victory speech. Her being refused a “first” in the U.S. cleared a path for Kamala Harris becoming the first Black, first woman, first Asian Vice President. '

Abrams turned an individual loss into a national win.

How should we handle rejection? As a New Testament scholar, I tend to place biblical texts in conversation with the present. This exercise in rejection reminded me of a particular passage. In the Acts of the Apostles (1:15-26), the 11 remaining apostles must choose a replacement for Judas. Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus for financial gain, committed suicide (Matthew 27:3-10). There are two candidates, Joseph Barsabbas, also called Justus, and Matthias. After prayer and conversation, the apostles select Matthias. Joseph Barsabbas is rejected.

Both men have credentials. Both have what it takes. Yet, one gets the vote. The other gets the boot.

I contend Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene should have been on the ballot. After all Mary is listed among them who were “constantly devoting themselves to prayers (Acts 1:14).” Additionally, as “certain women,” although unnamed, are noted in this passage, Luke does not hesitate to mention them in the first of this two-volume work (Luke 8:1-3). Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna are followers of Jesus who give out of their own resources. However, patriarchy has a short memory and ultimately carries the day.

None of these women are even considered to fill the twelfth apostle slot. Sounds vaguely familiar.

What does one do to reverse a rejection? First, acknowledge that it happened. Abrams did not offer a concession speech, neither did she conceal losing. It is one thing to face rejection on a small scale with knowledge of just a few people in one’s circle. However, this was as public as public gets. For more than a week after the 2018 Gubernatorial election, Abrams retreated to private quarters. Perhaps she needed time and space to wrestle with and reconcile what everyone was talking about — her not winning.

It is no doubt Abrams was qualified. She was a politician. She had public service receipts. Yet, like Mary, Joanna, Susanna, and Mary Magdalene, perhaps certain male-centered systems were not ready for her gubernatorial giftedness in female form.

Second, Abrams teaches us that we do not have to always be politically correct. Well, she did not congratulate Kemp. She did not pretend to be okay with what happened to her. Women are often supposed to be gracious, guarded, and demure. However, I say with the fire of Fannie Lou Hamer and the zeal of Shirley Chisholm, we need to lift a stentorian voice to all oppression, suppression, -isms, and phobias. No, I do not aver impertinence or character demonization. We have had more than enough of that the past four years. Yet, if we see something, we must say something. We ought to do something.

Lastly, turning rejection around means we protest with our prayers and pray with our feet.

Yes, we do something. Our inward gaze must be a catalyst for outward action. A year after her loss, Abrams drafted a sixteen-page manual detailing Democratic trends in Georgia. Additionally, she wrote a book, produced a documentary with Amazon Prime, and founded a second organization dedicated to registering voters. In essence, Abrams kept it moving.

Only Stacey Abrams knows if she has recovered from her rejection. We can surmise our own level of recovery from such public and private, personal and professional loss. Even if we do not earn the wreath, may we be encouraged and empowered to fight the fight.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

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

On-Demand Access

Christ | Christmas | Covid

Providing space to grieve and lament, while reclaiming the prophetic hope of this season.

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

Dr. Mothy Varkey 11/10/20 Dr. Mothy Varkey 11/10/20

Midwives of Life

“The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded all of us of the vital role health workers play to relieve suffering and save lives,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General. Around the world, acts of violence related to the pandemic take place against the background of escalating ‘social untouchability’ and bigoted behaviors against anyone suspected to have been in contact with the coronavirus (‘newer untouchables’). Health resources, patients, healthcare providers, and their immediate family members are at principally high risk of experiencing physical bouts due to the misinformation (‘infodemic’) that they have become points of contagion in a community.

The healthcare professionals who have stood out as the ‘courageous midwives,’ as in the book of Exodus (1:15-22), in todays’ tough times save humanity from a possible ‘health collapse.’ During this time of unprecedented and unparalleled upheaval, they hold the life of humanity in their hands just as a mother holds a newborn baby. They reach out to those who are suffering and save their lives at the cost of their own peace, security, and dreams of their dear ones. They have revealed that ‘fear and pain’ itself is possibly a pandemic even among the frontline workers. The lack of adequate personal protection, poor working conditions, long working hours, constant threat of infection, and subsequent risk to their family and friends worsen the situation.

One of the most riveting chronicles in the Hebrew scripture — the account of the escape of bonded laborers from bondage to freedom — begins in carnage of newborn sons. For his gigantic building projects, Rameses II preferred to conscript foreigners in the area, rather than native Egyptians. This was reported by the Greco-Roman historian Diodorus Siculus. The enslavement of the Israelites falls into the category that Diodorus describes.

Although the people of Israel were a “cheap” labor force, their unbridled growth in population became a major threat to the Empire. The language used to describe the high birth rate of the people of Israel (“fruitful” and “multiplied”) is perhaps an echo of the fertility of humanity of creation (Genesis 1:28) and at the new creation after the flood (Genesis 9:1,7). The Hebrew verb râbâ (“to be/become great, numerous”), translated “multiplied” in verse 7, repeated in verse 9 (as part of the phrase “more numerous”), verse 10 (“increase”), verse 12 (“multiplied”), and verse 20 (“multiplied”). Pharaoh must have thought that the massive populace of Israelites would join his enemies and destabilize his Empire.

So Pharaoh devised a strategy to deplete the Israelites by subjecting them to insufferable working conditions. What the people of Israel are dealing with is state slavery, the organized imposition of forced labor upon the male population for long and indeterminate terms of service under humiliating and ruthless conditions. Organized in large work groups, they became an unnamed biomass, depersonalized, losing all individuality in the eyes of their persecutors.

However, their population continued to grow and were an ongoing perceived threat to Egypt. At this point, foiled in the effort to lessen the Israelite population, another ploy was added to the repertoire of tactics for demographic control: elective infanticide.

Pharaoh ordered Shiphrah and Puah, who served as midwives in Egypt, to kill every baby boy born to a Hebrew woman. In issuing his decree to the midwives, Pharaoh perceptibly trusted upon the ease with which the baby could be killed at the moment of delivery by means not effortlessly noticeable in those days. Some advocate that Pharaoh, dreading an uprising, tried to dupe the Hebrew mothers into believing their children are stillborn. If so, Shiphrah and Puah are simply repaying Pharaoh in his own false coin. What is not clear is whether these midwives were Israelite or Egyptian women, for the Hebrew text can yield the renderings “Hebrew midwives” and “midwives of the Hebrew women.” It would have been strange for Pharaoh to have expected the Israelites to kill the males of their own people.

Another oddity is that only two midwives are mentioned for such a huge population. Either they were the supervisors of the practitioners and were directly accountable to the authorities for the women under them, or the two names, Shiphrah and Puah, are those of guilds or teams of midwives called after the original founders of the order. The conflict between Pharaoh and the Israelites began to take shape as a conflict between life and death.

But Shiphrah and Puah “feared God” more than the mighty Pharaoh. They refused to do the king’s bidding. In not killing male newborns, they engage in what might be termed civil disobedience. They displayed incredible courage. They fought against the agent of death on behalf of the God of life. Like other biblical acts of insubordination, the midwives’ noncompliance involves an element of ducking and diving. Ostensibly powerless, they do not openly defy Pharaoh, but deceive him. The Bible tells many stories in which a weak party tricks a stronger or in which characters engage in reciprocal, even competitive, trickery.

In today’s context, the frontline COVID-19 workers are the Shiphrah and Puah whom the God of life has appointed for our times. Their fear and pain are genuine, but like that of a woman in labor. When a woman goes through labor, she can withstand her agony as she is aware that a new life is about to deliver. They are not just saving the lives of COVID-19-affected people but saving humanity itself. God used the two midwives to redeem his people. Health workers are also few in numbers, like Shiphrah and Puah, but God has now placed the life and future of humanity in their strong and caring hands. It is their pain that shoulders humanity. It is in their sweat and tears, a seed of their untiring commitment that gives birth to a rainbow of hope. We honor them when we wear a mask, social distance, and deter the spread of the virus.

Rev. Dr. Mothy Varkey

Rev. Dr. Mothy Varkey is an ordained priest of the Malankara Mar Thoma Church, India. He is the Professor of New Testament at the Mar Thoma Theological Seminary, Kerala, India. He is also the visiting fellow at the Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. Among his many and influential works are Concept of Power in Matthew: A Postcolonial Reading (CSS, 2010), Salvation in Continuity: Reconsidering Matthew’s Soteriology (Fortress, 2017), and Church and Diakonia in the Age of COVID-19 (ISPCK, 2020), Inheritance and Resistance: Reclaiming Bible, Body and Power (CWI, 2020).
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rev.Mothy
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MothyVarkey
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/user/31msdhkqxmsosderdr2o54wl445a
https://anchor.fm/mothy-varkey
Website: https://murdoch.academia.edu/MothyVarkey

Join Us for a FREE Event

Christ | Christmas | Covid

Thursday, November 19 | 10:30am Central

Providing space for grief and lament, while reclaiming the prophetic hope of this season.

Dr. Mothy Varkey 10/6/20 Dr. Mothy Varkey 10/6/20

Break the Rituals, Break the Chain

In every human community, there are religious, cultural, and political ‘normals’ pertaining to human behavior, body ethics, and cultural codes. These ‘normalcies’ are not divinely ordained but constructed by the elite and the powerful with their seemingly consensual discourses and ritual practices. Those who control this process of manufacturing what is ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ eventually determine ‘who’ and ‘what’ are ‘normal.’ Divinization and absolutization of such ‘Babel normalities’ make alternative voices and imaginations marginal and ‘abnormal’. The absence of liturgical alternatives and counter-practices not only deprive people of their agency but, more importantly, reduce them to mere biomass.

People are not biomass, but free persons/individuals created in the imago dei (Genesis 1:26-27). For Walter Brueggemann, this means that humans are to be understood as being situated in the same transactional process with the holiness of Yahweh, as in Israel. The covenantality of human personhood reimagines ‘new normals’ that transcend ritualized ‘normalities.’ It decapitalizes the essence of the privileged and makes the ‘image of God’ the ontological capital and democratic alternative of all human beings.

Sabbath was a covenantal alternative to the imperial and cultic ‘normalities’ that ruled the ancient world (Exodus 20:9; Deuteronomy 5:13).

Through the institution of sabbath, God denaturalized and deritualized ‘normalcies’ that reinforced the interest of rulers and kings. As an alternative to the ‘normals’ of the then empires, sabbath was a disruptive ‘new normal’ which provided the possibility for a new covenantal social space. The ‘new normal’ (sabbath) disillusioned the naturalized ‘normals.’ In the first century Graeco-Roman world, it was seditious and subversive even to envisage a ‘new normal’ because Caesar was the ultimate embodiment of normality. Caesar was normalized as the ‘divinely ordained’ being. This naturalized the imperial power of Caesar. On the contrary, Jesus invited the people of Israel to reimagine the kingdom of God as a new possibility wherein their freedom and dignity would be defined not by Caesar but by the image of God, justice and compassion.

In Luke 13:10-17, Jesus reinforces the original meaning and liberative purpose of the sabbath by disenchanting its ritual priorities.

As Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on a sabbath day, there ‘appeared’ a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years (Luke 13:10–11). As Joel Green rightly contends, “bent-over” (συγκύπτω) is not a sign of humility (cf. Sir 12:11), but a metaphor for her ignominious position in the social ladder. Her physical condition was not so terminal that her presence would be noticed. This is what happens when church becomes a mere ambulance.

Jesus ‘saw’ her and called her over to him (Luke 13:12). The deixis of the word ‘saw’ (ὁράω) may be understood as an eschatological gaze as in “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6). Through Jesus becoming flesh (John 1:14), God took the ‘flesh’ of the entire humanity upon himself. In this respect, the ‘flesh’ which Jesus took in incarnation is not a male/white/brown/black/Jewish flesh, but the very flesh of humanity itself. By laying his hands on the crippled ‘flesh’ of the woman, Jesus materialized her flesh which is otherwise immaterial and invisible to the people in the synagogue.

The crippled woman now stands ‘straight’ in the synagogue (Luke 13:13). For Jesus, contrary to that of the religious leaders who saw the woman’s ‘crippled status-quo’ as ‘normal’, it is not ‘normal’ to be (or to remain) ‘bent-over’ on the sabbath. Jesus consciously disturbs their liturgical obsessions and ritual rigidity by healing the woman. Jesus “releases” her from the chain of ritual credulity and sabbath scrupulosity (Luke 13:15), which fulfills his mission manifesto (Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 45:16 [LXX]). When ‘binding’ is ‘normal’, “releasing” becomes the ‘new normal’. Breaking the ritual is the norm in the new normal. New normal is an eschatological straightening up of the naturalized ‘bent-overs’ and normalized ritual priorities. The posture of ‘straightening up’ of the crippled woman (Luke 13:13) is the anticipation of the eschatological redemption (ἀνακύπτω-Luke 21:28); “All flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6).

Jesus called the religious leaders in the synagogue “hypocrites” because they twisted his healing activity into an issue of breaking the sabbath laws (Luke 13:15).

Healing on sabbath was already an issue (Luke 6:6–11). Meeting the needs of the ox or donkey on a sabbath day in no way mitigates its sanctity. “All flesh” must be protected and taken care of, including all of creation. For Jesus, hypocrisy meant the prioritization of wrong things (Matthew 23:23). Jewish leaders domesticated sabbath rituals and rubrics in such a way that it ‘normalized’ their priorities and ‘naturalized’ their privileges. Consequently, instead of a day of ‘rest’, the sabbath became a day of ‘arrest’ for the weak and weary.

The juxtaposition of Jesus’ healing (Luke 13:10–17) and the parabolic teaching of the mustard seed (Luke 13:18–21), which is achieved by the conjunction “therefore” (οὖν) in 13:18, is very relevant in the age of COVID-19. Jesus’ disruption of the sabbath normalities and priorities by ‘seeing’ the woman (S), ‘moving’ her to his side (M) and making her ‘stand’ straight (S) are like ‘mustard protocols’ of the kingdom of God. Like the organic process of the growth of the mustard seed to a ‘nest of rest’ for the birds of the air, Jesus’ kingdom of God interventions would eventually become a ‘nest’ for the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the blind and the bruised (Luke 4:18-19).

Although the World Health Organization protocols (SMS) such as social distancing (S), using mask (M), and sanitizers (S) to curb the coronavirus might look inconsequential like a mustard seed, it is through such mustard seed-like intercessions that we endeavor to flatten the genocidal curve. Like the kingdom of God protocols in the healing of the crippled woman, WHO protocols also paradoxically inverse our understanding of ‘normals.’ ‘New normal’ means ‘new protocols.’ New protocols break conventional rituals. It is by breaking the ‘normalized’ practices and ‘naturalized’ rituals that we can “release” people, whether from the chain/bondage of Satan or from COVID-19.

Join Us for a FREE Event

Christ | Christmas | Covid

Thursday, November 19 | 10:30am Central

Featuring provocative, imaginative, and engaging short talks from both world-renowned speakers and emerging voices, we will provide space to grieve and lament, while reclaiming the prophetic hope of this season.

Church Anew 10/1/20 Church Anew 10/1/20

Church Anew Unequivocally Denounces White Supremacy

Bisque+and+Black+Text+Traditional+Nature+Quote+Instagram+Post+%281%29.jpg

Church Anew unequivocally denounces white supremacy.

We value diversity of opinions and believe deeply in setting a table of mutual learning across political and confessional boundaries through our blog, events, and connections with others. And hate, discrimination, and corrosive, violent ideologies such as white supremacy have no place at Church Anew. Opposed to the teaching, embodiment, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, these ideas should have no space in the walls of the church, or anywhere in God's world. We at Church Anew are dedicated to continuously rejecting and dismantling racism wherever it appears in pursuit of God's vision of beloved community.

Peter Wallace 9/29/20 Peter Wallace 9/29/20

Anger in the Service of Justice: Following Jesus’ Example

I am angry, and I am not alone.

The multitude of injustices perpetrated against Black Americans by police – spotlighted just now by the complete lack of appropriate justice regarding the grievous death of Breonna Taylor – is infuriating. Also infuriating are the blatant efforts on so many levels by elected “public servants” to deny simple access to the vote for all, to stifle economic equality and protect the wealthy, to remove much needed health care protections, to avoid responsibility for COVID-19 pandemic alleviation, to scheme in order to protect their own small-minded views in the federal courts, to ignore if not vilify the poor and cut off their safety net provisions, to intentionally deplete our hurting planet of active environmental protections – well, I could go on and on. My anger feels bottomless.

These combined tragedies are, at least, waking up a vast number of people of faith, who are channeling their anger into seeking just responses to these and other crises.

We find a perfect example for doing so in the person of Jesus. Because when we read the Gospels with open eyes, we may be surprised to find Jesus getting angry at injustice — and doing something about it.

Of course, we are ceaselessly bombarded by anger in our society: vicious arguments about political and moral views on radio and cable news programs; honking horns and rude gestures in mall parking lots; maskless minions fomenting terror in the name of freedom in supermarkets; mean-spirited, vulgar and often anonymous comments blowing up our Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, or blogs; a silly disagreement with a family member or co-worker that becomes fueled by deep stress or fear and explodes into a nearly violent altercation. We face more than enough anger in our lives.

Yet, there’s a category of anger that we must recognize as distinct and necessary: moral or righteous anger. Such anger can give us courage to do what we might otherwise not be able to do, helping us to overcome the paralysis of fear. It can fuel outspokenness to rebuke evil or injustice, giving force to reproaches that otherwise we’d keep to ourselves or simply mumble in complaint.

As Scottish Presbyterian devotional author, Robert Law, wrote a century ago that anger “is merely a force, a gunpowder of the soul which, according as it is directed, may blast away the obstructions of evil, or defend us from temptation as with a wall of fire, or which again may work devastating injury in our own and in other lives.”

Time after time throughout the Gospels, Jesus angrily challenges the hypocritical religious authorities, mocking them for their self-serving, self-promoting ways. He drives the elite crazy by spending time with and showing favor to the poor and marginalized. He questions assumptions and challenges the status quo. And as a result, he becomes the target of those in authority. Ultimately, those authorities tried to satisfy their hurt feelings by killing him. You know how that turned out.

Nevertheless, Jesus showed us that there are times when we must stand up and express truth to power in constructive, meaningful, unyielding ways despite the possible consequences.

Consider how often, and in how many ways, Jesus expressed anger in the Gospels. He was clear and direct, possessing a particular purpose: to bring about justice or reveal malice or ignorance. He made no personal attacks, but rather sought to uncover the evil behind the actions. There is no record of Jesus being angered by a personal offense no matter how wrong, unjust, or violent it may have been. He lived and taught that the one who is persecuting us is also created in the image of God and loved by God, and in that reality we can love our enemy.

Just as God is righteously angered over oppression and injustice, so should we God’s children be. Learning how to balance these teachings and actions is a lifelong process for those who choose to follow Jesus’s ways.

Jesus’s mission is to liberate human souls into a loving way of life. He is all about going after what matters to God. And so he reveals dishonesty, fights injustice and subjugation, causes change, sets thing right.

Undergirding every expression of his anger is love – Jesus speaks the truth in love.

In every case the anger of Jesus is the passion of love. His love of God, his zeal for the ways of God, his mission to open the way of God to all, together make him indignant at whatever dishonors God and whatever impedes others from knowing and experiencing life as God intends.

To simplify the matter to the extreme, we might say there are two kinds of anger: natural anger, or the anger of fear and selfishness; and holy anger, the anger of love and justice. When we witness wrong done to others, particularly those who do not have the strength or means to defend themselves, then as people of faith we need to express the anger of love — the anger that gives us boldness and outspokenness in defense of what is right.

As Robert Law put it:

“Holy anger… is one of the purest, loftiest emotions of which the human spirit is capable, the fiery spark that is struck by wrongdoing out of a soul that loves what’s right and just. When a person is destitute of such emotion – when there is nothing in them that flames up at the sight of injustice, cruelty, and oppression, nothing that flashes out indignation against the liar, the hypocrite, the swindler, the betrayer of sacred trusts—there is much lacking for the strength and completeness of moral personhood.”

There are numerous ways people of faith can be involved in helping set things right. For one thing, as we wrestle with, for example, the impact of a shooting tragedy, we can advocate for stricter, common-sense gun laws, or work toward offering much-needed services for those suffering with mental illness. Or we can take on another needed effort — whether it is helping to shelter the homeless, feeding those in poverty, visiting women or men in prison, helping to clothe children in need, volunteering to serve in voting precincts or get out the vote, serving those with special needs, working with youth who need an adult mentor. The needs are endless, the inequities abound.

Above all, we can vote, and do whatever we can to make sure others can vote.

As Election Day approaches, this is a good time for each of us to ask ourselves: How might my anger be channeled into loving action? For this is how we make our anger holy and righteous.

Jesus’s example and teachings reveal to us that anger, channeled and directed in love, can proclaim a better way and fuel positive acts. At this time of anger-fueled soul-searching, of disturbed grief, as we prepare for whatever is next, may we open ourselves to the guidance of the Spirit of peace to determine how best to express our moral anger, and, in all matters, how to speak and act in love.

Adapted from an article that originally appeared at HuffingtonPost.com/Religion and Day1.org. Republished with permission.

PW Wallace Studio 9-2020.JPG — Peter Wallace

The Rev. Peter M. Wallace, an Episcopal priest, is executive producer and host of the “Day1” weekly radio program and podcast (Day1.org). He is the author of 10 books and editor of 3; the most recent are *Bread Enough for All: A Day1 Guide to Life* (2020, Church Publishing, Inc.); *Heart and Soul: The Emotions of Jesus* (2019, Church Publishing, Inc.); and *Comstock & Me: My Brief But Unforgettable Career with The West Virginia Hillbilly* (2020, Amazon).
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pwallace
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peterwallace1
Website: https://day1.org/
Website: https://petermwallace.com

Erin Raffety 9/28/20 Erin Raffety 9/28/20

Trading Our Ropes for God’s Faithfulness

At the beginning of the pandemic, it was inevitable that we’d all come to the ends of our ropes. By now, however, we’ve all come to the ends of our ropes over and over and over again—people continue to die, whether from police brutality or this deadly virus, there’s no safety net, no childcare for working parents, no school for kids or support for people with disabilities, there’s no security, no hope in sight, it feels like what we give is never enough, and then the day starts over.

What do you do, how do you live, when there is no rope left?

You know the story where Jesus is walking on water and Peter wants to do it, too? Jesus commands Peter to come, and Peter’s doing it, he’s walking on water until the wind comes along, he becomes frightened, and he begins to sink. Just as Peter begins to sink, Jesus immediately reaches out his hand, pulls him into the boat and says to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:28-33) We often read this story as a cautionary tale about Peter’s lack of faith, but I wonder if we’re too quick to judge and our judgment clouds what God is showing us.

After all, we have all been faithless before.

A few weeks ago, not being able to be with a few of my dearest friends who were experiencing death and life transitions and challenges, began to break me. I felt so helpless and worthless and horrible. If I’m honest with myself, maybe I felt as upset about not being a good friend as I did about being apart from them and watching them suffer.

You see, I wanted to swoop in — I get a lot of satisfaction from swooping in — from helping people, especially helping them to solve their problems. Take that away from me, and maybe I’m not such a good pastor, maybe I’m not such a good friend, or even a good Christian.

It seemed to take proud, self-sufficient, busy, self-important me a long time to get to the end of my rope, but eventually, because there was literally nothing left to do, I cried out to God in prayer. I sat on my porch, morning after morning and just because there was nothing else I could do for anyone, I prayed.

Isn’t it ridiculous that it took a pandemic for me to lay down my work, my ministry, my problem-solving abilities, and call on God to help?

Isn’t it ridiculous that it took me getting to the absolute end of my rope to see my need for God’s faithfulness? Isn’t it ridiculous that we often think that ministry as primarily about our faithfulness rather than God’s faithfulness to us?

I think we’re often very proud that we never get to the end of our rope, but isn’t that somewhat the same thing as not truly letting God rescue us? I wonder how many of us are there on the water—sinking, flailing, drowning—yet too resolved to admit our weakness, our helplessness, our need for God.

The point of this passage is not that Peter is faithless—we’re all faithless at times—but rather that God is faithful. And that no lack of faith on Peter’s part, your part, or my part can screw up God’s ministry. When Peter cries out, “Lord save me!” Jesus immediately reaches out his hand and catches him.

He would never not catch him. God’s faithfulness endures even when ours falters.

But that is also not the end of the story. Out of heartbreak and helplessness, mercy ministers and hope is birthed. Out of the heart-wrenching book of Lamentations comes the promise, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23)

We’ve been cooped up like you all in quarantine, perhaps even a bit more because my daughter has multiple disabilities and is immunocompromised. But she and her nurse have also been walking the neighborhood morning and afternoon and by now, they’ve met neighbors who we never knew existed in ordinary times. The older man just down the street from us told us recently that now that he has to move, the thing he will miss most about the neighborhood is seeing Lucia everyday, especially her smile.

As we walked home from a short visit with our neighbor my husband mused, “I wonder why it is that so many people respond to Lucia that way, that they feel like they have a special connection with her even when they’ve only just met her.” Lucia neither walks nor talks: she doesn’t see well and she can’t really move her arms or legs purposively. I try on a few explanations for Lucia’s magnetism until I finally reply, “I think that when Lucia interacts, she doesn’t hold back. Like when she laughs, she chortles and cackles and carries on, and when she smiles, she’s not stingy, she gives you a huge, effusive, effervescent smile. She doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. And to feel like you can make someone that happy in an instant, and to receive that kind of abounding love from someone is something none of us can get enough of.”

The glorious truth of the gospel is that we don’t need to save ourselves: God’s already done that.

And although the human condition is depraved and arduous and painful and really sucks a lot of the time, there are these antidotes to it, these gifts of joy and hope that we know are from God, because they bubble up like laughter, the break forth like smiles from somewhere well beyond, outside ourselves. The faithfulness of God meets us in our most faithless hour, pulling us up and out of the water, where the steadfast love of the Lord engulfs us in seemingly impossible ways.

Who would have thought that in despair, God would meet me in prayer? Who would have thought that in a pandemic, my daughter would bring joy to the neighborhood? Who would have thought that God can restore us in our very helplessness, if we only let go of our own ropes and reach out for Jesus’s hand? Who would have thought that God’s mercies would be new, even this very morning?

“You of little faith,” I hear God saying. “Through it all, I am faithful. I will never, ever forsake you.”

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 9/16/20 Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 9/16/20

The Imposition of Imposter Syndrome

“At first passing seemed so simple … She hadn’t realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.”

—Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

The quote from Brit Bennett’s latest novel refers to twin sister, Stella. Although she is Black, her light complexion fools people into thinking she is white. After posing and “passing,” she secures a job at a department store — never to reclaim her Blackness. For over forty years, Stella pretends to be someone she is not. In her mind the advantages she receives as a white woman far outweigh any degree of racial obligation, allegiance, or honesty.

Recent stories of white women posing as Black women speak to a different type of passing. It is doubtful cultural critics or race scholars would even label the actions as such. The narrative is that white women do not have to pretend or prove proficiency as they automatically get a “pass” per se. The Karens, Beckys, Susans, Rachels, and now Jessicas are presumed innocent and right without inquiry or second glance. The systemic advantages garnered them thrive on systematic racist moves. Thus, a fictional character in a book and persons in history shift to a lighter side in order to glean some racial fringe benefits. The irony is palpable.

What is moreover disturbing about these reverse-passing machinations is the imposition it places on Black women.

As if we do not have to stand in the professional judgement seat enough, as if we do not have to demand the title of “Dr.,” “Professor,” or “Ms.” in the classroom, as if our ideas and data are not second-guessed, and our presence called into question, now any imposter syndrome Black women experience is layered with the imposition of real-life, true-to-form imposters. Because persons pretending to embody a Black woman’s existential reality have been weighed and found wanting and lying, there is bound to be more burden of proof on us. This is the imposition of the imposter syndrome.

Coined in the 1970s, imposter syndrome is described as an “internal experience of intellectual phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite high achievement.” It is the constant scrutiny, self-critique, position of doubt, posture of “don’t belong,” and rewinding of unsure and uncertain. Imposter syndrome evinces wherever a person feels they are not qualified, notwithstanding credentials to testify otherwise. Despite the StrongBlackWoman epithet, experts note that racism is generative in imposter syndrome causing it to manifest more in women of color.

Representation is also a contributor of imposter syndrome. As a partner of racism, representation and efforts to control the dearth of diversity impact feelings of adequacy. Environments where Black women are the only one add to performance pressure and imposter syndrome. In such solo contexts, Black women are the model that they are looking for and need. With no professional paradigm, there is a tendency to wonder of one’s worth. Whether in the classroom, boardroom, workplace, the arts, the public square, or on the screen, the inability to see people who look like us can lend toward both subliminal and stentorian messages of outsider and other.

This is not to say that women of other racial and ethnic groups do not experience imposter syndrome. Sexism has its hand in this self-debasing mental anguish. Yet, As Black women navigate the bottom of the social ladder, the trickle-down effect means the internal wariness is exacerbated. We straddle the intersectionalities while learning to live, move, and have our being.

As a biblical lens proves helpful in my personal pursuits, I lift two places where a potential reading of “imposter syndrome” could be applicable.

I Samuel 15:17 records Samuel saying to Saul: “Though you are little in your own eye, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel.” Saul is the first king over a people who were once in bondage. They requested a king. God reluctantly gave them Saul. Yet, Saul relishes in apprehension. Although he was a renown warrior prior to ascending the throne, this background was not enough to boost him. With royal scepter in hand he has identity vacillation. He is small, insufficient by his own characterization.

The Gospel of Matthew (15:21-28) registers an intense conversation between Jesus and a Canaanite mother. The mother is a non-Jew seeking healing for her daughter. Jesus a Jew is visiting her non-Jewish territory. He is the ethnic outsider in her hometown. The mother publicly makes a request on behalf of her ailing child. The conversation quickly spirals from courteous to curt as there are declarations of treating the mother like a dog. In the Greek, it is actually a play on the word “dog/Kynaria” and “Canaan” — the latter elicits memories of a people the Jews battled to get their Promised Land. In either case there is gender and racial denigration. The mother acquiesces to the canine epithet for the sake of her daughter. She yields to the racism and sexism. In the end, Jesus heals her daughter. The story does not paint Jesus favorably.

The Canaanite mother shouts, kneels, and makes internal mental modifications. She wrestles with Jesus and within herself. Although holding a place of geographical advantage, she relents it. Her imposter syndrome as self-deprecating becomes a bargaining tool.

The I Samuel and Matthean texts are places to pause and consider imposter syndrome. No, neither text employs nor anywhere in the Bible is the phrase used. Yet, as Saul belittles himself despite his regal status and as the Canaanite mother revisits her posture and place for her daughter, both can help the reader to consider their own pejorative internal speak.

The imposition of imposter syndrome is imposters who dwell in the mendacious abyss of professional facade make life harder for others. The imposition of imposter syndrome is we suffer, society is compromised, our giftedness does not illuminate a dark, dank world when we doubt and dare not show up fully. The imposition of imposter syndrome ought to conscript us to get off the mental merry-go-round of inadequate, insecure, and insufficient.

We do not need to pass. Just fight like hell to be in the skin we are in.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

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

Join Us for a FREE Event

Christ | Christmas | Covid

Thursday, November 19 | 10:30am-1:00pm CDT

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 8/24/20 Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 8/24/20

The “Light” of Ella Baker

Ella Baker at a news conference in 1968 | Credit Jack Harris/Associated Press

I admit I did not watch former Vice President Joe Biden’s Democratic National Convention acceptance speech. Apparently I missed a Black Woman shout out. Days before, I heard DNC host Tracee Ellis Ross pay homage to the Black women who paved the way for Vice Presidential candidate and Senator, Kamala Harris’, historic run. Ross lifted Charlotta Bass, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Shirley Chisholm. In her nomination acceptance speech Harris too gave tribute to the prowess and acumen of Black women political leaders. In addition to Hamer, Harris highlighted Mary Church Terrell, Mary MacLeod Bethune, Diane Nash, and Constance Baker Motley as Black women on whose shoulders she stands and in whose pumps she walks (my addition).

Still one woman’s name was just a whisper during the Convention as it was at services for the late Congressman John Lewis — Ella Baker.

That was until Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, quoted Baker in the opening of his speech: “Give people light, and they will find a way.” From 1944-1946 as NAACP Director of Branches, Baker convened officials from Shreveport to Chicago to conduct workshops for local NAACP leaders. The title was synonymous with these leadership conferences. She borrowed the phrase from one of her favorite hymns. Baker employed the theme because she believed people did not really need to be led. They needed to be given skills to lead themselves.

After resigning her role at the NAACP, Baker became one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Yet, she left the organization in 1958. Her male colleagues only recognized her competence and expertise to a degree. The “preacher’s club” named Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker to replace Baker at the helm. According to biographer Barbara Ransby, due to this prevailing patriarchy and what she deemed a focus on “mass rallies and grand exhortations by ministers without follow-up,” Baker departed the SCLC and chose to go her own womanly way.

While leaving the SCLC, Baker did not leave the work of civil rights.

In 1960 after witnessing the power of student sit-ins, Baker organized the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC (“snick”). Because of the influence of SNCC, students became the face of the Freedom Rides in 1961. These Freedom Rides from Washington, D.C. and Nashville down to Alabama led to Freedom Summer in 1964. In the heat of the day, students led volunteers from across the nation in a massive voter registration drive throughout Mississippi. Subsequently many students formed the Students for a Democratic Society.

In the book of Deuteronomy, God offers Moses and the children of Israel the choice of “life and prosperity or death and adversity” (30:19). Ironically, God makes the decision for them and admonishes the hearers to cast their lot with life “so that their descendants may live” (v.19). In other words, what Moses and his followers do at this intersection will influence children whom they will not live to see.

The action they take at this fork in the road will set the path for their progeny.

Additionally, the Book of Ecclesiasticus, not Ecclesiastes, upholds the significance of making proper choices. This literature, sometimes referred to as “Sirach” is a part of the Apocryphal or Deuterocanoncial works prevalent in Catholicism. In Sirach or Ecclesiasticus chapter 15, the author makes note of “the power of ... free choice” (v.14), and humanity’s “choice between fire and water” (v. 16). As recorded in Deuteronomy, this book also comments that “before each person are life and death” (v. 17).

Both sacred texts offer contextual relevance in helping us see that some decisions are not mere matters of material, food, or size. Pondering life or death choices is just that — will what you do make life better for you and the community or will what I decide possibly bring destruction to me and my neighbor?

Any “choice” words spoken in haste can kill my brother’s spirit, but choosing to employ language in love can shape a girl’s self-esteem and give her promise.

Standing at the crossroads and junctures of life is not solely about our individual living. These watershed challenges should lead us to consider touching people outside our physical reach. This is the legacy of Ella Baker.

Ella Baker seized the opportunity and made a decision that would turn the tide of history. She chose to do what far exceeded herself. Although SNCC is no longer a viable entity and Baked died in 1986, her name, her work, and her spirit thrive.

In his remarks at the home going services for John Lewis, Rev. James Lawson averred it was Black women who made the decision to desegregate downtown Nashville. Vice Presidential candidate Harris stated Black women paved the way. To say NAACP, SNCC, and now the 2020 United States Presidential election, one needs to sing her song and yes, #SayHerName — Ella Baker.

This blog has been adapted from its original publication on August 3, 2020 “Ella Baker: A Name We All Should Know.”

SBCrowder5 (1).JPG — 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

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

Dr. Michael J. Chan 8/4/20 Dr. Michael J. Chan 8/4/20

Return to Normalcy and Other Fleshpots

Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth. I haven’t come to bring peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34, CEB).

In the current political environment, many Americans are hoping for a “return to normalcy.” Such a pitch plucks at the heartstrings of many who are ready to vomit after too many sharp turns on the 2020 roller coaster.

Many of us just want to get back to the way things were—when masks were just a curious feature of foreign travelers, when visiting family didn’t require risk assessment, when self-scandalizing tweets didn’t hijack our news cycle, when church participation didn’t require a Zoom account, when outlets weren’t so clearly fueled and funded by rage, and when we didn’t have to squirm under the constant accusation of racism.

The return to normalcy argument derives its power from the common (and often beneficial!) human impulses to avoid conflict, stabilize life when it gets knocked off balance, resolve contradiction, organize chaos, and believe that we are good and decent people with upright intentions.

On its long trip from Egypt to Canaan, Ancient Israel experienced a similar urge to return to a more familiar and comfortable past (see Exodus 16:3).

The only problem was that their memory of the past was distorted. They remembered the fleshpots but not the chains.

Ironically, the promised “return to normalcy” means that 2020—like 2016—will be an election about nostalgia. But one thing sets 2020 apart from 2016: clarity. 2020 has seen the sins of generations washing up on the shores of our nation in ways that are profoundly public and profoundly painful. 2020 has been a year of judgment, when sinful seeds planted long ago are coming into maturity in ways that have compounding effects.

If divine judgment does one thing well, it brings into focus what was previously obscured or even ignored, separating wheat from husk and sheep from goats (Matthew 3:11-12; 25:31-46).

The fire of God’s judgment allows us to see ourselves as we truly are before God’s law of love. We are in a painful process in which our national eyes are slowly and reluctantly opening to truths that some in our population have suffered under for ages.

2020 has brought clarity about many particular things: clarity about racial disparities, clarity about the dangers of poor leadership, clarity about the weaknesses in our social fabric, clarity about the importance of robust free speech and assembly rights, clarity about the deficiencies in our health care system, clarity about the disrepair of the international order, and clarity about how lines of discrimination can exist in reality, even if they don’t exist legally.

But clarity is painful and costly.

It stings the way Nathan’s words to David must have stung: “you are that man” (2 Samuel 12:7). It crashes down on us like the waters crashed down on Pharaoh’s armies at the Red Sea. And it brings us face-to-face with one of the most disturbing aspects of Jesus’ ministry: confrontation.

Jesus’ ministry was inherently confrontational, as Matthew 10:34 indicates: “Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth. I haven’t come to bring peace but a sword.”

Matthew’s Jesus is an apocalyptic figure, whose conflict with the powers of sin, death, and the devil are borne out through the Gospels. He recognized that true peace, shalom, requires confrontation.

Like the late John Lewis, Jesus was a troublemaker. When Jesus came to town, the powers of sin, death, and the devil surfaced. The demons showed their faces—not because they were powerful, but because they were vulnerable.

As the apocalyptic sword of divine judgment sweeps through our own land, ancient demons are emerging from their lairs with the kind of ferocity that comes only from desperation. In the apocalypse, the last thing we need is a return to normalcy.

Americans face an important question: Are we willing to exchange the moral clarity of this moment for a distorted memory of the past?

Is a “return to normalcy” really what is called for?

We ought to be concerned when and if “return to normalcy” is heard as a summons to a time when we saw less clearly, when we more easily overlooked our neighbor’s weathered face and scarred hands. The precious gift of moral clarity at this time of judgment is utterly invaluable.

And we ought not substitute that clarity for a morally dull sense of comfort.

Dr. Michael J. Chan

Host: Gospel Beautiful Podcast
Assistant Professor of Old Testament
Luther Seminary

Join Us for a FREE Event

Being Church Today

Monday, August 17 | 10:30am-1:00pm CDT

Church Anew has gathered a diverse group of Christian thought leaders to ignite innovation and imagination for leading congregations in a time like this. These keynote speakers will amplify the voices of local leaders from the Minneapolis area, who will share stories of how the church is leading in our own context, particularly in response to systemic racism in our communities.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 8/3/20 Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder 8/3/20

Ella Baker: A Name We All Should Know

I sat waiting and waiting and waiting. Watching the recent homegoing celebration for Civil Rights icon, Congressman John Lewis, I was waiting for someone to mention the women. This was not about slighting Lewis in any way. He was and remains deserving of honor and accolades. Yet, I get nervous when people start talking about the 1960s and its horrid context of water hoses traumatizing flesh, dogs biting skin, and people crossing bridges only to be met with batons.

Often in this retelling, narrators forget to #SayHerName, and by this I mean put on stage the women, the sisters, the matriarchs of the movement.

So, with tiptoe anticipation and ear attuned, I pined for any of the speakers to #CallTheRoll. Rev. James Lawson, Jr. did. In griot fashion, cultural curator posture, and with oratorial aplomb, he noted his apprentices including Lewis who learned non-violent resistance in the bowels of Nashville, TN. Among the young activists whom Lawson highlighted were women: Jeannetta Hayes, Helen Roberts, Delores Wilkerson, Diane Nash, Paulina Knight, and Angela Butler. They were students from Fisk University and American Baptist College who rallied against racial segregation in the capital of Tennessee during the late 50s and 60s.

Still, one woman’s name was just a whisper during the services for Lewis — Ella Baker.

Baker was one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Yet, she left the organization in 1958. Her male colleagues only recognized Baker’s competence and expertise to a degree. The “preacher’s club” named Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker to replace Baker at the helm. According to biographer Barbara Ransby, due to this prevailing patriarchy and what she deemed a focus on “mass rallies and grand exhortations by ministers without follow-up,” Baker departed the SCLC and chose to go her own womanly way.

While leaving the SCLC, Baker did not leave the work of civil rights. In 1960 after witnessing the power of student sit-ins, Baker organized the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC (“snick”). Because of the influence of SNCC, students became the face of the Freedom Rides in 1961. These Freedom Rides from Washington, D.C. and Nashville down to Alabama led to Freedom Summer in 1964. In the heat of the day, students led volunteers from across the nation in a massive voter registration drive throughout Mississippi. Subsequently, many students formed the Students for a Democratic Society.

It is not hard to connect the dots from the student sit-ins and protests in Nashville to Baker’s work with students at lunch counters in Greensboro and Raleigh, North Carolina.

The tentacles of SNCC stretched throughout the Southeast. Annals record Lewis became one of the original freedom riders in 1961 and in 1963 SNCC’s chairman. He stood tall at the March on Washington representing this organization. However, his advocacy for non-violence learned at the feet of Lawson would come in conflict with SNCC members as he later lost the chair’s seat to Stokely Carmichael.

In the book of Deuteronomy, God offers Moses and the children of Israel the choice of “life and prosperity or death and adversity” (30:19). Ironically, God makes the decision for them and admonishes the hearers to cast their lot with life “so that their descendants may live” (v. 19). In other words, what Moses and his followers do at this intersection will influence children whom they will not live to see.

The action they take at this fork in the road will set the path for their progeny.

Additionally, the Book of Ecclesiasticus, not Ecclesiastes, upholds the significance of making proper choices. This literature, sometimes referred to as “Sirach,” is a part of the Apocryphal or Deuterocanoncial works prevalent in Catholicism. In Sirach or Ecclesiasticus chapter 15, the author makes note of “the power of ... free choice,” (v. 14) and humanity’s “choice between fire and water” (v. 16). As recorded in Deuteronomy, this book also comments that “before each person are life and death” (v. 17).

Both sacred texts offer contextual relevance in helping us see that some decisions are not mere matters of material, food, or size.

Pondering life or death choices is just that — will what you do make life better for you and the community or will what I decide possibly bring destruction to me and my neighbor? Any “choice” words spoken in haste can kill my brother’s spirit, but choosing to employ language in love can shape a girl’s self-esteem and give her promise.

Standing at the crossroads and junctures of life is not solely about our individual living. These watershed challenges should lead us to consider touching people outside our physical reach.

This is the legacy of Lawson, Lewis, and Baker.

Ella Baker seized the opportunity and made a decision that would turn the tide of history. She chose to do what far exceeded herself. Although SNCC is no longer a viable entity, and Baked died in 1986, her name, her work, and her spirit thrive.

In his remarks at Lewis’ services, Lawson averred it was Black women who made the decision to desegregate downtown Nashville. To say SNCC, Lewis, Selma, one needs also to sing her song and yes, #SayHerName — Ella Baker.

Join Us for a FREE Event

Being Church Today

Monday, August 17 | 10:30am-1:00pm CDT

David Lillejord 7/31/20 David Lillejord 7/31/20

Why Is It So Hard to Live as One Body?

Why is it so hard to live as one body?

Well, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, God created the heavens and the earth. At the end of each day, God looked at what was created and God said it is good. The last day of the week God created the very first human beings and, in Genesis 1:28, God said to Adam and Eve, "You have ‘dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’"

And just like that, everything went downhill. In other words, everything in creation was good until human beings were put in charge.

Why can't we live as one body?

Because of human beings. My sermon could be that short. Contractually, it has to be at least 14 minutes long. So, I go on. Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. For the record, there were only four people on the face of the earth — you think that this would be manageable. They didn't even have to share a bedroom. Cain and Able have their own bedroom. Nevertheless, Cain killed his brother Abel.

Why can't you live as one body from the get go?

They couldn't. Don't worry I'm not going to go through the entire Bible, but by Genesis 6, people are so wicked and so out of control, God decides to get rid of everything except for two of every animal species and Noah and his family. What do you say we try this again?

Maybe it was just a hiccup. By the way, Noah and his family survived the flood — in case it's been a long time since confirmation. Their children have children. The world populates again. Maybe this time, things will work out better. Which brings us to today's reading [Genesis 11:1-9] where all people wanted to build a tower that reached all the way up to God.

Now here's a repeating theme alert.

The serpent in the Garden of Eden tempted Adam and Eve by saying if you eat this apple you will be like God. In this scripture text, they wanted to build a tower that would bring them to the level of God. “Hey, let's make a name for ourselves,” they said. God knew that they were getting too big for their britches. God knew that they were more than fine being the same. They all talk the same language. They all look the same. Nothing can stop us now, they thought. So God scattered the people all over creation and had them speak different languages.

Not as a penalty, rather as a gift. The only problem was apparently human beings struggle to live as one. Some things never change. I have three points.

Point #1. Even Lutherans can't seem to live with other Lutherans.

There is a town in Minnesota with a population 13,746 souls. You ready? In this town, there are eleven Lutheran churches. Eleven in one town. Population 13,746.

It is one, a business model that's flawed. Number two, it shows that we can't live as one.

One of my favorite stories? A guy is stranded on a desert island for 40 or 50 years, and this is the opposite of Castaway.

Someone finds him, comes on his Island, and says "Will you give me a tour?"
“Okay.”
He comes to a clearing there are three buildings.
What is this building?"
"That is my home. That is where I live."
"That is lovely. Good job. How about that building right there?"
"That's where I worship." "Well, that's lovely, great job. What's that other building over there?"
"That's the church I used to attend."

Hyperbole, but close, Minnesota. Eleven congregations when there should be maybe two, at most three.

On December 18, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said "We must face the fact that in America the church is still the most segregated institution in America.” At 11 o'clock on Sunday morning, we stand saying that Christ has no east and west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation.

This is tragic. Nobody of honesty can overlook this. 1963 — so that was then, what about now? Here's my question for you. What is the whitest denomination in the United States of America?

Answer? We are. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is the whitest denomination in the entire United States of America.

So here's what I think about when I dare to go there.

We're diverse enough in our thinking and our beliefs and traditions to have eleven different Lutheran churches in one community. But, when all is said and done, we're not diverse in ways that I think are helpful, deep or wide.

Point #2. Christians are expected to be like Jesus.

Actually, Jesus was a rebel from the get go. Jesus hung out with outcasts and the disease-ridden. Jesus always talked about the importance of finding equal value in all people. In fact, if one was to synthesize what Jesus said in his conversations and monologues and sermons it would be as follows: Everyone is loved by God.

Everyone is God's favorite. We read the children's story Bible. We're all, you're all God's favorites. You're all my favorites. You love your children the same. Well, so does God. Nevertheless, you have power. You have created a paradigm that always has you in the catbird's seat.

But in our world, the last will be first. The first shall be last. In our world is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave or free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. That's the expectation, and we are expected to live and treat others like Christ did.

Point #3. Now is a time to reflect, ponder, assess, confess, make amends, and then work together to create a more just world.

I was going to quote me, but that’s a little self-serving, but that was my first thought. Speaking of confessing, I also was thinking this week: How often do people of power and note and authority ever admit they're wrong?

No, really, I'm serious. The last time you heard a confession? It's always justified somehow. It's all something like, "Well, I was misunderstood."

When was the last time someone of any kind of import just said, "I was wrong and I want to change."

When I thought about that, I thought about the semester I interned at a treatment center for addicts. On my first day, it was Family Day. I thought Family Day was going to be great because all the addicts are there. I imagined the wife or husband or significant other and the kids coming and they would all hug. It was not that at all.

Instead, they had a big room and everyone invited the people closest to them, and they all, the addicts and their families sat in a big circle. And then it would be one person's turn. Let's just say the addict is a guy, a husband and a father, and he would take his chair pre-COVID and sit knee-to-knee with, in this case, his wife, the mother of their children.

And there were two rules.

Number one, the wife in this case, could say anything she wanted for as long as she felt necessary. And the second rule was the addict, in this case, the husband and father could say nothing.

I'm 100% Norwegian, grew up in a house that if you didn't like something, you kept it to yourself, and you told your therapist later.

And then all of a sudden, those wives and mothers would talk for half an hour about this scoundrel and all the things that he had done to her and their children and their lives. “This is what you did repeatedly: You lied. You cheated. You stole."

And he, in this case, had to sit there, saying nothing. When there was a break in the action, I went up to the therapist and I said, "This is ugly. This is carnage. This is terrible. You got to change the flow of this." And the therapist says "You're new here." and I said, "Mhm."

In order for there to be change, the people who were not heard, in this case the wife, needed to speak and be heard. Finally. And the one who caused the damage, or allowed it to occur, had to listen and learn.

I'm no longer talking about chemical addiction. I'm talking about life and race and gender and all things to deal with being equitable and just.

It's time for people like me, in my station in life, and the hue of my skin to sit in that chair and listen. Not speak, not justify, not explain it away. Now is the time to reflect and ponder, assess, confess, make amends and then work together to create a more just world.

This week, Congressman John Lewis died. I tend not to pay a lot of attention to politicians. I'm sorry. This is only my opinion. There are not many I hold in high esteem. But this week, Congressman Lewis died. Mr. Lewis was a civil rights leader, and he served in Congress for the great State of Georgia from 1987 to his death. I've been reading the three blogs a week from our Church Anew Blog as I have encouraged you to do too. We have contributors from all across the world, the nation who are writing, and I'm following and reading each week just like you.

This past week, in a blog entitled "Dwelling in the Cathedral of John Lewis' Spirit" by Paul Raushenbush, here is one of the many things that jumped out at me: Mr. Lewis was attacked by a group of white men in 1961. Fifty years later, 50 years later — it's never too late — one of the men and that man's son came to Mr. Lewis' office in Congress and said, "Mr. Lewis, I beat you, I attacked you. I want to apologize. Will you forgive me?" The man's son, who had been encouraging his father to do this for some time, gave Mr. Lewis a hug. So did the father, and then father and the son both started to cry.

Mr. Lewis hugged them back and said, "Yes, I forgive you." They all cried together, and from that moment on, they continued to see one another and when they did, they would call one another "brother."

Oh, and one more thing.

As Mr. Lewis reflected upon that moment and what it really means, he said in 2011, let me say it again, in 2011, this is what he said:

"That is what this movement is all about. We are one people. We are one family. We are one house. One Love."

If we didn't have to be quiet due to being in this small in-person worship gathering during COVID-19, I would have all of you stand up and shout and celebrate words that are still true and yet to be fulfilled. But may they also be grafted on our hearts and our minds.

That is what this movement is all about. We are one people. We are one family. We are one house, one love.

For those of you who are seated here at church, for those of you who are seated or laying in your bed at home watching on-line, I want you to look, and I want you to say these words to yourself. Great in theory. Let's put it to practice and practice so long that it becomes habit in the way that we are.

So help us God, Amen.

This sermon, part of a series themed “Hard Questions”, has been adapted from its original delivery during worship on Sunday, July 26th, 2020 at St. Andrew Lutheran Church, Eden Prairie, MN.

Pastor David Lillejord

Senior Pastor | St. Andrew Lutheran Church | Eden Prairie, MN
Church Anew

Join Us for a FREE Event

Being Church Today

Monday, August 17 | 10:30am-1:00pm CDT

Erin Raffety 7/2/20 Erin Raffety 7/2/20

Leaning into Disability, Lamenting with Freedom

I remember how it felt to choke out those words. I remember how my teeth clenched around them. I remember how my chest tightened as I stammered in our living room to my spouse.

“I’ll be dammed if after all Lucia has been through, this virus is what kills her.”

It surprised me a bit when the words came tumbling out. I thought I had made peace years ago with my young daughter Lucia’s medical fragility and especially with her terminal diagnosis. But the global pandemic—especially the shortage of PPE and other medical supplies, the overwhelm of physicians and hospital staff, and the increased vulnerability for individuals who rely on full time nurses and caregivers—has created new challenges for people with disabilities.

On the one hand, the rest of the world is gaining a glimpse into the many challenges people who live with chronic pain, disease, and disability face every day. The world has also benefited tremendously from people with disabilities’ ingenuity in confronting such challenges through the use of technology, universal design, and creativity. People with disabilities have always utilized a combination of online and in-person platforms to network strategically, protest boldly, and adapt courageously in an able-bodied world.

But the pandemic has also revealed how deep the roots of ableism run and how intertwined they are with sexism and racism.

People of color and people with disabilities are dying at much higher rates than average citizens. Plus, the medical needs of some are so often positioned as an additional burden for the country rather than an invitation to justice or care.

Indeed, as churches especially are clamoring to return to face-to-face worship, nostalgic for the simplicity and straightforwardness of ministry in the pre-Covid days, it often feels as if they presume all their challenges will be erased with this return to “normalcy.” Sometimes it feels like we want to sweep aside any perceived weakness or suffering if only we could get back to the “good old days.”

We incessantly talk about the pandemic. We try to control the logistics of returning to worship. We so rarely talk about how it feels to be terribly, utterly afraid.

Sometimes it’s easy to get the idea in the church that being fearful is a sign of faithlessness. If “perfect love casts out all fear,” you certainly can’t be scared and trust God at the same time.

But squashing our fears with logic or brute strength doesn’t seem to make us more faithful. Ironically, as we bury, stifle, and stuff down our fears, we drive more social distance between us than this virus ever could. We shut ourselves off to real relationship. We become numb before God.

In mid-March, a class I was co-teaching with students with intellectual and developmental disabilities at The College of New Jersey and master’s students at Princeton Seminary had to go online like all others. As we fumbled through our new virtual ways of relationship, we figured we at least knew how to pray together. The other instructor, the seminary students, and I carefully crafted beautiful, theologically astute prayers for patience, healing, resilience, and strength in the face of a global pandemic. These prayers were abruptly punctuated by the TCNJ students’ cries against the injustice of those they knew who were getting sick (“It’s not fair! This is scary!,” they said), their hurt from being alone (“I’m sad at home. I miss my friends”), and their fears about what might happen in the future (“What if this never ends?” they worried).

It was not only a profound teaching moment for my seminary students who were taken aback yet strangely comforted by the earnest expressions of emotion that poured out of their friends and classmates. This moment was also a powerful reminder of how the ritual of lament in the Bible provides a container for our seemingly out-of-control emotions to be honored, held, and known by God. With lament, God essentially says, “Let it all out, I can take it. Faithfulness is not about keeping it all together when the going gets tough.”

In light of these laments, I can now see clearly how my clenched teeth and tightened chest were but an attempt to control my own anger, frustration, fear, and trembling. I didn’t want to open up to the possibility, yet again, of losing my daughter. If I stood before God and others in my deepest fears, would I not become utterly powerless, defeated, and obsolete?

Leadership and lament are not about us. Leadership and lament are about God’s faithfulness—about how God crouches down in the dirt with us, envelopes us precisely when we let go, grieving with us, laboring with us, growing us back toward one another. What if in leaning into chaos and fear, we don’t lean away from, but into God? Where can we flee from God’s presence? Even in our powerlessness, won’t God find us, even more so?

God has promised to turn our mourning into dancing. But maybe we who refuse to mourn also cannot dance.

A country that remains numb to its pain, fear, and injustice cannot feel God’s comfort. Churches that do not have the courage to open themselves up to the deep-seated fear of their people will never preach hope.

But God will not forsake the broken-hearted. Would that we would bear our broken hearts with one another in faith so that God’s Kingdom and God’s justice might come quickly to this earth. Would that we would be known to the world as a sanctuary for the broken-hearted so that no one would have to be afraid alone.

Blog Posts

Rev. Angela Denker

Twitter | @angela_denkerFacebook | @angeladenker1Blog | http://agoodchristianwoman.blogspot.comWebsite | https://www.angeladenker.com

Nekima Levy Armstrong

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Facebook: Stephanie Buckhanon CrowderTwitter: @stepbcrowderInstagram: StephBuckhanonC

Erin Raffety

Erin Raffety is a Presbyterian pastor, a Cultural Anthropologist, and Research Fellow in Pastoral Care & Machine Intelligence at the Center for Theological Inquiry. She is currently working on a book on the ministry and leadership of people with disabilities in the church.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

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

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Christ | Christmas | Covid

Abrams turned an individual loss into a national win.

None of these women are even considered to fill the twelfth apostle slot. Sounds vaguely familiar.

Lastly, turning rejection around means we protest with our prayers and pray with our feet.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Christ | Christmas | Covid

Rev. Dr. Mothy Varkey

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rev.Mothy

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MothyVarkey

Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/user/31msdhkqxmsosderdr2o54wl445a

Website: https://murdoch.academia.edu/MothyVarkey

Christ | Christmas | Covid

Sabbath was a covenantal alternative to the imperial and cultic ‘normalities’ that ruled the ancient world (Exodus 20:9; Deuteronomy 5:13).

In Luke 13:10-17, Jesus reinforces the original meaning and liberative purpose of the sabbath by disenchanting its ritual priorities.

Jesus called the religious leaders in the synagogue “hypocrites” because they twisted his healing activity into an issue of breaking the sabbath laws (Luke 13:15).

Rev. Dr. Mothy Varkey

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rev.Mothy

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MothyVarkey

Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/user/31msdhkqxmsosderdr2o54wl445a

Website: https://murdoch.academia.edu/MothyVarkey

Christ | Christmas | Covid

These combined tragedies are, at least, waking up a vast number of people of faith, who are channeling their anger into seeking just responses to these and other crises.

Nevertheless, Jesus showed us that there are times when we must stand up and express truth to power in constructive, meaningful, unyielding ways despite the possible consequences.

Undergirding every expression of his anger is love – Jesus speaks the truth in love.

As Election Day approaches, this is a good time for each of us to ask ourselves: How might my anger be channeled into loving action? For this is how we make our anger holy and righteous.

Peter Wallace

Twitter: https://twitter.com/pwallace

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peterwallace1

Website: https://day1.org/

Website: https://petermwallace.com

What do you do, how do you live, when there is no rope left?

Isn’t it ridiculous that it took a pandemic for me to lay down my work, my ministry, my problem-solving abilities, and call on God to help?

He would never not catch him. God’s faithfulness endures even when ours falters.

The glorious truth of the gospel is that we don’t need to save ourselves: God’s already done that.

Erin Raffety

Erin Raffety is a Presbyterian pastor, a Cultural Anthropologist, and Research Fellow in Pastoral Care & Machine Intelligence at the Center for Theological Inquiry. She is currently working on a book on the ministry and leadership of people with disabilities in the church.

What is moreover disturbing about these reverse-passing machinations is the imposition it places on Black women.

As a biblical lens proves helpful in my personal pursuits, I lift two places where a potential reading of “imposter syndrome” could be applicable.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Christ | Christmas | Covid

Still one woman’s name was just a whisper during the Convention as it was at services for the late Congressman John Lewis — Ella Baker.

While leaving the SCLC, Baker did not leave the work of civil rights.

The action they take at this fork in the road will set the path for their progeny.

Any “choice” words spoken in haste can kill my brother’s spirit, but choosing to employ language in love can shape a girl’s self-esteem and give her promise.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Facebook: Stephanie Buckhanon CrowderTwitter: @stepbcrowderInstagram: StephBuckhanonC

The only problem was that their memory of the past was distorted. They remembered the fleshpots but not the chains.

If divine judgment does one thing well, it brings into focus what was previously obscured or even ignored, separating wheat from husk and sheep from goats (Matthew 3:11-12; 25:31-46).

But clarity is painful and costly.

Jesus’ ministry was inherently confrontational, as Matthew 10:34 indicates: “Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth. I haven’t come to bring peace but a sword.”

Is a “return to normalcy” really what is called for?

Dr. Michael J. Chan

Host: Gospel Beautiful Podcast Assistant Professor of Old Testament Luther Seminary

Often in this retelling, narrators forget to #SayHerName, and by this I mean put on stage the women, the sisters, the matriarchs of the movement.

Still, one woman’s name was just a whisper during the services for Lewis — Ella Baker.

It is not hard to connect the dots from the student sit-ins and protests in Nashville to Baker’s work with students at lunch counters in Greensboro and Raleigh, North Carolina.

The action they take at this fork in the road will set the path for their progeny.

Both sacred texts offer contextual relevance in helping us see that some decisions are not mere matters of material, food, or size.

This is the legacy of Lawson, Lewis, and Baker.

Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

Facebook: Stephanie Buckhanon CrowderTwitter: @stepbcrowderInstagram: StephBuckhanonC

And just like that, everything went downhill. In other words, everything in creation was good until human beings were put in charge.

There is a town in Minnesota with a population 13,746 souls. You ready? In this town, there are eleven Lutheran churches. Eleven in one town. Population 13,746.

So here's what I think about when I dare to go there.

No, really, I'm serious. The last time you heard a confession? It's always justified somehow. It's all something like, "Well, I was misunderstood."

In order for there to be change, the people who were not heard, in this case the wife, needed to speak and be heard. Finally. And the one who caused the damage, or allowed it to occur, had to listen and learn.

That is what this movement is all about. We are one people. We are one family. We are one house, one love.

Pastor David Lillejord

Twitter | @angela_denker
Facebook | @angeladenker1
Blog | http://agoodchristianwoman.blogspot.com
Website | https://www.angeladenker.com

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

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

Host: Gospel Beautiful Podcast
Assistant Professor of Old Testament
Luther Seminary

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

Senior Pastor | St. Andrew Lutheran Church | Eden Prairie, MN
Church Anew