Rev. Dr. Yolanda Denson-Byers
Rev. Dr. Yolanda Denson-Byers is a senior pastor of an ELCA church in Minneapolis. She has been a pastor and hospice chaplain for the last twenty-eight years and is the author of the book, See Me, Believe Me: A Guide to Deepen Allyship with Congregational Leaders of Color. She hails from Saint Louis, Missouri. She has degrees from Wesleyan University (B.A.), Harvard University (M.Div.), and Luther Seminary (D.Min.). In her spare time she loves to spend time with her spouse and children on any beach along the Atlantic Ocean.
Blog Posts
Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness.
Ableism
has always tried
to turn disability itself
into the problem.
As though the injustice
is the wheelchair
instead of the stairs.
The autistic child
instead of the cruelty.
The chronically ill body
instead of the systems
that abandon it.
The incense of myrrh is made from “tears” formed when the sap of the myrrh tree hardens after cuts in the trunk expose the sap to air. Myrrh comes from tears.
When we see John’s accounts of Mary Magdalene as a throughline from her bearing witness to Jesus raising her brother Lazarus from the dead, to anointing Jesus’ feet with pure nard, and then staying steadfast at the foot of the cross, and then — come Easter morning — refusing to leave the Garden when the tomb is found empty, demanding, even, of a man she mistakes as the Gardner “Where did you put my Lord?” so that she might go rescue his mutilated corpse — when you see this throughline of this disciple, this leader, Mary Magdalene, we see why she is called Mary the Tower.
It calls back something in Jacob, about the blessing that he stole, the one that caused the rift between him and his brother, that sent him into exile for twenty years. That’s not this one. This blessing is for him. It’s really his. He is finally worthy of his own blessing.
Within the Bible’s many pages are texts that sanction military violence, impose limits on its use, and imagine a world beyond it. Given the diversity of social settings—and the more than thousand years over which these texts were composed—this should hardly surprise us. The Bible’s reflections on war are every bit as complicated as our own.
Queerness was (and is) much more than about the gender of people in a relationship – it was about changing everything society expected about race, money, and identity. Queerness also created (and creates) a community where people made sacrifices to protect and encourage others without personal gain. Queerness is embracing the fullness of oneself no matter how that may manifest (or at least an ongoing attempt towards it) as well as how that manifests in relationships with others.
Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness.