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God does not kill.

I first heard these words from Abuna Elias Chacour, the archbishop emeritus of the Melkite Greek Orthodox Church in Palestine. I met him while visiting that land with a small group of pastors and rabbis. Chacour was born an Arab-Palestinian resident of the Galilean region before the establishment of the modern state of Israel and for years, he’s pastored and tended to the souls and needs of Palestinians, while advocating for non-violent solutions to the long-standing, violent conflicts in that land. The first thing we know about God, he teaches, is God does not kill, so we should not either.

I found Chacour’s message of just peacemaking so intuitive, so winsome, I was eager to share it. But when I did, I got pushback I hadn’t expected. None of my friends told me that people should be killers, but some of them thought that God was, at least sometimes. And they cited moments in the Bible where authors imply God had a hand in the death of humans. My friends aren’t blood-thirsty. They don’t defend violence with a smile. But they feel protective of God’s desire and God’s ability to kill when it suits God’s purposes.

And it turns out that the friends I talked to are on the side of mainstream Christianity, not me and Abuna Chacour. Most Christians, like most Muslims, think God is omnipotent – all powerful, that God can do whatever God wants, whenever God wants, however God wants to do it.

My God is so great, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do!

Maybe, sometimes, even kill.

And the history of the land where I met Abuna Chacour tells this story. So many people have fought and killed for that land – the ancient Israelites, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Muslims, the Christians, now the Israelis again. And often people have fought in the name of their God, whose power they perceived to be on their side in their killing.

So many religious people believe that this is what God’s power looks like – unlimited, unrestrained, as long as it suits God’s purposes.

• But friends, we believe a lot of nonsense, don’t we?
• About God, about ourselves, about all kinds of things?

I don’t think God kills. I don’t think God is violent. I don’t think God ever wants those things. But even with the good things God does want, I don’t even think God has all the power to do all those things, whenever, however God wants them. And I think this is radically good news as well.

This week, and in fact the next three weeks, I’m going to talk about the cross of Christ. How the death of Jesus on the cross speaks radical, powerful, upside down subversive truths to us about many important things.

And today I want to look at how the cross speaks to us about power.

Today’s Bible passage is from the first chapter of I Corinthians. It’s a letter written by one of Jesus’ very famous first followers, Paul of Tarsus, to a little house church in the Greek city of Corinth midway through the first century AD.

It says:

I Corinthians 1:23-25 (Common English Bible)

21 In God’s wisdom, he determined that the world wouldn’t come to know him through its wisdom. Instead, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of preaching.

22 Jews ask for signs, and Greeks look for wisdom,

23 but we preach Christ crucified, which is a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.

24 But to those who are called—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom.

25 This is because the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

Christ crucified – a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But also, God’s power and God’s wisdom.

I have a little fish tattoo on my left wrist.

Which is weird because I don’t like fish all that much.

But I have it because it reminds me I’m a follower of Jesus.

Jesus probably did like fish a lot.

But more than that, the fish was one of a handful of symbols for the underground, persecuted, fast-growing Jesus movement in the first three centuries A.D.

In Greek, the word fish, ichthus, was a secret acronym for Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior. And since it could be dangerous to be a follower of Jesus, having a secret symbol for your allegiance made sense.

But in the fourth century, followers of Jesus and churches started making their shift from fish to crosses.

And after a while, those crosses started showing up everywhere.

In jewelry, in armies, in medicine, all kinds of places – sometimes beautiful, sometimes problematic. In churches too.

In fact, if we look around us here, this beautiful sanctuary building is framed by 16 large stained glass panels, and five of the 16 are about the cross and the events surrounding Jesus’ death.

They tell us the story.

I look at these a lot when I’m in this room. In fact, looking at these stained glass panels a few weeks back is what gave me the idea to do some preaching on the cross this month.

How does it all speak to us today?

Paul says it’s really important.

He says that Christ crucified is central to whatever it is you have to say about Jesus. And he says that Christ crucified is God’s power and wisdom.

Want to see what God is like? Look at Jesus. That’s what the original Christian faith argues. And you want to understand God’s power and wisdom? Well, look at Jesus while dying on the cross.

This probably sounded ridiculous at first. And for us, after seeing crosses in churches and tattoos and blood drives and around people’s necks all our lives, maybe we’ve lost touch with this.

But Paul barely needed to tell his first century Graeco-Roman Jewish/Gentile mixed culture little church that this was a scandal, it was foolishness.

Of all the radical, crazy things to say: that a loser of an upstart Messiah, denied and betrayed even by his own followers, publicly stripped of his clothes, mocked, executed by the mighty Roman empire, to say that this disaster is what God looks like, that this disgrace shows us God’s wisdom and power.

It’s foolishness. Even the Bible admits that.

Many Bible scholars argue that this is the most radical thing about the first century message of Christ crucified. It is an absolute flipping of the tables of the imagination and the social structures of the first century world, which was an honor/shame system when it came to power and meaning in life.

We know a little bit about honor/shame systems if we ever went to middle school, or in the ways our middle school selves still live in us.

At that age, most of us know who seems on top of the pecking order around us. And if it’s not us, we can live with that, but we’d just love to not be on the bottom. We hope we’ll have someone to sit with at lunch, or that we don’t get embarrassed by our teacher in class, or by our parents outside the school, or that we won’t look stupid or ugly to too fat or too gay or too try-hard or whatever it is we fear we’ll be perceived as.

And maybe we grow up and get more secure in our bodies and ourselves and it’s not this way any more, but maybe we’re still keenly aware most of the time of who is richest and most accomplished and most beautiful and happiest and most powerful, and whether we’re near or far from that mark. And we feel pretty good or pretty bad about ourselves a lot of the time as a result.

Oh, friends, beautiful, beautiful friends, I feel for us….

Well, in the first century Ancient Near East, all this was even more intense. It was clear in the Roman Empire who was at the top of the honor pyramid, the wealthy, land-owning, male Roman citizens that ruled how they wanted in the world had honor, power, and the favor of the state and the gods on their side.

And on the bottom of the pyramid were the many slaves and subjugated, colonized outsiders of that society. Subject to high taxation, land theft, sexual assault or violence at the hands of others or even at the hands of the state, these folks lived in shame, cursed by the gods, considered not even really as persons.

And into this society, a new movement claims that their leader – a colonized, conquered nobody from a backwater town, arrested, beaten, sexually assaulted, and left to die a bloody, gruesome death out in public. This victim, this loser, this failure spoke to us of the wisdom and beauty and power of God.

• How can that be so?
• And if this is wisdom and power, what in the world do those words even mean?
• I keep saying this, but it is so subversive, so upside down, isn’t it?

There’s way too much we could say today, and I’m going to take two more weeks on this. Next Sunday I think I’m going to talk about the cross and manhood, not to make gender stereotypes, but because all of us – not just men, but all of us, are suffering because we have terrible models of what it means to be a man, and I think Jesus shows us something really beautiful and important here.

And then the week after that, I think I’ll talk about solidarity and hope. What the cross speaks to us about our most terrible, unspeakable pains and hurts. The ones we carry inside of us and the ones we share in our sometimes terrible world.

But today, I just want to say a word about this foolish, backwards message of the cross – which is that this shows us what the best power, the power of God, looks like.

Jesus was the one killed on the cross, not the killer.

So followers of the way of Jesus bear crosses, we don’t build them.

The church has gotten really confused about this over the years. We often think of God’s power as perfectionist and punitive and coercive and violent. And so we end up using our power as parents or bosses or pastors to be perfectionist and critical and punitive and coercive ourselves. And we support governments and criminal justice systems that do the same.

One reason is we’ve centered the wrong parts of the story. We take our notions of God’s power from old myths about God blessing an ancient nation as they took over the promised land. Or we take our notions of God’s power from some modern myth about a violent God who’s going to slaughter all his enemies in hell some day. Or we turn the cross into a story about God’s own abusive violence, how he was so pissed off at us all that he killed his kid so he wouldn’t do that to us.

Instead of centering the cross itself, God in Christ on the cross, suffering and dying as a revelation of God’s wisdom and power.

Or we’ve committed what Alfred North Whitehead called

“the deeper idolatry of the fashioning of God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers… giving to God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar.”

God in Christ didn’t act like a king, a dictator, a Caesar, so strong and so mighty. God in Christ was killed by Caesar. But the beauty and force of this Jesus Christ’s love and words and vision and Spirit has moved and shaped the earth like no Caesar, no president, no king ever has.

What does that power look like?

My mentor, the theologian Tom Oord has a word for the power of God, the kind of power that we see in Christ crucified. He calls it amipotence.

A God who is impotent is a sham, no power. That’s not the God the cross reveals.

A God who is omnipotent controls everything through force. And that is certainly not the God the cross reveals either.

But a God who is amipotent – ami the Latin root for love, potent the Latin root for power – forever expresses power shaped by love, power restrained by love. Loving power, the power of love.

This is amipotence. We see this in the kind of parenting we admire.

Imagine a parent who keeps their teenage kid in line, obedient, because this parent is so threatening, so forceful in their punishment or their threats or their manipulation that the kid does everything they want.

If we see that, we know the kid’s on the verge of a great despair or a terrible rebellion. This is a kid the parent is going to lose. And we don’t admire this all-powerful parent. We fear them, we’re repulsed by them, we pity them. Maybe we had that parent, maybe we’ve known that parent, maybe we’ve been that parent. But it’s not good.

But a parent who loves their teenage kid so well, is so winsome and beautiful in how they conduct their own life, so gently persuasive about what’s good and true and beautiful even while they give their teenager increasing freedom, well when that parent gets what they want in their kid’s life, it’s beautiful.

But even when the parent doesn’t get what they want in their kid’s life, when the kid chooses a path that isn’t so good or wise, we still admire this parenting. Just as we hope the kid will come around to what’s best for them. We wish we had this parent, we wish we were this parent, and even if our parent or as a parent was like this just once in a while, that’s still really beautiful.

How much truer for God – an amipotent God, guided by the power of love. A God in Christ that tells the truth in love even when it gets him killed. The God in Christ who says and does the most beautiful things even when he’s shamed and assaulted and dying. This God calls to us, woos us, seeks to persuade us into wisdom, beauty, truth, and goodness, but doesn’t force it on us, doesn’t control us. This is the power of our amipotent God.

Two areas where non-violent, amipotent faith might have the most radical impact are in our politics and our prayer.

Followers of an amipotent god will reject the politics of killing. We might wonder what criminal justice and foreign policy of more persuasion and less force might look like. We might examine the portion of our national budgets devoted to the purchase, use, and donation of weapons and advocate for the reallocation of large portions of those funds to diplomacy, global health, and other national and international projects that better promote human flourishing. We’ve gone backwards on all this recently, but it’s not too late to change our ways.

Followers of an amipotent god will also be less likely to stop praying because we secretly blame God for our unanswered prayers. We’ll understand that God doesn’t always get God’s way, but God also never gives up, and so our prayers matter, as does our hope! We won’t pray that this god will unilaterally change people against their will. Instead, we might pray that more of the world will respond to the goodness of the god expressed in the teachings and life of Jesus.

We might join Jesus in his prayer that God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done in the lives and communities of people who turn from bitterness to gratitude, from fear to faith, from resentment and violence to love and joy. In our prayers we will be less likely to ask God to blind our enemies and more likely to ask God to help them open their hearts to love, justice, and wisdom. These prayers of blessing may in turn empower us to use our words and bodies to learn the ancient art of blessing in our day to day lives – becoming people of daily encouragement and grace.

The politics and prayers of faith in an amipotent God would be less likely to form in us the anxiety, greed, and violence that marks this moment of post-Christendom late capitalism we have inherited. Instead, we might begin to see in one another an increase of good fruit of God’s spirit – more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. And against that kind of power there is no defense.

The Rev. Dr. Ashley Mangrum is a member of our church, and is a chaplain and a clinical pastoral educator at the Beth Israel hospital in Boston, and she’ll be leading us in communion today.

The post The Cross and an Amipotent God first appeared on Reservoir Church.

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Hi friends, it’s so good to be with you all today. If you haven’t heard, I’m about to use the last month of a 3-month sabbatical that I’ve spread out over the last few years, taking one month each time one of our kids graduated high school. Reed is headed to college in a couple weeks, and so I’ll be off the month of August!

And in preparation for sabbatical I’ve been trying to tackle a few house projects ahead of time. Hoping to clear some space — visual and physical space — so I can actually rest when sabbatical begins.

And there’s a few areas of our house that continually get overlooked, one of them being my bedside table. So over July 4th weekend, I decided I was just going to quickly tackle that project. Make some more space for books I want to read, a candle, a coffee cup, some flowers — a little morning oasis that could bring a spot of happiness when I wake up.

Of course this was not a quick cleanout.

It was 20 years of life compressed into one drawer and a shelf. So many programs from our old church days here, printouts of our bible guides, articles, piles of sermon prep materials, notes and cards from friends and kids, and just an astonishing amount of dust.

So many sentimental things I’d tucked away because I’m not good at throwing them out. And also because I keep thinking about what I want to have around to remember when I’m really old and alone. I want boxes of evidence I guess — of what I loved and what loved me — what made up my life.

Among all of this stuff I found three small journals tucked at the waaay back of my drawer. Journals I had kept for each of my children when they were really young.

And they contained just simple observations about them, records in brief — “lost a tooth today”, “helped me carry in costco groceries”– small details, delights, concerns……

Pages filled with who they were becoming. Prayers written in longhand…moving and twisting around every day moments — the movement of life .. in cursive.

And I thought — WOW, I was pretty great that I did that! HA!

But I haven’t for 15 years since then! And now our children are older. if someone is losing a tooth these days, it is definitely not exciting! (like not a milestone, more an emergency) Their lives have become more complex, less controllable– more full of questionable choices (but! developmentally appropriate), their lives are becoming more increasingly their own. Which means I can’t go ahead of them in all the ways I want…

But I had written those pages before any of us knew the roads that would follow — pages seeded with a love that I hoped could somehow go ahead of them nevertheless. And perhaps every such hope carries a fear within it. And maybe parenting simply gives one particular shape to a universal question, that belongs to all of us,

“What are the odds that any of us make it through this life and still know ourselves as deeply loved?”

This is why I don’t clean anything out! One drawer turns into a psychological excavation and a philosophical inquiry into the meaning of life. And then I have to lie down on the floor among the dust and bags, and 17 things I can’t decide what to do with… (good prep for a sabbatical, indeed!)

The world it seems is always ready with an answer to this question (or at least part of it).

It gives us numbers –so many numbers — and teaches us to mistake them for measures of our worth, our lovability.

Acceptance rates. Employment rates.. Price tags. Interest rates and housing costs. Divorce rates. Depression and illness statistics. The odds of earning enough. The odds that our children will be safe. The odds that our bodies, relationships, institutions, and dreams will hold.

And then we marry those numbers with all the variables no statistic can quite capture like, how tired we are at the end of the day. How one unexpected bill can undo all the careful tetris-ing we did to get through the month. How alone we can feel, even in a household, even in a marriage. Just how much effort it can take simply to keep showing up.

It’s not surprising that the outlook of how to get through life, period can feel pretty dismal.

Now, I believe some calculations are useful. They can help us prepare. They can tell the truth about risk. They can reveal injustice, because the odds are not distributed evenly.

Race, disability, gender and sexuality, immigration status, geography, and wealth — and so many other forces. All shape whose risks are multiplied, whose lives are given …. or not given a chance to flourish.

Which is precisely why the kin-dom of God must operate really differently. Statistics can describe populations but they can’t tell the whole truth about the sacred worth of the people inside them.

And I wonder what happens when we absorb this way of moving through the world, letting the odds shape how we see ourselves and one another, until people begin to look more like probabilities than whole human lives.

The world is constantly estimating our chances. And it can make us ask — why keep trying and loving? Why keep pressing toward the goal —

“toward the prize of God’s call in Christ Jesus” —

when the outcome can feel like it’s already decided?

It’s why today, I want to talk about how these numbers are never the whole picture with God. And against all those odds — I’m betting on us!

Because the love of God does not stand at a distance, assessing our chances.

God is with us, attending to — and attentive to — the movement of our lives. And the life of the woman we are about to meet in Luke’s Gospel this morning.

God of limitless possibilities, remind us this morning just how much you love us. How much you delight in being in this room with us, just as we are.

Luke 7:36–50 36 When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.

37 A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.

38 As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

40 Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

41 “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii,[a] and the other fifty.

42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

43 Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

44 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

45 You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet.

46 You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.

47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

48 Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

49 The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

50 Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

I love this passage because Luke lets us watch the meanings unfold in real time. We enter an actual room, with all these people, their stories, opinions, AND assumptions — and right in the middle of it, Jesus tells a parable that opens the scene in new ways and invites everyone, including us, to look again (and maybe again).

All four Gospels tell a story of a woman anointing Jesus, each in their own way. And at the heart of every account is a woman who lays love down at Jesus’ feet and in doing so makes visible what the rest of the room can’t yet understand or perceive.

In Luke’s telling here, a woman enters a room where everyone has already calculated her odds…and they are decidedly not in her favor.

Jesus has been invited to a meal in the home of a Pharisee, Simon — a respectable table, shaped by power, hierarchy, status, gender and religious and social codes kept by a few.

It is a room where everyone knows their place — and hers.

And then this woman enters…uninvited.

Luke tells us that she is known in the city as a sinner, but just to be clear, the text never tells us that she was a prostitute. Generations of interpreters have supplied that label, as though a woman’s defining sin must be sexual.

I do not want to build an interpretation on a detail that comes to us through a male-dominated Western tradition whose readings of women have not always been free from misogyny.

Luke doesn’t name her offense — but he does suggest that she has a reputation, one that Simon believes is all he needs to know about this woman.

And that reputation enters the room, even before she does…

But she enters anyway.

She comes near to Jesus weeping. Her tears fall onto his feet. She dries them with her hair, kisses them, and pours perfume over them.

And Simon sees all of it. He sees her. And every move she makes. He notices and tallies every boundary she crosses.

Jesus of course, sees that he sees her… and he decides to tell Simon this story —

Two people owe money to a moneylender. One owes much more than the other, but neither can repay the debt. The moneylender forgives them both.

It’s such a weird little parable to place inside a story about odds…because the parable begins with impossible odds — right? I mean, neither debtor can pay.

And then Jesus introduces a new possibility no one has accounted for — forgiveness.

And suddenly, the odds change. Forgiveness says that we are not permanently confined to what has happened. The worst thing we have done, or the worst thing said about us, does not get to determine the whole of our future.

Forgiveness in fact, can open a future no one else had imagined. And Jesus opens that future by first restoring this woman to full view.

Jesus turns toward the woman — but continues to speak to Simon, he asks:

“Do you see this woman?”

Not the rumor about her, or the odds society has calculated…

“Can you see her fully? As a whole person? Can you hold her human dignity before you?”

Jesus is inviting Simon to see that the world’s calculations were never capable of telling the whole truth about her in the first place. Because Simon’s way of seeing is also at stake. And Jesus cares about this too.

Jesus is inviting Simon to recover his own humanity by recognizing the humanity he has denied in her. Jesus isn’t just saying,

“revise your opinion of this woman.”

He is inviting Simon into an entirely different way of seeing, and being.

Cole Arthur Riley writes that justice

“does not decide whose dignity is superior. Justice upholds the dignity of everyone involved. Even as it confronts harm, it reminds us that what a person has done is NOT what that person was made for. They, too, were made for beauty. In justice she writes, “everyone becomes MORE HUMAN, everyone bears the image of the divine.” (This Here Flesh, 123).

And perhaps that is what Jesus is doing in this room.

He does not equate the woman’s marginalization with the discomfort of those in the room whose judgment is being exposed. He names the power at work in the room and the way shame has structured their relationships. And he turns toward the woman. He names what Simon has failed to recognize. He restores her dignity publicly.

Jesus doesn’t want her reputation to define her, and he also doesn’t want Simon’s judgment to be the end of Simon’s story either.

He offers Simon a way out of the world Simon has helped create.

And that invitation is powerful because he offers Simon a way out of the world Simon has helped create, and this resurrection has the potential to reach all the way into Simon’s understanding of Jesus.

Here we see that Simon thinks that if Jesus were a prophet, he would know what sort of woman was touching him and would keep his distance. Simon seems to think prophecy means identifying what is wrong with her.

But perhaps this woman is actually the prophet in the room. Because through her, we see what God is making possible.

It certainly is easy to cast judgement on someone else from inside a system that has already made room for you.

But this woman refuses to let his judgment determine how close she may come. She steps beyond the predictions made about her and trusts that love has already gone ahead of her — and already made room. And Jesus meets her there….

I love this about this story. The world gives us such discouraging odds about what is likely. But Jesus again and again gives us almost absurd odds about what is possible.

The possibilities of the kin-dom can sound wildly unrealistic, until someone begins living as though it is true. This woman does. She lives whole-heartedly, whole-bodily, ‘whole-everything-ly’ as though the love of Jesus as her organizing principle is real and game-changing.

This is what I mean when I say I am betting on us.

I’m not betting on humanity’s existing record (thank God!)… But I am betting on what becomes visible when WE, together – live in response to a good and loving God.

And I think Jesus keeps betting on us too – eager for our partnership, our input in creating this kin-dom here on earth.

I started the sermon with this nod to Paul’s words in Philippians,

“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus…”

I used to think that beating the odds meant to just endure, hustle more, be good unto perfect — and some day — beyond this earth/heavenward — that’s when I’d receive the prize. But these days, I wonder if the prize is really about the gift of being alive, awake to God, and awake to the people we cross paths with…attentive to the love already among us.

I think about this woman, and I think of everything this woman had to cross simply to come near Jesus. The room offered her no indication of safety, imagination, or mercy. Every barrier carried the same implicit message: This love may not be for you.

And if one of the deepest questions of our lives is how we make it to the end of life still knowing ourselves as deeply loved, then perhaps part of our calling is to make that love a little less difficult for one another to encounter.

Many times in a single day, I can see a person without fully seeing them. I can notice what is happening and still keep moving, without offering any indication that they have been seen.

Perhaps that is why Jesus’ question stays with me:

“Do you see this woman?”

The room didn’t make God’s love readily visible to her. But she came toward Jesus as though that love were already hers anyway.

And that’s the challenge right — to keep living that way — in a world that for the most part isn’t that way.

Those journals I found — had pages filled with simple noticings as I said, a walk to the park, tears over a skinned knee, joy at a bee found in a flower. Simple attentiveness to what made up a day and what made each child who they were.

What moved me about those journals, and also what kept nagging at me — was that I had once seen my children so clearly through the lens of wonder and possibility.

And as I went out for a walk a couple days after I found them, all these questions started to surface:

“Do I still see them the same way?” “Or somewhere along the way, have I begun to see them through the odds?”

“Will they be ok? Will the world be gentle with them? Can they withstand the pressure, the dangers?”

“What about vet school? What about friends? What about their futures…. ?

AND of course the question underneath all the others.. “HOW.CAN.I.DO.MORE?”

Huffing up this hill – I was letting all of these questions take up space in my mind and body– increasingly amped up. And I realized how TIGHTLY I was gripping love.

And then I looked up and a momma deer had stepped into a clearing directly across the road from me..

And I stopped. Stunned. She just stood there, locked eyes with me on this busy road.

And wanting to give her some space, I just took a step back, and as I did she stepped toward me, and I took another step back and she stepped forward AGAIN.

So I finally stopped.

And we held each other’s gaze for a good two minutes.

And then I naturally burst into tears… I mean I was sobbing…for the next 45 minutes on my walk.

And somewhere in all that crying, I felt my grip begin to loosen.

There was such a release in knowing that I cannot control the odds they’ll encounter.

But I can trust that Jesus will be with them — and those odds are like 100%!

Sometimes fear disguises itself as attentiveness.. . and narrows what we can see. Much like Simon, I had been so focused on the calculations life was dictating, that I was missing the power and the presence of God which was already in the equation.

And maybe this deer was inviting me back into ‘a way of seeing’ that this woman had already shown us — loosen my grip and lay down love… and trust that the love of Jesus has been there, is here, and will meet me along the way, and I might want to pause for just a step or two to notice it.

The writer of Hebrews says that (and I’m paraphrasing here):

Hebrews 12:1-3 (NIV)

“we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,

2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith — so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

We do not run this race of life alone my friends. We are surrounded by people who have loved and failed and kept reaching toward God before us.

And Jesus is the pioneer – the one who goes ahead of us (into every meeting room, hospital room, dinner party.. All. the. rooms)…

And Jesus is the perfecter – the one who meets us along the way. . . and keeps leading us forward. And “perfecter” doesn’t mean that Jesus wants us to be perfect. It means that Jesus takes our faith when it’s wrapped in fear and tears and keeps leading us along with love, with dignity, and wholeness….

Jesus begins and opens a way where none seemed possible, and then walks that way WITH US. Amen. Amen.

Can you imagine if, in those early journals, I had written down the odds my kids would face?

“You will encounter suffering. You will tear your ACL your Senior year. You will battle your way through depression. You will experience heartbreak. You will carry enough pressure to make you wonder whether you can keep going.”

We already know enough about the odds of suffering.

What we need is a reminder in the midst of suffering, a word of truth — a strong word, backed by the love of God — that suffering cannot speak over us. And this is the word Jesus gives this woman, right? He says:

“You are forgiven, your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Jesus’ word over our lives is not a prediction, or a list of every circumstance waiting for us down the road. It’s a promise that we will be saved unto love again and again — drawn back into the presence of God, into peace, into life.

Can you imagine that!?
Can you imagine the odds of our lives if that is true?
Can you imagine facing the uncertain future believing that resurrection is not only something God did once, but this pattern of hope that is infused into our very lives.

Maybe that is why the writer of Hebrews tells us to,

“FIX YOUR EYES on Jesus and run the race set before you. And you will not lose heart.”

Those journals held a few recorded moments from the beginning of ‘the race’. And let me tell you the 15 years that followed were not blank pages. They were lives in full motion — so much change, so much we couldn’t have predicted. And so many people — a great cloud of witnesses guiding us along.

I told my kids about the deer encounter at dinner that night. Through tears, I blessed them with my specific, concrete hopes for them and entrusted those hopes to Jesus who carries each one beyond what I can imagine.

And I want this for all of us — our stories are still being written… the world isn’t finished becoming – and with Jesus in the room, neither are we…

So I am pressing on.

I am fixing my eyes on Jesus.

I am laying love down, as best I can at the feet of this life…

And against all odds, I am betting on us, with Jesus — to keep creating together a more beautiful, merciful and just world.

Thank you, our good, and living and loving God.
Thank you, our good, and living and loving God.
Thank you, our good, and living and loving God.

The post Against All Odds, I’m Betting on Us first appeared on Reservoir Church.

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1 Corinthians 2:1-16 (New International Version)

1 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[a]

2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.

4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,

5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.

8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

9 However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,

what no ear has heard,

and what no human mind has conceived”[b]—

the things God has prepared for those who love him—

10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.

13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.[c]

14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,

16 for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord

so as to instruct him?”[d]

But we have the mind of Christ.

I took my 5 year old to the Harvard Art Museum the other day.

I loved showing my son his first Monet, the French Impressionist.

I took him real close to the painting, saying “don’t touch! Don’t touch!” And I was like, “what do you see? Kind of blurry right?” And Jesse said something like, “I see like swirly things.” And I went, “okay okay, now back up with Umma, back up back up! Now what do you see?” And with excitement, as if he discovered something totally new, he said, “Umma! I see the bridge! And the, and the man, the man on the boat!” and I said, “Yeah! That’s right baby! Isn’t that so interesting? Sometimes when you’re too close, it’s hard to see, but then when you back up, it actually becomes MORE clear.”

And I told him about how Monet had bad eyes, and how he drew things so accurately blurry and that actually made it for a better painting somehow. And then we went around the whole museum getting close to a painting and then backing up to see if we saw something different.

I think that’s what Paul is trying to do in our text today, drawing us nearer, showing us the blurry, and also, back up, it’s totally not what we expect, we see it more clearly. That things are hidden, mysterious, difficult to understand and grasp, and at the same time, God reveals things to us and we CAN totally get it. It’s a bit confusing, totally Paul’s style.

You see, this guy named Paul wrote a lot of the letters in the New Testament, including today’s 1st Corinthians, a letter he wrote to the church in Corinth. But I gotta be honest with you. Of all the biblical characters, Paul is my least favorite. He’s just so talkative. Unnecessarily verbose. Almost like half the New Testament is attributed to him, although 7-8 of them, scholars actually think that it’s not really written by him but just written in his perspective or voice, which the ancient writing world sometimes did and it was cool. I mean we have ghost writers these days too. I just discovered, you know, that designer from Queer Eye, Bobby, I just learned that my friend Jamie wrote his book, so cool. Anyways, if you wanted to write in the voice of Paul, you would need to master erratic, long, run-on sentences and commas, lots, of, commas.

Actually the original language, Greek, didn’t have comas.

This one actually includes some of our text today. It starts at 2:11 apparently. Ancient Greek is just these capital letters. Which the alphabet system is pretty similar to English, so if you want to learn how to read Greek, it’s not that bad. I mean, learning how to pronounce the letters of the Greek. To understand the grammar, well that’s a whole another ball game. Any language that has conjugation is just a lot.

Moving on. So in translating Paul’s letters, just to get his sentences to make it make sense, in English, you have to use a lot of commas. And it still doesn’t make sense. Which is why I get, when he says,

“My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”

It’s true, you really do need the Lord’s Spirit when you’re reading Paul’s letters.

But you can see his passion. I’ll give him that. He writes like he talks. He’s a character. A charismatic dramatic leader.

In this text, he’s talking about worldly wisdom, and comparing it to God’s wisdom. But he calls God’s wisdom

“ a mystery that has been hidden.”

A secret.

Is it literally a secret that’s been hidden? Because it kind of sounds like he’s trying to make us understand the secret and reveal it to be known and understood.

It’s a method.

There’s a method to getting a room full of rambunctious kids to listen to you. You could do the: if you can hear me clap once. If you can hear me clap twice. If you can hear me clap thrice. That works too. But my favorite, so counterintuitive, and it’s for the OG preschool teachers who know what’s up. It’s the whispering quietly. Not talking over.

Like if you want to listen, you can listen.

Like when Jesus said, in Matthew 13:9

“Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

Jesus also goes on to say,

“Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. “

Biblical scholar Richard Hays, a notable thinker, who was a New Testament professor at Duke Divinity and ordained minister in the UMC, United Methodist Church, he argues that Paul here in 1st Corinthians chapter 2, is being quite ironic. Hays says that Paul is using the popular vocabulary of the time, words like “wisdom”, “mature”, and “spiritual,” words that were considered thoughtful and trending in and around Corinth at the time, to say like,

“you think you know wisdom? I know wisdom wisdom. You think you know what it means to be spiritual? I know the secret of being spiritual!”

It’s almost as if he’s trying to be funny or sarcastic. It’s the irony of trying to explain wisdom by putting the wisdom of the world, right next to the wisdom of God, and making the point that one wisdom is, not wisdom at all!

He might be doing air quotes around the “wisdom,” but we cannot see that in the text. And we often see the Bible more seriously rather than sarcastically. But I’m trying to tell you, that’s who Paul was! And if you try to picture Paul more like a stand-up comedian, I swear, his message will make more sense to you. That’s just my personal opinion. (well, and other biblical scholars that I’ve read that have influenced me to imagine the person of Paul realistically). For example,

New Testament scholars like J. R Daniel Kirk, who actually went to my old church in San Francisco, wrote a book, literally, titled,

“Jesus I have loved, but Paul?”

Cause to be frank, Paul’s quite problematic, some of the things he says. You know, not unlike modern day stand-up comedians who get cancelled for their truth telling jokes.

We might not be “getting the joke” because we are so far away from the world that speaks these languages with all the cultural implications. But that was Paul. I’m telling you, he was a character.

He’s the one who said,

“I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”

in 1 Corinthians 9:22

To which I used to be like, I’m sorry I had to go to the clubs, “to the party people I became like a party people, that I might save some.” Jesus hung out with the sinners! So, I have to, you know, be one of them.

Another method Paul deploys: quoting something EVERYONE knows, that many will recognize, but then, kind of like changing it and misquoting it. And you may think, well it must be right because it’s quoting a very well known axiom that everyone knows. They say when you say things in rhyme, or in a rhythm, people perceive it more as true.

It’s called “Keats heuristics.” “People prefer rhymes for their “pleasurable aesthetics,” as the rhyme creates a sense of unity and coherence, increasing the aphorism’s appeal, repeatability, and memorability. This cognitive bias is often explained by fluency heuristics, where the ease of processing a rhyming statement enhances its perceived truthfulness.

Like a saying, a penny saved is a penny earned.

So Paul says in our today’s text, verse 9:

9 However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,

what no ear has heard,

and what no human mind has conceived”[b]—

the things God has prepared for those who love him—

You’re like okay, I think I heard that before. And so people are like, searching their brain… oh yeah I paid attention in church. I know my Hebrew Bible. And maybe they didn’t have a written bible on hand, even if they did, not everyone was literate. They might’ve relied a lot on verbal narratives and memorization of the holy scriptures. And we all start nodding, at the cue of the perceived smarted person in the room, that’s that, Isaiah…. Sixty….., four! Yeah that’s the one.

So you look it up and it says,

Isaiah 64:4

4 Since ancient times no one has heard,

no ear has perceived,

no eye has seen any God besides you,

who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.

It says, those who WAIT for him.

Wait. Wait a minute.

• What did Paul say?
• Who can see?
• Who can hear?
• What mind can conceive the things God has prepared…????

For those… who .. it’s not waiting. It’s

LOVE.

Paul changed it.

It’s not for those who wait for God.

It’s not for those who fear God.

Or those who obey God.

The understanding, the truth, the wisdom, is not for the ones who work hard or only smart enough to get it.

It’s for the one who loves.

You see, Paul is using words like “wisdom” or “knowledge” or “mind” but that is not what Paul is talking about at all. He’s not pointing at your head saying, “do you GET it?” He’s pointing at your heart and saying, “do you get IT?”

I mean, even as he ends with, “We have the mind of Christ.” he’s saying this after he spends the last two paragraphs talking about how the Spirit works, not the mind.

He says, “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” And that same Spirit is the spirit that works in those who love God. When you love God, you are a person that has the “mind” of Christ.

Paul says in an earlier part of 1 Corinthians in chapter 1:30,

“Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God.”

meaning…

and I quote theologian Edith M. Humphrey, a New Testament professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary,

“Wisdom is, first and foremost, a who, rather than merely a body of knowledge or a human capacity. Just as the Fourth Gospel (the book of John) celebrates the Logos made flesh, here Paul pictures Jesus as God’s own Wisdom (Gk. Sophia), at last among us with transformative power…”

Wisdom of God, the Logos of God, the “mind” of God, the Body and the Present Spirit of God, at last among us with the transformative power–that is the power of Jesus. This is the supernatural reality, the beauty, the compelling story of Jesus that Paul was trying to convey in so many commas and words.

It’s actually pretty cute. Paul’s excitement and delight, of this Jesus that he’s fallen in love with, so much that he can’t go on about it without run-on sentences that make no sense, but also make all the sense. It’s like seeing someone go on about their new crush. I think that’s what made all of Paul’s letters so compelling. He’s crazy. He’s crazy about Jesus.

Have you fallen in love with Jesus like this?

You see this thing we’re doing at church, it’s not something we’re aspiring to get or understand. We only need to fall, fall in love. Be in awe. See the wonder.

I was walking around Reservoir Beach the other day and I saw this guy, by himself, hopping, doing this little jumping to grab a leaf falling from the tree. It made me smile and giggle inside. So cute, the wonder of this old man, wanting to catch a leaf from a tree.

And I was driving around one time, a few months back. It had been a cold winter for months, but we had one of those golden gifts where it was sunny and the weather was nice. I was stopped at a stop light and I saw this woman, just standing in the middle of the sidewalk, with her hands by her side, her head turned toward the sun, eyes closed with a smile, just receiving the sun. It touched me to see someone receive the warm sun so sweetly.

I think the hidden secret is that it’s actually all around us, the awe and wonder, the love. But we only need to be foolish enough to jump and catch the leaf. We only need to pause and close our eyes, like you’re a scene in a movie, and feel it. When you are in love, you’re not trying to understand, you just get it. You’re just in tune with the one you love.

That’s the invitation and the desperate urgency and charge Paul gives us.

I know I’ve talked a lot of smack about Paul but actually my favorite verse, the verse that actually brought into ministry is, from Paul.

2 Corinthians 12:9

9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

Why is Paul so obsessed with weakness and talking about his “weakness with great fear and trembling”? Because Paul was constantly pointing to the power of Jesus that is made perfect in weakness.

What makes God’s love and power that we see in Jesus so compelling? It’s because Jesus used that power to lay down his power. God’s power is revealed in weakness. God’s power is revealed in vulnerability. That was the power of Jesus, the

“self-emptying love of God on the cross.”

No matter what you may be going through, Jesus says to you,

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

So let’s be crazy like Paul, and boast all the more gladly about our weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on us.

Look, you’re not perfect. I’m not perfect. Our church is not perfect. None of this is dependent on the strength or capabilities of some pastors. The pastors? We’re just curators.

Do we go to the museum for the curator? For the person who found the art, loved the art, put the best lighting on the art, and spent days hurling over a few words to describe the art? No, we go to the museum for the Artist. We went to the museum for Monet. I don’t even know the curators name. Though I do know the name Harvard. But, God is the great Artist. We are just the curators.

I wonder what it would look like to be the kind of church that boasts in our weaknesses, so that the power of Jesus is on display. May that be so. Let me pray for us.

Jesus, you showed us the power of love by laying down your power and control, showing us what it means to empty oneself for the sake of love. Help us Lord, help us to first and foremost, receive that love, delight in that love. That we may be of one mind, one spirit, one, with you. That is all we long for God. All action, or justice, or goodness we crave, they are mere byproducts. Help us to seek you first, and that all these things will be given unto us, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.

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Today I’m going to talk about artificial intelligence, what it means to be human, and how the deepest truths and hopes of our faith can inform these things.

I’m trying this out today because all of a sudden – or all of a sudden to me – AI is everywhere. We’re hearing about it a lot, some of us are using it a lot. And a lot of people think that at minimum, it’s going to be one of the most disruptive, consequential technological innovations of our lifetimes.

But I don’t think AI has come up in a sermon here or in most churches. Part of what churches do is preserve ancient truths and rituals and practices, which is important. But at our best, a church can also try to integrate all of these treasures with the big changes and realities of our moment. So we can ask what it means to promote peace and justice in our generation, how to live with faith, hope, love, and courage in our times.

So today, we’ll take a first pass here at Reservoir at talking about AI and the human calling.

When I hear people talking about AI, I mostly hear one of two things – that it sucks or that it’s magic.

On the “it sucks” front – Ronnie Chieng, down the street from here at Harvard this spring, said “F_ AI, destroy it. AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber.” He was like: human creativity is the fun part of our jobs. Don’t turn that over to AI. He talked about giving a friend a book on Buddhism, then the friend got AI to summarize the book in 10 seconds. And then he said, “Surprisingly, he did not achieve enlightenment.”

And it’s true, sometimes AI really does suck.

But I also hear people talking like it’s magic.

I can’t tell you how often this past year I’ve had a problem or a project I was working on, and a friend in one of my networks told me how AI could take care of it for me. And mostly their selling point is how fast it would be.

And they’re right. This year I’ve seen friends use AI to create their presentations, write their emails, draft their strategic plans, take notes for meetings they don’t want to go to, push them out of writer’s block, code a bespoke app for a community program. It’s stunning how much work we can turn over to our really new and free generative AI programs.

It is kind of magical.

• But each time, I’ve wondered – is faster always better?
• What if I want to go through the process of really learning something?
• What if I want to grow and create and collaborate with other people through this problem or project?
• And what if I want the things I do to reflect my unique, God-given voice and how it’s developed so far through these 52 years of my life?

Telling ChatGPT to do stuff for me might short-cut or miss a lot of that.

So friends, maybe AI sucks, and maybe it is magic, or maybe both are a little true. But it’s showing up everywhere, in our schools and workplaces and government and homes, and in our churches too. So it’s worth having thoughtful, discerning conversations about generative AI. What we want to use it for and what we don’t. How we want it to shape our hearts and minds and communities and environment and workplaces, and how we don’t.

I am very much a learner here, not an expert, so if you are an expert, bear with me, as I hope to provoke conversation among us, and hope to promote what our faith tradition calls discernment – thoughtful, careful, prayer-guided, love-informed thinking and decision making about technology – how we use it to change things and how to be aware of how it’s changing us.

Obviously, as with many modern things, the Bible says nothing about AI, of course. But it does say a lot about what it means to be human and the best and most important things humans of all generations are called to by God. And it even wrestles with how humans use technology as they do that.

So let me ground this teaching in two ancient scriptures, and things I’ve been learning from three authorities I’ve been listening to as I think about their implications.

The two scriptures are ancient stories about how people used technology – building technologies in these cases – and about what it did for them and to them and how God may have felt about all that.

The first is the story of the Tower of Babel from the first book of the Bible, called Genesis. It goes like this:

Genesis 11:1-8 (Common English Bible)

11 All people] on the earth had one language and the same words.

2 When they traveled east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them hard.” They used bricks for stones and asphalt for mortar.

4 They said, “Come, let’s build for ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves so that we won’t be dispersed over all the earth.

5 Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the humans built.

6 And the Lord said, “There is now one people and they all have one language. This is what they have begun to do, and now all that they plan to do will be possible for them.

7 Come, let’s go down and mix up their language there so they won’t understand each other’s language.

8 Then the Lord dispersed them from there over all of the earth, and they stopped building the city.

9 Therefore, it is named Babel, because there the Lord mixed up the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord dispersed them over all the earth.”

So on the surface, it looks like people are trying to build a city, they aim for something large and impressive, and God finds that threatening somehow. So God foils their plans and scatters them.

That’s not a very satisfying reading, though. Any reading of the Bible that makes God seem small, petty, or insecure is probably not a good reading. So people have seen other things in this story.

We notice the fear. Genesis begins with the beauty of the whole earth, and the goodness of the human beings who get to live in it. It says humans have a responsibility, a calling – to care for and cultivate the earth, and to fill it with people, and fill it with beauty and culture and love and goodness.

It’s a beautiful, bold calling.

Here, though, the people are afraid and they’re not using their powers to make beautiful things but to most efficiently resist their fears, and this seems like poor use of human ingenuity and technology.

We can notice history too. Genesis was completed and edited while its Jewish authors lived in exile as subjects of the Babylonian empire. And the Tower of Babel sounds a lot like the great stone ziggarut temples the Babylonians built. It’s likely that the Jewish exiles in the 6th century BC were conscripted to help renovate some of these towers, as slaves and as low-paid conscripted workers.

And this was all really exploitative. We have an empire building monuments to its own greatness, using the labor of conquered peoples for the conqueror’s profit and status. Anxiety and pride-fueled, grandiose building projects then and now choose self-serving power over love, uniformity over diversity, the enriching of a few at the top over the pyramid instead of the common good and dignity of everyone else in the middle or at the bottom.

And God rejects this project, hates it, curses it.

Later in the Hebrew scriptures, we read of another building project. After the Babylonian exile, the people of Jerusalem have the chance to return to and rebuild their homeland. And the book of Nehemiah tells the story of the former exiles rebuilding their temple walls.

The story starts with a Jewish exile named Nehemiah, who is serving a Persian king. The king asks why he’s so sad. And the story says:

Nehemiah 2:3 (Common English Bible)

I replied, “May the king live forever! Why shouldn’t I seem sad when the city, the place of my family’s graves, is in ruins and its gates destroyed by fire?”

This building project doesn’t begin with fear, control, and efficiency but with grief, love, and hope. The people of Jerusalem are eking out a miserable civic existence, and Nehemiah has the creative vision to imagine something better.

Later, back in his homeland, he presents his vision to the residents of Jerusalem.

Nehemiah 2:17-18 (Common English Bible)

17 So I said to them, “You see the trouble that we’re in: Jerusalem is in ruins, and its gates are destroyed by fire! Come, let’s rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so that we won’t continue to be in disgrace.”

18 I told them that my God had taken care of me, and also told them what the king had said to me.

“Let’s start rebuilding!” they said, and they eagerly began the work.

Nehemiah’s project may have been envisioned by him, but the people at large consent to and celebrate and expand upon his vision. It doesn’t become a project of control or profit in the hands of a few, but of shared work toward the common good for many. Throughout the story, the people involved fight corruption, work for fair wages and equity and robust participation from as much of the community as possible.

Together, the community builds something they all want and need, and unsurprisingly, the story ends in joy.

Nehemiah 12:43 (Common English Bible)

43 They offered great sacrifices on that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy. The women and children also rejoiced, and the sound of the joy in Jerusalem could be heard from far away.

Human ingenuity and technology have been used equitably and creatively to preserve and expand the common good. And so people are happy – it’s a beautiful thing for them. And God is happy as well – it’s a beautiful thing for God.

Well, what do these building projects have to do with how we relate to human technology and innovation in general, and to AI in particular?

I drew them from the beginning of a long paper published by Pope Leo in late May this year. This letter from the pope, what the Catholic Church calls an encyclical, is entitled The Magnificence of Humanity: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.

Now the pope is not an AI expert, but he’s listening to a lot of AI experts, and he’s a religious expert, and he’s got a lot of wise and important things to say.

He writes about the significance of employment and the lack of thoughtfulness companies and nations exhibit when we rapidly disrupt economies, trusting the market to take care of employment creation, while millions of people’s experience of the dignity of meaningful work is threatened, and parents struggle to raise their children with hope.

And this is just one example of his reckoning with AI and the common good. How God calls humans to employ our gifts and talents not just for the efficiency and well-being of myself, or my family, or my culture, but for the common good of the human family and all of creation.

The tower of Babel is an archetype of tech that uses humans, that exploits us, that is driven by fear, that’s controlling, and limiting and harmful to humanity. Massively enriches the power and prestige of some people, but isn’t good for many more.

But the community building project of Nehemiah is a picture of technology being used equitably, justly, and creatively for the common good, as that is perceived and discerned by the community.

I spent some time recently with one of our Reservoir members who is a high level AI expert and these concerns about the common good came up a lot.

We talked about the problems of all the creators whose work is used to train AI models, without consent and without compensation. And how from the perspective of my friend, that is hard to solve but needs to be solved.

We talked about the massive and damaging environmental impact of the explosion of AI. Just a few years ago, it seemed like American society was maybe finally interested in reckoning with the impact of all the carbon burning and pollution. And now we have this explosion of data centers that deplete millions of gallons of fresh water for cooling, that have huge carbon footprints, that produce toxic electronic waste, and we’re like: sure, why not? Our descendants will hate us for this, friends.

And when AI tools are mostly built and controlled by white men in for-profit companies, and trained on the published texts mostly written by white men as well, the issues of bias are pervasive and important.

I am personally choosing to not use AI actively in my work or free time until these issues are reckoned with.

But the more my friend and I talked, the more persuasive I found her thinking that our problems with the common good aren’t mostly an AI problem, they’re a human problem. AI is a tool, maybe a powerful accelerant in the scope of our common good problems, but it’s up to people and companies and governments to care about the common good and to develop and use and regulate in the direction of the common good.

My friend also talked about ways AI is being used to protect and enhance the common good. Not removing humans from hiring processes, but lowering human prejudice and bias in HR. Not using AI in education and learning to cheat and avoid creativity, but to broaden access to tools that spark learning and creativity for learners who have had less access to these opportunities.

There are plenty of ways to use AI to deceive, control, cheat, and produce bad work. But there are ways to use it to enhance creativity, learning, equity, and the common good.

The other big theme that emerges in the pope’s work, is the risk that ubiquitous AI has in cheapening and avoiding the development and expression of the human soul.

He writes about the difference between efficient processing of information – with generative AI is very, very good at – and deep wisdom, which can only be a product of longer slower processes that include choices, mistakes, forgiveness, and fidelity.

And the pope writes about how the beauty of humanity isn’t always best experienced in maxxing out our capacities, but embracing and working within our limitations with grace, courage, and interdependence.

My friend and I talked about this as well. She thought it made sense that I don’t use AI for my work at least, because as a pastor, there are things I could use AI for but it would make my work less relational, less creative, and less soulful. People trust writing produced by AI less than by humans, even when they don’t know who wrote it. AI can’t attune and listen and create like a human can. And every time we ask AI to help us with something, we’re not asking and listening to the fellow humans we relate to.

People are also using AI for really terrible things.

Fake nude images of children, deceptive and manipulative media, choosing where to launch lethal drone attacks that kill innocent people.

• Any time we cede our creative and relational callings as humans to AI, we get bad product but more importantly we give up part of the glory of how we’re meant to work, and who we’re meant to be.
• Any time we cede our moral decision making to AI, we also abdicate some of our most beautiful responsibilities as human beings as well.
• And any time we use AI to more efficiently and more skillfully steal, kill, and destroy, well, we become corrupted shadows of who we were meant by God to be – makers of goodness, beauty, truth, and love.

These are all fundamentally human problems, not AI problems, though. Tech is going to tech, and the speed of its dizzying innovation isn’t going anywhere. That cat is out of the bag. It’s up to us – individual humans and communities and societies of humans – to decide how to train it, how to regulate it, and when and how to use it.

The third expert I consulted in this sermon is kind of a pope in parts of the progressive evangelical Christian world. He’s an old colleague of mine who’s become a very influential thinker and speaker. His name’s Andy Crouch.

And Andy’s language he’s using for this is redemptive directions for AI. He’s asking how we can use AI for good, and in ways that don’t misshape us as humans. He argues things like, redemptive AI should inform but not replace human agency, that it will be used to serve human relationships, never to replace them. That it will benefit the global majority, and I’d add, our global descendants, rather than serve and enrich just a present-day global minority.

I think Andy’s speaking wisdom I hope we will listen to.

Friends, I’m out of time, and obviously this is only the beginning of all the things we could say and talk about.

But I’ll end with two quick thoughts.

One is that if you want more of this conversation on AI and Christian faith, can you let me know? A colleague who’s doing a lot of work in this area offered to run a free workshop after church for us this fall, for instance, for those who are interested. Let me know if you’d come to that, and we’ll make it happen if there’s interest.

Two, friends, I ask that you remember and reflect on your deep and beautiful human calling. You and every human you will ever meet is a child of God, made in the image of God – a reflection of some of God’s beauty, possessed with God-like powers and capabilities, even if like me, you’re also sometimes a fool. You were made for truth and goodness and beauty and joy and love.

Don’t let any tech rob you of all this.

And in your use of technology and AI and everything else, be wise, be discerning, be redemptive, be loving, be bold and free. Because all that is your birthright and your calling. Nothing less, nothing less.

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I remember in college, one of the first things you asked when you met a new person was, “what’s your major?” At my school, if you say, “Guess.” then the other person would say, “North or South?” It wasn’t about North or South Korea, but asking, “are you North or South campus?” You see, UCLA was divided into two types of people. North Campus or South Campus. North campus was generally social sciences, like psychology, sociology, political science. South campus was bio, chem, engineering, math, you know, the real sciences. It categorized people immediately. Like you were trying to figure out what kind of a person you are. The stereotype was, and I’m not saying these things are true, it was just a bunch of 18 year olds making stereotypes, South campus, you’re like actually smart, probably pre-med and so forth. North campus, eh you’re probably opting for an easy major. Unless you were double majoring of course, like Anthropology and Bio, then you were smart and hot.

I say that this is just based off of 18 year olds making up stereotypes but let’s be real, grown-ups kind of do this too, no? I remember at the Church Retreat, the dinner tables had lovely cards with fun questions, like “what’s your favorite childhood memory?” So we’re not resorting to boring questions like, “What’s your major?” “What do you do?” for which I totally did ask someone next to me, “So, what do you do, for work or school?” (I thought I was giving options) to which the person generously diverted me by reaching for the cards at the table, “I… work but… let’s see these cards…”

You see, humans, we love categories. We draw these lines to put people here, north campus, and put people there, south campus, to make it easy for us to make assessments about each other quickly. I mean, they’re probably just trying to suss out if you my type or not.

This past month, our church celebrated Pride Month two weeks ago. It was a beautiful reminder for me of the struggle of the LGBTQIA community, and the strength, liberation, and hope. It reminded me of this text from Galatians 3:28, where Jesus talks about Oneness, that I wanted to share today’s message from. Let me read it for us.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

We are meant to be one. Not male or female. Slave or free. North or South campus. But one. And I want to talk about this Oneness Jesus invites us into through the lens of Queer Theology in celebration of Pride Month, it’s still June, we got a few more days. I wanted to do this because I believe that Queer theology, which if you’ve never heard of it before, I will get into it in a bit, but I really believe that it has a fresh access point and lens for us humans to speak and think about God in a new way that is abundant and life giving. And I bring this to us, not just as queerness being about gender and sexuality, though so much of it derives from the departure and liberation from “traditional” perspectives of gender and sexuality, but as a way to combust the box, the box in which we have put God in.

• Do you have God in a box?
• Have you had God in a box?

Just as the white male God theology of the European ancestors and histories have contributed to the message of Jesus through systematic theology (ones that were pretty popular in my days growing up) with John Calvin’s Institute of Christian Religion – someone who used his training as a lawyer to speak about God – and its thinking becoming central, almost normative for all people to receive wisdom and knowledge about God in this perspective, I think it would behoove us to consider various points of views that expand the whole picture of who God is. By interacting and receiving wisdom and knowledge from the queer community, not just describing a God to fit their needs but describing a God that can expand all of our views.

It really is not that systematic theology is the standard and other theologies are mere offshoots or supplemental theologies, but ALL of these theologies and perspectives describe a God from their point of view that helps us to get a better picture of God, or the elephant. Therefore, just as systematic theology isn’t just for lawyers but anyone who wants to learn about God in a systematic method, and Queer Theology isn’t just for the queer but Queer Theology is for Everyone who want to learn about God in an open and expansive ways that blur the lines of binary thinking.

So what is Queer Theology?

In An Introduction to Queer Theology book titled Radical Love by Patrick S. Cheng, it says that,

“queer theology refers to a way of doing theology that, in the word of the Magnificat (the song that Mary sang when she was pregnant with Jesus in Luke 1), brings down the powerful and lifts up the lowly.”

Cheng lays out a few different ways to define Queer Theology. One being, the thinking from the queer/LGBTQIA community and its activism. Another being, he says, “self-consciously transgressive.” I was like, what does he mean by “transgressive”?

“Transgressive” describes actions, ideas, or behaviors that violate or go beyond established social norms, moral codes, rules, or boundaries. It means stepping over the line of what is considered acceptable, conventional.

So doing queer theology is just like the act of pushing and going beyond what is socially acceptable. Okay.

And the third way to think of it is, he says,

“In other words, queer theology argues that the discourse of classical Christian theology ultimately requires the erasing of the boundaries of essentialist categories of not only sexuality and gender identity, but also more fundamental boundaries such as life vs. death, and divine vs. human.”

Is this not what Jesus did? Overturn life and death?

Isn’t that the whole point of Jesus, one who moved across, through, or beyond divine and the human and life and death?

I remember when I first came across Queer Theology. 2009, I’m in seminary. I happened to be the President of our campus’ Student Association Council. My Vice President was this amazing woman named Heather. She was tall and big, and so smart. I remember thinking in our classes, how can she be the same age as me but she’s read so much more, speaks so eloquently, and I felt like her thoughts were always so beyond and ahead of my thoughts. Sher and I were a great team. We’d be in meetings with the Dean and the seminary’s president, and I’d basically just say everything she’s laid out for us in our prep meeting and things she scribbled onto a notepad during the meeting. Not sure why I was the president and she was vice.

In her dorm room, a bunch of us would hangout for hours, talking theology, drinking beer, playing music, we would pull up MySpace, yes this was like Facebook before Facebook, yes a long time ago, yes I’m that old, because MySpace had better Karaoke videos than YouTube at the time. We’d bust out big spoons to use them as microphones and sing and dance. And her place was scattered with books everywhere.

On her coffee table laid a book titled, I think, if I remember correctly, The Queer God. I remember feeling a subtle mix of homophobia and a great curiosity. “How could God be queer?” and quickly thinking, “well I suppose God is not a boy or a girl.”

You see, I’m definitely not an expert on queer theology but as I have been exposed to it since over a decade ago and journeying alongside and learning from books and the queer community, I realize the love for God and the love of God when seen through the queer lens, is like that crystal prism,

It unveils beauty, a whole spectrum of magnificent color and an array of delight.

I looked up the book this week. I had never read it, but now I will. But check out this, just the description.

“The Queer God challenges the oppressive powers of heterosexual orthodoxy, whiteness, and global capitalism. Inspired by the transgressive (there’s that word again) spaces of Latin American spirituality, where the experiences of slum children merge with Queer interpretations of grace and holiness, The Queer God seeks to liberate God from the closets of traditional Christian thought, and to embrace God’s part in the lives of gays, lesbians, and the poor.”

Queering God is mind blowing, mind bending, mind exploding. I would go on to say such endeavor takes us on a journey to obtain cognitive flexibility, or in this case, spiritual flexibility.

I just finished a novel titled Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It was a fun read because she talks about Boston and LA, and the author’s half Korean so it has some sprinkles of Korean American experiences. In it, when the main character Sam is at a testing moment, his grandfather who owns a pizza place in Koreatown dishes out a piece of wisdom you’d learn in business school: the ability to pivot.

It said,

“the most successful people in life are the people who are most able to change their mind sets. Knowing how to change their mind about something. The ability to pivot or elasticity in thinking. Elastic thinking of cognitive flexibility is the ability to break free from ingrained rules, sit with ambiguity, and adapt to rapidly changing situations. Unlike logical or analytical thinking, it relies on imagination, a tolerance for failure, and an openness to entirely new paradigms.”

I guess, the point isn’t to be the most successful, but even just to survive this complicated everchanging world, to withstand the life that life be throwing at ya, don’t we all need some flexibility and adaptation? If the rigid kind of faith or theology has worked for ya, by all means.

But if you are looking for a God that surpasses all understanding, if you are looking for a Christianity in the post-modern world that doesn’t make you smaller but expands your spirituality to hold, not just sophisticated world we live in but the complex and varied experiences and identities and the thoughts that you hold, that you are, can your theology hold it all up?

I think that’s what so many of us are and have been doing in this day and age. Trying to do Christian faith involves, yes deconstruction, and pulling out weeds, and severing parts that don’t work for us, and finding a new footing. And that’s uncomfortable, scary, exciting, jarring. It involves grief. Lots of grief. And acceptance.

In Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, I hope this isn’t too much of a spoiler cause it is a fun read, but Sam has had a condition where his foot eventually needed to be amputated. He ends up getting a prosthetic but experiences what they call Phantom limb pain, where the brain continues to receive and process nerve signals from a missing body part. It manifests real tingling, cramping, burning, or shooting sensations from the foot that is no longer there. The doctor tells him that the good thing is that the feelings, the pain, are “not real.”

I wondered if some of us experience that as we grow in faith and sometimes have to sever ties with those who were our faith groundings, those who first taught us about Jesus, those who taught us to pray and recite Bible verses, who may have had a difficult time embracing some of the new ways you’ve matured in faith that they don’t agree with. Change is hard.

This is a bit off topic but I’ve even thought about the ways our church has been and will be going through some changes. I just saw the Benjamin Banneker school that’s been on our church campus even before we moved into this campus, move out this week. I did snag a really nicely built bookcase. Those things are expensive! But it’s kind of sad. A big change for our campus. It is a good thing for Banneker – their kids and community get their very own school. We’re happy for them. But also it is a loss for us – loss of sharing the space with them, loss of financial security which we’re actively working on and there’s new opportunities in sight. I’m just saying though, a pivot, a shift, seeing a new tomorrow is both exciting and filled with grief.

Anyhow, letting go of a picture of a God who is a powerful omnipotent mighty king, was also hard for the people who were watching Jesus get beaten and hung on the cross. Holiness hurts. Beholding the divine in our mind is a mind trip. Let’s just say, it’s not boring. We haven’t learned all that we can about God. God’s love is endless and just when you think you have God figured out, God’s like,

‘I’ve got something new for you. Come here. Follow me.’

In Outside the Line: How Embracing Queerness Will Transform Your Faith by Mihee Kim-Kort, she says that

“queerness emerges as a means to embrace the gray areas and the ambiguities.”

I was at a conference for Progressive Asian American Christians with Mihee in 2019, where we suddenly heard the news of her good friend Rachel Held Evans’ passing at the age of 37, Rachel, the one who wrote books like “A Year of Biblical Womanhood” and “Faith Unraveled” that ushered in so many of us toward the journey of deconstruction and asking questions. These thinkers and believers like Mihee and Rachel kept pointing back to Jesus again and again to derive their conviction and theology of expansive and inclusive love.

Mihee said that Jesus

“challenged the racial, sexual, cultural, religious, and economic realities and more around him. He did so with a compelling fervor and creative brilliance, undoing the structures and systems with a mere parable or blessing, a touch or gesture. Finally, he himself was undone on the cross.”

She goes on to say,

“Jesus acted queerly. Certainly, we could describe his actions as the dictionary definition of queer, “strange or odd from conventional viewpoint; unusually different.”

This is good news for all of us because on that cross, it says in

Matthew 27:50-53

“When Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split

52 and the tombs broke open.

The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.

53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.”

Jesus’ audacious, scandalous, indecent act of surrender split open the heaven for us.

Plenty of churches and temples were torn in two when people in the church started coming out of the closet. I’ve been through churches shaking, the congregation splitting, budgets were cut. But in that, there, new life was happening. Resurrection in people’s souls was happening. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after and went into the holy city and appeared to many people with much pride.

All this so that we may know new life, he did for us.

God is everything. Not just a he.

In

Genesis 1:2 “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

The Spirit of God is Ruach (רוּחַ), which is a feminine noun.

In Genesis 1:26 God refers to Godself in the plural pronouns.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,

He. She. They.

And God created humankind in God’s own image,

In the image of God, God created them

And so you, who may identify as he/she/they

You are made in the image of God, just as you are.

I want you to turn to the person next to you and say,

You are made in the image of God

I want you to turn to the person on the other side or behind you and say,

You are made in the image of God

You are made in the image of God.

And in God there is no division. North or South. Male or Female. Slave of Free. We are one.

Let me pray for us.

God who loves us across the boundaries of divine and human, one could say like a queer love, bursting through the walls of what the religious leaders thought were correct and right, you simply loved. You simply were a human being even though you were so much more. In Jesus you showed us the scandalous love that shocked the world. Whether it’s through queer theology or not, help us to know that each of us are fiercely passionately absolutely loved by you. May we surrender to you and receive that love, without any excuses, oh no I need to fix myself up or be a better person, but to simply know, just as we are, in all our complexity and contradictions, that you love us. I pray in the name of sweet lovely Jesus, Amen.

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The 2026 Reservoir Juneteenth Sunday Celebration was an inspiring and insightful tribute to the ancestors and a reflection of the ongoing fight for equality presented by members of the Reservoir community.

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This year’s Reservoir Pride service was a beautiful invitation to worship through the experiences of our LGBTQ community and a beautiful expression of how the image of God is reflected through members of our LGBTQ community.

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At the start of this year, I spent some time paying attention to my dreams for this church community. And as I was listening, and praying, and reflecting, three phrases came to mind again and again.

That all of us who want to can find a community of care and trust here.

That each of us and our community can grow to be more and more resilient.

And that we’ll all find the help we need to keep the faith in hard times.

Community of care and trust. Resilience. And keeping the faith.

I started the year with those as my biggest hopes for us. Still true now.

And so when I took some time this week to wonder what I would say to you today in my sermon, a fun thing happened.

The sermon I’d had in my mind just went flat. Maybe I’m not ready to preach it yet. Maybe now’s not the right time. I don’t know. But when I tried to focus on the idea I’d had in mind, I just knew it wasn’t going to happen.

So I did a thing I don’t do very often, but that now and then we do at Reservoir in the summertime when we don’t have these teaching series we picked. I went to what’s called the lectionary. The lectionary is the preplanned cycle of Bible reading and teaching for the global church. The basic idea is that it walks you through a lot of the Bible every one to three years. And in a lot of more formal, more traditional church traditions, preachers and pastors like me don’t just get to pick what we want to preach on. We’re supposed to preach from these pre-planned texts, set by a committee generations ago.

Anyway, I went to the lectionary and what did I find this week, but several different scriptures that all explore the meaning and the practice of keeping the faith. They explore what faith is and what it isn’t. And they give some direction and some inspiration on what keeping the faith looks like, and why that can be so valuable.

So I thought: how serendipitous, that I get to teach today on one of my big dreams for us all – for help in keeping the faith.

The first passage is a big moment in the first book of the Bible, Genesis. It says:

Genesis 12:1-3, 9 (Common English Bible)

12 The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you.

2 I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing.

3 I will bless those who bless you,
those who curse you I will curse;
all the families of the earth
will be blessed because of you.”

9 Then Abram set out toward the arid southern plain, making and breaking camp as he went.

So Abram, later called Abraham, and his partner Sarah, are considered the father and mother of faith in three great religious traditions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. No one pretends they would have been the first people to trust or worship God or the gods. Or the first family to try to discern and follow the wisdom of their creator.

But in the story of Genesis, they represent a new beginning of how we live and partner together, human and divine. And in the traditions of our religion, they’ve become a kind of archetype – a model, an inspiration – of faith.

So it’s interesting and important to look at the stories of their lives and notice what faith is and what it isn’t for them. Genesis, and the teachings in the New Testament that look back on it, have very little to say about what they named God, or the things people believed to be true about God and God’s world.

Faith for the father and mother of faith was not about the various facts and theories they held to be true. It was about taking a step forward in God’s direction, as best as they knew that direction.

Abram and his family think it’s time to leave home. To pack lightly, to travel through a desert wilderness, in search of a better land and a better life, where things can happen in them and in their descendants that will bless this whole earth.

It’s a story of exile and immigration, a story of hope and loss and trust, a family story – but not a private one, but one for the common good. And it’s a story about what faith looks like.

The faith of the ancestors is not about what facts or theories we believe to be true. It is about taking a step forward in God’s direction, as best as we know that direction today.

Faith is way less signing off on statements and beliefs, and way more about moving forward one step, one day at a time, in trust.

Last Sunday, over dinner at our community group, we were having a conversation about whether or not you’d had times in your life where with a big decision, you just knew in your gut exactly who or what you should choose.

And some of us had stories like this and some of us not so much.

But the one that came to mind for me was the time I knew that Grace and I were going to buy her childhood home and move in with her parents there.

This had not been part of my life vision board. Not at all. Grace’s folks owned an old two family home. They were aging and had some needs. And she’d brought up this idea with me. And I was like – no thank you. I didn’t really like the house or the neighborhood. We were living somewhere else we liked and where we imagined we could raise children. And, I don’t know, for white people these days, it’s not a thing to live with your parents or your in-laws.

I mean, maybe it’s a thing if you have to, but it’s not a thing you would choose. At least not for me. And Grace was cool with my lack of interest in this.

But one afternoon, I went for a run, and near the end, this obscure Bible passage from the stories of the life of Jesus came to mind. It’s s a story about our money and our resources and what we do with them, and a story that has connections to how we honor our parents, and what good and bad religion look like. And as it came to mind, I just knew in my gut that God was bringing this story to mind and that today, it was about Grace and me and her parents and the reasons we should buy their house and move in there with them.

I mean: I just knew it. Like this was a call, like it was meant to be. And I told Grace about it and she was like: that checks, sounds good. Let’s do it. And so we did. More than 20 years ago.

Honestly, I’ve looked back on that choice with mixed feelings. I’m not always sure if it’s worked out for us. The finances of the purchase were complicated and costly. It’s an old house, and there are times when fixing it up has felt like a money pit. The living in that community and living with in-laws has been … complicated. There have been some headaches. I still think: I wouldn’t have chosen this on my own.

But when I shared this perspective with our group, Grace was like: no regrets. She’s had the same complications I have. It wasn’t a choice she was looking to make, but an act of filial piety. But she knows we were moving in faith – taking a step in God’s direction, as best as we could see it. So she said:

I think we’ve been rewarded. Not with money or anything, but in a deeper way. I think it was a good thing to do and God’s honored our faith.

And I like to believe Grace is right – not just for us, but for all of us.

In my daily prayers, I actually remember Abraham and Sarah’s names, and the names of all the other founding fathers and mothers in the book of Genesis.

I do that for a lot of reasons – to remember that me and everyone I love are part of a bigger story, to remember that just like them, we don’t have to be certain about anything or even have it all sorted out what we believe. But because God is good, God’s vision is to love and bless us. And that’s not just a promise for me and mine, but it’s bigger than that too. God wants to bless and love me and mine and all of us together. God’s invested in beautiful personal and small stories that are part of a mosaic of beautiful collective and large stories for all of creation.

And faith looks like trusting this is so. And trusting the best way I can try to live today like that is true.

And all of that is good and pleasing and beautiful and holy.

Trust is beautiful.

Trying is beautiful, no matter what happens.

And small beginnings are beautiful too, even when we don’t know the ending.

I was talking with one of you this week, and you said you are so grateful that you can be part of this church and have no idea whether or not you think the stuff in the Bible and the facts and beliefs that are part of this religion are true. And you talked about how not knowing whether a bunch of stuff is real or true, you find it helps you make meaning of your life and the world week after week, and it anchors and inspires and holds you in good ways.

And I love that honest reflection. Because I think this too is what faith looks like, that whatever you think you believe to be true, you try to take steps forward in God’s direction, as best as you know that direction today.

Alright, two more things I want to say about keeping the faith.

The second passage from the lectionary readings, we’ll take two little parts of. They’re both from Matthew’s stories of the life of Jesus.

Matthew 9:9-12 (Common English Bible)

9 As Jesus continued on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at a kiosk for collecting taxes. He said to him, “Follow me,” and he got up and followed him.

10 As Jesus sat down to eat in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners joined Jesus and his disciples at the table.

11 But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

12 When Jesus heard it, he said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do.

13 Go and learn what this means: I want mercy and not sacrifice. I didn’t come to call righteous people, but sinners.”

Here Jesus is pulling together his quirky little school, his first small band of followers that will grow into the Jesus movement. And he picks this person Matthew that nobody likes. To the Romans, he’s this Jewish guy who’s good with numbers, and they look down on his culture and think he’s a loser, but they use him to collect their taxes and run their empire. And to the Jews, he’s a sell out and a traitor – a mark of shame on their culture and their family name.

Some of us know what it’s like for people to look down on us and disrespect us and underestimate us again and again.

And some of us know what it’s like for our religion or even for our family to hate, or to grieve that we are who we are.

Oh, what a heartbreak. What a horrible thing. People can be so cruel.

But Jesus calls bull on all this. He loves Matthew. He chooses and calls Matthew. And Matthew isn’t just love and chosen and included, he ends up with a book of the Bible named after him, and his name and the imagined renderings of his face show up on stained glass and art in millions of churches across the millennia.

Because isn’t God like this – to reverse our hasty judgments, and to take the ones who’ve been misunderstood and excluded and shamed and make them the cornerstones of something beautiful.

There’s this bit about the meaning of faith here too. A quote from the old prophet Hosea that Jesus makes the centerpiece of his teaching on faith.

Healthy people don’t need a doctor, the rest of us do.

God desires mercy, not sacrifice.

Faith is not about being good people: conformity to any particular standard of morality. And faith is not about being correct people, based on any particular understanding of the stuff you most believe or the way you need to look and live.

Faith is the hope that there is love and help and growth available for us, and for everyone else, and faith is about saying:

I’m in on that. I’ll take the love. I’ll take the help. With the help of God and friends: I’ll heal. I’ll grow.

I love that this teaching is happening on a day each month we set aside to name celebrations and griefs in our lives so we can be known and prayed for.

Because this day always reminds me just how amazingly wonderful and just how hard and painful life is. For all of us.

And we share parts of this together, knowing that the stuff we celebrate – what we name as blessings. We’re just thankful. It doesn’t mean we’re better people and it doesn’t mean that we’re more faithful or more rewarded when we celebrate. It’s just a gift, and we say: yes.

And the stuff that’s hard – the hurts, the losses, even our own missteps, it’s not a sign that there’s something wrong with us, or that we’re unchosen or ineligible, it’s just a reminder that life is hard sometimes, and we all need help. And that faith is hoping and believing that God loves us, and God has goodness and growth for us, even when things are hard.

Which brings me to the last thing I want to say. Which is that faith is hanging on all of this when it’s impossibly hard.

That bit about Matthew and mercy and and doctors and faith is immediately followed by a story of people reaching out to Jesus for help when things are impossibly hard – parents whose 12-year old kid is dying, and a woman who’s been so sick for 12 long years, that it almost feels like she’s dying.

And in both cases, Jesus is so tender and sweet. He calls them sons and daughters. And he helps them out, but then he acts that he’s not the one who’s done anything special at all.

Matthew 9:22 (Common English Bible)

22 When Jesus turned and saw her, he said, “Be encouraged, daughter. Your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed from that time on.

Your faith has healed you. Your faith has saved you.

I was in another community group years ago, where for a year we studied the book of the Bible that most uses this language about the saving power of faith. It’s a letter called Romans that talks about father Abraham and mother Sarah and how much faith means. And the more we studied it, the more it became clear to us – just like it has to so many scholars these days, that the faith it’s talking about isn’t believing all the right things, and it isn’t doing all the right things either.

We’re all sort of stumbling forward as best we can anyway, and God doesn’t care that much about how supposedly correct we think we are. No faith is about faithfulness, it’s about keeping the faith, it’s about hanging in and hanging on.

And that is one ingredient in what saves us.

Things are bad in our country right now, but what do we do with that? We can give up on it, and on the one hand, that’s fair. But if you give up on it and stick around, what do you have left?

Despair? Chronic fear and misery? Fighting for just yourself and your group, and saying: to hell with everyone else. We’ve tried all those things, and none of those help make for better lives for us and our descendants.

The only choice we’ve got if we care about that is to find some way to keep the faith, to hang on and hang in, and do our little parts to make a more perfect union, and to protect the rights and lives of those we love, and to try to do that in a way that protects the rights and lives of other folks too.

Whether any of us chooses to or not, I think being a faithful American calls for that.

American or not, hanging in with your country or not, this is some of what faith is:

• Faith is taking a step forward in God’s direction, as best as we know that direction.
• Faith is the hope that there is love and help and growth available for us, and for everyone else.
• And faith is hanging on and hanging in, even when things are impossibly hard.

It’s leaning into what’s good and true and beautiful, even when other people aren’t. It’s walking in the Way of Jesus, even when we don’t know how much difference it can make. It’s living like faith, hope, and love are good and real and true, and they matter still.

I still think that with the help of God and friends, that faith heals us. That faith still saves us.

Can we pray for that?

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This morning I’m in my uniform for the Renaissance choir I sing in. Because I’ve got a concert today. And because I’ve learned a lot about God, about what matters most in life, and how we show up together to do something beautiful through singing in choirs.

And I want to share about that today.

Two Bible passages today. The first is from a book called Exodus, because the first 24 chapters of the book tell the story of ancient Israel’s exodus out of slavery in Egypt and the beginnings of how they’re learning to live as a free people.

But then the last 16 chapters of the book are about how to build the tabernacle – the portable sanctuary where the people will worship God.

And this bit about professional artists comes in the middle of that temple-building section.

Exodus 31 1:6 (Common English Bible)

31 The Lord spoke to Moses:

2 Look, I have chosen Bezalel, Uri’s son and Hur’s grandson from the tribe of Judah.

3 I have filled him with the divine spirit, with skill, ability, and knowledge for every kind of work.

4 He will be able to create designs; do metalwork in gold, silver, and copper;

5 cut stones for setting; carve wood; and do every kind of work.

6 I have also appointed with him Oholiab, Ahisamach’s son from the tribe of Dan. To all who are skillful, I have given the skill to make everything that I have commanded you

Thirty years ago, I wanted to join Bezalel and Oholiab as a professional artist, in my case a professional musician. I had been singing classical music for a few years. I liked studying music, I liked practicing, I liked performing, and I was getting a lot of encouragement to give it a go as a career.

Until one summer, I gave up and quit music entirely.

I had two big reasons. Funny enough, neither of them were the reason you might assume. I feel like most people give up on their ambitions in the arts because they decide it’s impractical. It takes a lot of time, it’s very competitive, it can be hard to make a living.

But when I quit music, none of that had really sunk in yet. And my two big reasons basically boiled down to not thinking a life in music was important enough.

I wanted to do things that made a big impact in the world and that were aligned with the things that matter most to God. And I couldn’t see how teaching voice, and conducting choirs, and singing in concerts could really matter all that much to God.

I remember trying to explain this to some of my mentors and backers in music – my voice teacher who had invested so much in me as a singer, my professor who offered to support me for two years as a benefactor. I tried to tell them why I thought my faith required that I quit the arts and it made no sense to them. At the time, I thought it was because they just lacked faith themselves.

But years later, I’m on their side, and I think I’m the one that lacked good sense.

This passage is one of many, many places in our sacred scriptures and in our experiences that teaches us that the arts and all beauty matter to God.

One of the first things the Spirit of God inspires in ancient Israel as a free people is to build this tabernacle. And the plans in the Bible are detailed and extravagant!

On the one hand it seems really random. I mean, the back third of Exodus is one of those sections of the Bible that make most people give up on reading the thing. There’s the exact kind of wood used to hold this special cupboard, and the number of cubits in length for the golden cover on top of it. Patterns for the priests’ robes, descriptions of the lamp stands and candles.

Why do we care?

And why do people who have just escaped from slavery, learning how to be a free people, need to spend so much time and money building a house of worship?

Maybe it’s because beauty matters.

When we think about the work on earth that matters most to God – your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven kind of stuff for God – the Hebrew scriptures use the language of God anointing people to do that work. God setting people apart, equipping them spiritually/internally, and also helping them to develop special skills to partner with God in accomplishing what matters most.

And that language gets used for kings and priests and prophets. I had imagination for that as a young adult, that God could call people and equip them for religious work – like the priests and the prophets. Or God could call people for world-changing work of leadership and service – like the kings.

But here that very same language is used for artists, and craftspeople. Bezalel and Oholian are filled with divine spirit, with skill, ability, and knowledge – this is calling and equipping language – people being prepared for holy, important work that matters to God.

And for Bezalel and Oholion, this work has to do with jewelry making and wood carving, and metal sculpture. They’re lead artisans on the temple project, responsible for its beauty.

Beauty matters because it matters to God – God loves beauty.

And beauty matters because it matters to us.

I was talking the other week with a friend of our community, Stephanie Acker Housemann. She was a social work intern at this church around 20 years ago and stayed on staff with us for a little bit as we were a new church in the neighborhood, and her job was to help us learn to love our neighbors in North Cambridge and be good neighbors to this community.

She co-founded our Soccer Nights program, which we will run every year. And she helped our community groups find ways to serve and connect in the neighborhood together as well.

Steph has moved on in her career. These days, she lives in Europe and works on issues related to international refugees and others who are displaced from home. And she has started a new initiative called everyplace, which partners with refugee and displacement-affected communities to reimagine shelter and housing as places of beauty, dignity, and belonging, using art, design, storytelling, and community-led practice.

The research and experience behind this is that when displaced people are robbed of their agency, and structures are built for them. And money is spent on them, and plans are made for them, it is all super-utilitarian and functional. And often ugly and demeaning to the people involved.

But when people can exercise their own agency in the design and improvement of their home – even if that home is in a shantytown or a refugee shelter – they often spend time and energy and resources on making it more beautiful.

• Because beauty matters to people.
• Beauty helps us inhabit our homes and our lives with more pleasure, purpose, and peace.
• Beauty helps us smile. It helps us love.

And this is not just a thing for middle class and wealthy folks in highly developed societies, who are looking to get back in touch with their artistic selves. Steph’s work honors that beauty matters to all people.

Back to my own middle class, middle aged self, with a tiny bit more time on my hands now that my kids are grown, I can’t tell you what it’s meant to me the past year and a half to have started singing in choir again. I go to a rehearsal one night a week most of the year, and I’ll spend part of my afternoon today at a concert in Brookline, with the sole purpose of joining 15 other singers in making something beautiful together.

And doing this not only makes me smile wider and breathe deeper, it makes me feel whole, in a way. Coming back to singing the past couple years, I feel like I got back a part of myself I’d lost. And I’m grateful for that.

Some of us make beauty in traditional arts like me, or Bezalel or Oholian, in music or acting or painting or photography or pottery or whatever. And some of us make beauty and elegance we try to bring to management or parenting or teaching or any number of other creative endeavors.

As people made in the image of God, creativity is part of our birthright, and to make beauty is part of what brings us and keeps us alive.

Beauty matters. That’s one thing I’ve learned singing in a choir.

And the other thing is this.

There is no “I” in team, but there is an “m” and an “e.”

I know, it’s a cheezy cliche, but it’s true, there is no “I” in team, but there is an “m” and an “e.”

I learned in choir that the most important things we do almost never happen by ourselves. They take community and partnership, and that takes leading but it also takes a lot of following. It takes joining and submitting to other people’s vision and good ideas and initiative, not just our own. No “I” in team.

But it also matters that we show up with our bodies and our wholehearted yes. Our presence, our unique voice and gifts and contributions matter. There is an “m” and an “e” in team. We matter.

One more scripture to help us get there.

Mark 3:13-19 (Common English Bible)

13 Jesus went up on a mountain and called those he wanted, and they came to him.

14 He appointed twelve and called them apostles. He appointed them to be with him, to be sent out to preach,

15 and to have authority to throw out demons.

16 He appointed twelve: Peter, a name he gave Simon;

17 James and John, Zebedee’s sons, whom he nicknamed Boanerges, which means “sons of Thunder”;

18 and Andrew; Philip; Bartholomew; Matthew; Thomas; James, Alphaeus’ son; Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean;

19 and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus.

The gospels teach us that even Jesus Christ did almost nothing by himself. In many ways his primary work was to organize little communities of people to walk and grow and learn together and to be God’s hands and feet in the world.

An author named Andy Crouch, in a book he wrote years ago called Culture making, writes about this. He calls it the 3 – 12 – 120 principle of community.

Jesus famously had 12 named disciples that were in training with him. They were hardly the dream team, though. Even in the naming of them, the tradition remembers that one’s betrayal played a part in his death, and what looked like it was going to be the end of everything.

Anything important takes a team of people big enough to do something good, small enough so everyone knows each others’ name and styles and strengths and weaknesses. It’s never perfect. It’s usually not a dream team, but it is a team. That’s the 12.

Beyond this circle, there was a larger circle of community of students and helpers and participants – men and women, many of whose names we don’t know. At one point, there are 72 that Jesus sends out. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, there are 120 left at the beginning of what comes next.

All ventures that grow need a larger group involved at some point, where not everyone knows each other, but at some level, they are there for the same reason and purpose. That’s the 120.

But smaller than all that, at the heart of most important things are deep partnerships and trust between a very small number of people. For Jesus, within his circle of 12, there were three who were alone with him at the most important moments – Peter, James, and John. They are always named first in the lists of disciples, usually with their nicknames. They weren’t necessarily the best, just the closest, the ones most at the heart of Jesus’ time and trust and particular venture.

Almost anything important takes close partnership between a small number of people – founders of a company, the parents or caregivers in a family. This is the three.

This is true for Jesus, and it’s true for making anything. We don’t do it alone. Whether we are perceived as a leader or a co-leader or a follower or whatever, pretty much anything beautiful or important humans do, we do alongside a small number of other people.

We’re meant to make beautiful things together.

In a choir, you learn a lot about this.

A choir is all about togetherness.

When you join a choir, you join a group of people – and you probably wouldn’t have chosen them all as a friends, but there you are, to figure out how to do something beautiful together. Work is like that, family is like that, church is like that. A good life takes joining with people and sticking with people that you don’t choose.

A choir is also all about listening more than speaking or singing. Our former music director at Reservoir, Matt Henderson, was great about valuing this and teaching this. When you make music with others, the first thing you need to do is listen. Because no matter how skilled or talented you are, if you’re not listening, you can’t do something beautiful together.

Work is like that, family is like that, church is like that – hanging well with other people, doing something beautiful together takes a lot of listening, asking questions, getting outside our own heads and getting curious about what’s going on in someone else’s.

A choir, I’m continually learning, is also one where your unique voice really matters, but where the community voice matters more. For a choir to make really beautiful music, especially a small choir like mine, where we’re 15 people, often singing five, six, seven part harmonies, everyone has to sing their lines a little like a soloist – thoughtful about our breath, and phrasing, and sound quality.

But unlike opera or a lead singer in a band, you can’t just do your thing and let it rip. You have to blend in one voice with the group. And that takes listening, it takes paying attention to what your neighbors are doing and blending with them. Yesterday, before our concert, our choir director was just begging us to look at our music less and look at each other more while we sang. For this reason. And she was like: I dare you, look at each other while you sing. I’d rather have you look and make beautiful music with a mistake here and there, then to not look and make no mistakes, but do nothing beautiful.

Jesus took the risk of doing something beautiful in a community of flawed, messy, sometimes disastrously bad relationships between people. Because he didn’t have a choice. None of us do. If we want to do anything beautiful, anything that really matters, we’re mostly going to have to do that together.

There’s no “I” in team – it’s never just about our preferences, our choices, our needs, our directions. Good things are made in team. But there is an “m” and an “e” in team. Teams need us – our time, our talent, our joining in , our offering of our special and wonderful and unique selves, whether or not we’re the ones setting the pace or leading the way. Work is like this, families and friend groups are like this, church is like this, because life is like this.

I want to end with a pitch to you friends, an invitation to do something beautiful together as a church. This program that our friend Stephanie co-founded nearly 20 years ago, Soccer Nights, is one of the more beautiful things Reservoir does. A week-long, free, evening soccer camp in the neighborhood after school gets out.

It’s one of the things we’re known for best in Cambridge. It’s one of the things we’re loved for most. A beautiful week of 250 kids, a hundred volunteers, families throughout the neighborhood of so many cultures and languages sharing a beautiful summer evening together.

You may or may not love soccer. You may or may not be super-experienced with kids. Honestly, you may or may not feel like you can show up three nights or five nights in North Cambridge and volunteer during the last week in June. But it’s a way that this neighborhood and this church need you. And it’s a way to join in and make something beautiful together, something that takes a team.

Increasingly, the volunteer base of this program is made up of teenage volunteers from the neighborhood who grew up participating in soccer nights. But for a bunch of teens to be successful and happy as volunteers, they need a bunch of adults to do it alongside them, and kind of keep things steady and cool and safe and on target.

Truth be told, I don’t like soccer very much. And some years, showing up on the field for five nights in early summer has been fun and convenient, and some years it’s been an inconvenience for me. But for just about every year, the past 17 years, I’ve been on the team. Because I believe in making beautiful things together.

And I believe in being part of what my church does that’s most important. And over time, it’s been really rewarding to be part of something so, so beautiful that I could never lead and that I certainly could never do by itself.

Pretty much every week, there’s someone in the dome after church that can talk to you about volunteering at soccer nights and help you sign up. I’ll be there today. And friends, I’d really love to see you there at the end of June.

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Today Post Evangelical Collective executive director Keri Ladouceur will be our guest preacher, as part of our series Something New, about creativity, art, spirituality, and the good life.

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On July 21st this year, the First Baptist Church of Mt. Vernon, Illinois, held its last service. Random, but I know about this because its pastor Ryan Burge is a researcher and writer that I follow, so I read his article called, “My Church is Closing, and I don’t know what comes next – for me or America.”

It ends:

“I walked out those doors into the blinding heat of a summer day in southern Illinois and stepped into a future where I don’t know where I will go to church next Sunday, or even if I want to go. Frankly, I don’t know if my own faith will survive, and I’m not sure if the church in America will be there for the next generation like it was for me. And I’m terrified because for the first time in my spiritual life, I don’t know what’s next.”

Something like 5,000 churches closed last year in America. That’s 5,000 centers of community life, 5,000 groups of people eating together and praying together that aren’t any more. And 5,000 pastors, and tens of thousands more people not knowing if the church in America will be there for the next generation like it was for them, and a little terrified in their spiritual lives, not knowing what’s next.

Friends, there are a lot of reasons that churches are closing, and some of them are right good reasons. I’m a pretty big critic of most of what passes for Christian faith and practice in America. And Reservoir, we’re a reformist church. We’re trying to do some new things in new ways in how we do church too.

So I have mixed feelings about this decline of churchgoing and decline of organized religion in America. Sometimes I’m like: good riddance! Let it die. Let’s make room for something new.

But sometimes it makes me sad. Sometimes even terrified. Because churches at our best are powerful communities. And without churches at our best, there are some really good things that would happen a lot less if at all for the generations that are coming after us.

Friends, don’t get me wrong, our church, Reservoir, is not in distress or on the edge of closing or anything like that. Between our in person and online programming, we’re reaching about the same number of people every Sunday we did before the pandemic. That’s unusual. And over the course of a year, we’re probably touching more people than we did then. And as a pastor, I’m lucky to see and hear a lot of the stories of people who have more friends or more faith or more hope in their lives because we are all here. And that’s so good.

Still, none of this happens on auto-pilot. Which is why every fall we return to this theme: We Are Reservoir. We try to remember why we’re here and that we are the church. We ask again what takes from all of us to make this the church we want it to be, and that our community needs us to be.

And the way I want to help us to do that today is to think about where we come from and where we are going.

I’ve got the tiniest of Bible texts to read, just one verse.

John 13:3 (Common English Bible)

Jesus knew the Father had given everything into his hands and that he had come from God and was returning to God.

Jesus is having a bad day. The biggest of storms is coming in his life. His opponents are closing in. He’s close to arrest, death by crucifixion. It’s a moment where the only natural thing is to be sad, terrified.

But John gives us this window into Jesus’ inner life and says, Jesus thought about where he came from and where he’s going.

It says he came from God. That’s a big place. His hometown, his parents, the embarrassing nose-picking moments of his childhood, Jesus believes his whole life comes from God, and that he has particular gifts to offer and purposes to fulfill still. And for him, white worst, most violent day isn’t the end either. Jesus knows that even death can’t end him. He’s going back to God too.

I think this powerful awareness of where he came from and where he was going made Jesus the most secure person who ever lived, maybe the most present person who ever lived. Always now, here. And security and presence – those are some mighty superpowers.

They help Jesus in this moment not be mostly sad or terrified, but alive, curious, full of potential energy. Here I am, in this moment, God’s given me everything I need. What will I do?

And per unusual, he goes and does something really beautiful, really powerful. Story for another day.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in my own life.

• Where do I come from?
• And where am I going?
• And how can I lean into more beauty and more power each day I’ve got?

I’m 50 years old, somewhere in the middle of my life, I hope. Our kids are all adults now, they’re coming and going. I’ve got a lot of tread on the tires of my body. But I’ve got a lot of experience too and God willing, a lot of years and a lot of adventures ahead. And I find mid-life can be an interesting time – because you can collapse into anxiety – being kind of sad and terrified – or you can embrace the adventure of it all. And wonder what this next great season’s going to be about.

I saw this little reel on Instagram that was encouraging us to ask, what would make the eight year old version and the 80 year old version of you proud of yourself today? What would make an eight-year old proud of you today? Friends, my life is so small and flawed in many ways, but I tell you, eight year old me was entering a sad and lonely season of life, and eight year old me is pretty damn proud of who I am now. And that gives me encouragement. That helps me feel good about my life.

And then I wonder what would make 80-year old me proud of me today? And sometimes that helps me make better choices than I usually do. I mean, sometimes it doesn’t. We’re all human. But sometimes it does.

Where do you come from? And where are you going?

I think these are helpful questions for our church. Your executive pastor Trecia Reavis, has been encouraging me and her to do some strategic analysis of our church, and she’s got me asking where we come from, and where are we going? We’re just starting to invite other people into this conversation. And I’m finding this helpful to ground and focus our church too.

When it comes to thinking about where we come from, the late poet Maya Angelou has this great line. She said:

“I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.”

Maya Angelou

If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.

We spent a lot of time last year celebrating where Reservoir comes from. We recorded 25 great stories from our 25 years as a church about what this community has meant to so many of us.

We talked about how our church is still up to the same best things we cared about when we began in the 1990’s but also how we’re different now too.

Earlier this month, our staff team went back to last year a little again, as we took some time to reflect on these same questions, for us and for the church. Where do we come from, and where are we going?

I had us write some poetry. When I was a writing teacher with teenagers, I often started the school year with this “where I come from” poetry exercise. I’d ask kids to generate a list of places and smells and sounds and objects from their childhood and make a list poem out of that. It was a way of starting the year of English class seeing that we could write something really cool and interesting, kind of fast.

It was also a way of showing the students that what matters in the class isn’t just the literature or the lessons that I would bring to the table. What matters first actually is them – the lives and history, the beautiful, important selves that they bring to the table.

So our team had some fun writing our own awesome “where we come from” poems, and then we generated a list of words and memories of where Reservoir comes from too. We didn’t get time to turn those into a poem so I thought I’d do it quick for you. Here’s what I’ve got.

We come from flower children and intellectuals,

Inter-Varsity and Vineyard.

We come from prophecy and prayer and Holy Spirit miracles.

We made baseball diamonds and soccer fields,

Knit quilts, stacked chairs and more chairs,

Daring to be different, saying “if it works for you.”

We come from “spiritual, practical, fun”

“Pastoring secular America,”

Empowering impossibly great lives,

And trying fast, failing fast, always trying again so fast….

We come from the time

Of absurdly generous, hospitable, later burned-out leaders.

From so much welcome, too much hierarchy.

Big dreams and big mistakes

From seeking and Jesus and endless innovation,

From the hopes of dead founders and

The hands of the long gone dreamers,

From prayers that have filled this reservoir

With hope and faith and love.

For the old-timers among us, maybe some nuggets and some memories.

Friends, you’re in a church that has always swung big.

The founders of this church had big hopes to be the kind of church that could welcome people into this faith for the first time and welcome back thousands of people who’d left the faith as well. And with the help of God and friends, we’ve done that, we keep doing that.

In the first five or six years, this church grew faster, more explosively than almost any church in the history of New England. Five, six years into its life, hundreds of 20 and 30-somethings were raising millions of dollars to buy this city block we’re in today.

We stand on the shoulders of leaders before us with extraordinary love and energy. I was reminiscing with one of you about one of our former members who was learning to make quilts. But she didn’t just make a few quilts for her mom or her kids, she gathered dozens of people to make quilts, and they made quilts that knit the word beloved into them, and those quilts found their way to dozens of people unhoused on the streets and in recovery homes around the world to warm their bodies and speak the truth of their beloved beauty to their souls. One of those quilts hangs on the wall in the sanctuary.

There are dozens and dozens of stories like this.

Now there were some things in the first 25 years of this church we weren’t proud of, that we had to learn from, mistakes made, people hurt, courses that needed to be corrected, and we talk about those sometimes too. But Reservoir, I also want us as a church to know that we come from big hearts and big dreams that have always yearned for as many people as possible to get deep tastes and beautiful pictures of the love of God, the gift of community, and the joy of living.

So what does that mean for where we’re going?

Well, none of us know of course, but will you dream with me for just a minute?

One of my mentors in the Way of Jesus, the indigenous teacher Randy Woodley, reminds us of the wisdom of how his people think about time, looking back and forward across the generations.

He often quotes from the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy, a foundation for American democracy, where it was said:

“In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”

(The Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy)

What might the world need from us in seven generations, what might God want from this church in seven generations? These questions focus me differently.

It’s not easy to think seven generations forward if you’re not used to it, though, so in starting some strategic analysis, Trecia and I have been wondering what does God want, what does our community need from us in 25 more years, in one generation. In 2050, what will our generation’s children and grandchildren need from Reservoir Church?

I wonder what comes to mind for you.

What will America need from its churches in 2050?

What will the two generations that follow us – our children and our grandchildren – need from churches like Reservoir?

When I ask this question, I think: my God, I’m grateful for the We Are Reservoir sermons that Ivy and Lydia gave the past couple of weeks.

Ivy talked about community, how loneliness and polarization destroy people and communities, but how connection saves us. And I was like yes, yes, yes.

And I think in Ivy’s sermon, she gave vision for the two types of connection that save us, what Robert Putnam, our great local scholar of community in public life, calls bonding social capital and bridging social capital.

Bonding social capital is when we do life together. These are the people who do chores together, the people who call each other when they have great news or bad news to share. They are our ride or die partners in the big road trip of our lives.

Bonding social capital is good. We need more of this. We have epidemics of loneliness and addiction and social alienation in our times that would all be better with deeper, warmer bonding social capital. So hug your friends or spouse or kid or mom or whoever you’ve got. And if you don’t have people like this in your life, you need at least one or two. We all do. And Reservoir is an awesome place to find a little more of this. Start with a beloved table, or a community group.

No bonding social capital and we die of loneliness. But only bonding social capital, and we die of polarization and prejudice and powerlessness. See, Robert Putnam tells us about another form of community called bridging social capital.

Bridging social capital is connections of trust between people who are different from one another, sometimes really different. It’s when people who wouldn’t naturally be family and friends discover some shared interests, some reasons to relate to another and do something together. And friends, as much as America is sick from a lack of bonding social capital, we are even sicker from a lack of bridging social capital.

Where in 25 years will Americans of different races, different sexual orientations, people of different class and convictions, be getting to know and appreciate and respect each other more?

Where will people of very different ages and hobbies and day to day concerns be finding common hope, common loves, common care for one another to make for a healthier society, for the possibility of our big dreams we share with Jesus – words like commonwealth, and family of God, and beloved community?

If this doesn’t happen in diverse churches like Reservoir, there aren’t enough other spaces where it can happen. So friends, I think the next generation needs us to be an even stronger, deeper, more diverse community of connection, love, and respect.

And then Lydia’s sermon too, where she talked about our commitment to everyone accessing the good news of Jesus – everyone, however they receive it.

And again, I think yes, yes, yes! Thousands of churches like that one in Mt. Vernon, Illinois are closing for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons churches are closing is that Christianity’s message hasn’t been good news. It’s been about conformity and control, and no healthy person is looking to be controlled or told how they need to conform to be acceptable to God or the church – however well meaning those efforts at command and control may or may not be.

And churches are closing too because they haven’t been for everyone. They’ve been for the men leaders only, or they’ve only been for the old or the straight people or the republicans or the liberals or the well-behaved and well-spoken.

And so, if churches like ours are going to offer a gift to the next generation, let alone the next seven generations, we’ve got to keep discovering how the good news of Jesus is really good news to us and our generation. How this faith helps us love and be loved, how it helps us be people who find resilience and flourish in hard times, how it produces more joy and justice around us.

Because those are things we could use a lot more of.

We’re going to keep asking what this church needs to be over the next 25 years friends, and how we can get there, but this is my best sense of it today. Powerful bonding and bridging community that heals saves lives and communities, and good news of Jesus that is really good news, for everyone.

This is why we are, Reservoir.

And if we can be here, secure, present, knowing in this moment, God has given us everything that we need, I wonder:

• what will we do?
• What’s possible together?

At minimum, friends, I hope you’ll take a couple steps with me this fall. Your life, your story, your engagement is needed to make our dreams come true? Can you find one or two more simple ways to get involved?

Volunteer once a month if you’re not. Become an official member. Start giving some money. Join a community group. And especially, make a new friend here. Tell yourself, I’d love to make a new friend at church this year, and try to do that.

And then keep exploring with us the way of Jesus, the good news of Jesus, in stressful, chaotic times. We’ll be doing that on Sundays right on through Thanksgiving.

Next Sunday, my friend and a friend of ours, the Rev. Dr. David Gushee will be with us. Here on Sunday, he’ll preach on the good news of the moral teachings of Jesus, and on Saturday night, in the chapel, he’ll be here for a public talk on defending democracy from its Christian enemies. I hope you’ll join us for both of those. David’s books will be on sale at a discount too. I think he’ll give us a lot to talk about.

Friends, if you have any part in this church, you come from big, bold, beautiful dreams of all that we can experience and do together. And with your help, and the help of God and friends, we’ve got some amazing adventures and stories to come. I can’t wait to see just what those will be. Please be part of it.

Join in, if you will, to pray.

God give you the curiosity to wonder what would make the eight-year old version of you proud of you. And God give you the courage to ask what would make the 80-year old or even older version of you proud of you as well.

God gift you with security and presence, to be now, here, for this day that God has made.

And God give you, and me, and all of us under the sound of my voice the gift of being part of beautiful and powerful stories together, transmitting deep community and the good news of Jesus to the generation to come.

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We are in our Fall Series called “We Are Reservoir.” It’s a fun season — jumpstarting, reminding us of the beauty and presence of God in this community. Jesus at the center of all we do — all we dream and envision — and even more than what we can imagine. We draw close to us (as best we can) the values of an open, inclusive, beloved community that Jesus calls us to create and grow. Staying open, eager, connected to the Spirit of God by which we move and breathe and have our being.

This series “We Are Reservoir,” while in some ways is a taste and a teaching of Reservoir’s expression of how and why we think about faith and God the way we do (I think is mostly an invitation to live a connected life. To live a vibrant life — with a vibrant faith — with a vibrant God right at your hip. It’s an invitation to continue your journey of faith, cultivated “yes” (in part) by your individual moments with this wondrous God) but mostly it’s a journey lived out with all the beautiful, complicated, messy, people…image-bearers of God among and around you.

In some ways, “We Are Reservoir” isn’t really about Reservoir at all — it’s always been about what is beyond Reservoir. It’s the belief that God’s imprint is held and living in everyone. And perhaps our most vibrant faith — our most vibrant view of God will take shape as we seek to discover just that. As we live our lives tethered to a dynamic Spirit that promises to enrich our story as we uncover the stories of God exactly where our feet are.

I’d love to spend some time with you and the Spirit of God this morning — wondering together about why connection, why community is so vital to a healthy faith, a healthy life. We’ll learn from the stories of the widows in the New Testament and we’ll ask ourselves potent questions,

“Am I lonely? Am I connected? Where am I finding community?”

Prayer: This morning, may we turn to each other – as we turn to you, God. Today we ask of you what is simple — but seems to take lifetimes — help us love one another, unto a community of saints and widows and students and tradesman and high-level professionals and all of us — help us to resurrect one another where parts of us might feel absent of life…help us to continue to see you the life-giving, resurrected one in our midst.

YES DINNERS

Well back in 2016 (after a notable election) we started what we called “yes dinners.” It’s the same design as the Beloved Tables that we are running right now. . .. our version of community dinners that allow you to gather around a table, meet some folks in this community and feel (hopefully) a little more connected — a little more known.

And we completely stole this idea from a small grassroots organization called the People’s Supper. Who, in the wake of the rupture of the election and rippling division, vowed to hold 100 Suppers in 100 Days — hoping people would lean in and opt to connect around a table rather than hunker down in silos. This organization set out to equip communities with the tools they would need to build trust across lines of difference —

“realizing that social change moves at the speed of relationships, and that relationships move at the speed of trust.” (www.thepeoplessupper.org)

Over the years I think this movement has grown a lot — realizing areas in which they needed to adapt and change — and realizing that these meals weren’t a panacea.

“They don’t inoculate against grief, or polarization, or futility. But still holding close to the belief that those moments in which we truly connect with each other matter. They move us from isolation to connection, and toward a shared humanity. And the absence of such connection actually diminishes us.” (www.thepeoplessupper.org)

There are ways that big national events –like elections and a global event like a pandemic spike our awareness of how disconnected we are. We are suddenly all paying attention all at once — to what has laid beneath the surface for a long time.

We are a lonely bunch.

We really are.

There are just tons of data to support this. I mean our social connection has just plummeted since the early 2000’s — so much so that Vivek Murthy our Surgeon General (the doctor of our nation) last year put out a Surgeon General’s Advisory report declaring that we are enduring an epidemic of loneliness and isolation — one that has profound negative effects on not only our individual health but also societal health.

Loneliness is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Vivek says we will pay an ever-increasing price in the form of our individual and collective health and well-being if we don’t figure out how to build more connected lives and a more connected society.

Social connection is our deepest fundamental human need, as essential to survival as food, water, and shelter.

“Just as hunger and thirst tell us that we need to eat and drink — loneliness is our natural signal that reminds us when we need to connect with other people.” (Together, Vivek Murthy)

If left “untreated” Vivek believes we will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country. Instead of coming together to take on the great challenges before us, we will further retreat to our corners—angry, sick, and alone.

Throughout history, our ability to rely on one another has been crucial to survival — in fact our ancestor’s default setting was “togetherness”! (hunter-gatherers and such). We human beings are biologically wired for social connection — we are made as relational beings.

God embedded in the very design of the universe the energy of love and relationship…. Many scientists have pointed out that love is

“the very physical structure of the Universe.” That gravity, atomic bonding, planets, orbits, cycles, photosynthesis, ecosystems, force fields, electromagnetic fields, and evolution all reveal an energy that is attracting all things and beings to one another, in a movement toward ever greater complexity and diversity—and yet ironically also toward unification at ever deeper levels. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) This relational energy is quite simply love under many different forms.” (Rohr)

You see the energy is not IN the planets, or IN the atomic particles – the energy is found in the relationship between them.

It’s so beautiful — this ‘love force’ surrounding us at every turn — suggesting the very nature of our beings should just ooze with connection and good relationships — healthy communities. And yet it’s the hardest of things to do … we are often pretty bad at being relational beings.

Vivek Murthy spent the first part of his term as the nation’s doctor embarking on a “listening tour” around the country. Listening to stories, of what people were going through on the health front, what their lives were like — and what he uncovered was that the most prevailing ailment that held many chronic illness in common was loneliness.

Stories have always helped us feel connected and promote a sense of belonging. Storytelling helps us relay our values, purpose and identity and helps us bond emotionally.

“Ever since the first cave drawing we’ve been encoding our experiences in stories through words, pictures, music and rituals that are passed down generation to generation.”

Stories help us feel connected to one another. If I’m not sharing knowledge and emotions — bringing my true authentic self – my complex, diverse self – to a relationship — then I feel lonely.

Connection Value

It’s why here at Reservoir “connection” is one of our core values. We value

“life-giving connections and are committed to pursuing God’s wholeness, love, and leading in every moment of our lives, transcending distinctions between sacred and secular.”

What feels especially Reservoir-y about this to me — is that we don’t define what those “life-giving connections” look like — or where you’ll encounter them!

As we move into the scripture this morning in Acts, I invite you to hold all these parts of connection and community — its complexity, its importance, the stories, the barriers and the ways in which you feel connected or not.

Let’s read this story in the early part of Acts

Acts 6:1-7

1 In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.

2 So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.

3 Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them

4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”

5 This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism.

6 They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

7 So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

Here we have the early developing church in Jerusalem. A rapidly growing community of people that have come together with all their complexities and diversity, right? The 12 disciples themselves come from different social backgrounds, and opposing philosophical and political viewpoints.

Matthew, the tax collector was seen as regarded as a collaborator with the Roman occupiers. Simon the Zealot, was a member of a group that sought the expulsion of the Romans and the regaining of Jewish independence. . . and yet this early church community as it’s taking shape in Acts, is characterized by extraordinary unity and generosity. In Acts 4 it says,

“all the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”

However, in the midst of all the ‘love force’ and relational capital — we have some internal division brewing among the community.

• The “Hellenists” are presumably Greek-speaking Jews, which means that they originated outside of Palestine.
• The “Hebrews” are also Jews, of course. But they are Palestinian Jews, whose first language is Hebrew or during this time Aramaic.
• The “Hellenists” feel that, because of language and cultural differences, their widows — are being neglected by the predominantly “Hebrew” members of the community as well as the entirely “Hebrew” leadership of the Twelve – the apostles.
• They are being excluded from the daily distribution of food, from a meal, from a seat at the table.

Now this passage is often regarded as offering a quick, good response to a practical problem in the community — with the appointment of the first deacons to address it (and Greek speaking ones to boot).

And as I read these verses I can acknowledge this — the apostles responded efficiently. “Check!” I mean it’s better than letting tension fester — or continuing to neglect an already under-resourced and excluded group of women.

However, I can’t help but wince at a couple of points as I read these verses as well. And rather than bypass them unto the happy ending in verse seven where we see

“the word of God spreading and the number of disciples and priests increasing in number…”

I want to press into those points that give me pause and see what we might be able to learn about connection and community.

If I may, I’d like to rewind a tiny bit to the Gospel of Luke — where we see a sequence of “widow” stories and Jesus’ interactions with them. That may help us with this story in Acts. Luke (also the author of Acts) spends a lot of time in his own Gospel talking about widows (and women in general), more than the other gospels. Noticeable enough that some scholars wonder if he himself was raised by a widow. Let’s consider four of these widow stories really quickly in the gospel of Luke:
(Much of this learning from F. Scott Spencer)

1. Anna the Prophetess – we learn that she is an esteemed elderly widow who stays at the temple day in and day out — fasting and praying and worshiping. She is faithful, she praises God and speaks about Jesus to everyone as the Messiah. And while it might seem like the temple is her primary resource, the gospel of Luke paints the picture of the temple as an exploitative establishment, a

“den of robbers”

and likely not a great support to Anna.

2. In Luke we also have the story of the widow of Nain. – Jesus finds the widow of Nain at a funeral procession for her deceased son. And Jesus rises her only son back to life– and gives him back to her — which gives her back her social standing and her livelihood AND social connection. He restores her primary means of surviving materially as well as emotionally. Jesus raises her from the death of loneliness. In the midst of pallbearers, and townspeople, and a large crowd — Jesus is the one to show compassion and make a “life-giving” connection.

1. We then read the parable of The Persistent Widow. Where for the first time in Luke’s Gospel, a widow is given her own voice. She pleads for justice in front of a

“judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people”

and the widow is granted her request. She makes a new way, receiving justice from an unjust system — expanding her story of what a relationship with a just and loving God could be.

1. Lastly we have the story of the Poor Widow who gives all she has — two coins to the temple treasury. And we see again Jesus

“pitted against the temple authorities”

Jesus not only caring for the widow’s story but pointing out how the Sadducees used widows as subjects of debate and how the scribes used them as objects of exploitation. Jesus says,

“Truly I tell you, all of them have contributed out of abundance, but this poor widow out of her poverty has put in all she had to give.”

Jesus calls her worth and dignity to the surface — and at the same time criticizes the corrupt temple system which took all of her resources and offered nothing in return. No connection, no community.

This little rewind confirms that we shouldn’t be that surprised that resources and networks for basic economic, practical and social support are lacking for these Hellenistic widows — But we might be surprised that the neglect we witness – here in Acts – comes from the budding and growing community of Jesus’ followers. wince

The apostles have holy reasons and holy words for this — they say,

“it is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables.”

But in light of the stories we just read in Luke their exclusionary explanation seems to place them in the

“unholy alliance of unjust judges, hypocritical scribes and an exploitative temple system.” (Spencer)

This distinction of “the Ministry of the word of God” verses the “service or ministry of the table” makes me wince because notice that what is “not right” is not as much the widows’ predicament as it is the prospect that the 12 have to curtail their teaching ministry in order to help the widows. (Spencer) Talking about what might be “right” or “wrong” feels ill-placed when the basic human rights and need for love and dignity is not on the table.

“In effect the apostles co-opt the widows’ ordeal: they suppose that their right to proclaim the word is as much in jeopardy as the widows’ right to receive food. While they proceed to map out an effective plan for meeting the needs, the Twelve still punctuate their proposal reiterating that , “We, for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word”. (adapted Spencer)

And there’s a way to wonder — well, what’s the big deal? Everyone seems happy here — the widows are fed, the 12 get to keep doing their apostle-thing — all is good.

BUT — Luke’s Gospel repeatedly exposes the 12’s proclivity to promote the ministry of teaching and preaching at the expense of the service of food at table, in contrast to Jesus’ pattern of transcending any distinction between the “sacred” and the “secular.” What is deemed to be “sacred” on the surface — Prayer and teaching and preaching is not interconnected with Jesus’ presence, listening and liberating these widows from material and physical oppression.

And the cost is that no life-giving connection is experienced — by either the apostles or the widows. The widows plead here, in Acts, for recognition as much as for food. And the apostle’s recognition of the sacred in human form is missed.

As a scholar of this story says,

“The Twelve lay their hands on the seven men to be appointed to the “charity ministry of widows”– but keep their distance from the widows — they don’t lift a hand in that regard.” (Spencer).

WIDOWS

Quick action is taken — a solution is crafted and put in place (a fix!) — but in such quick action it seems apparent that there is

“a posture of trivializing not only the needs – but the personhood of the widows”

their voice, their complaints, their concerns — their full multidimensional selves. It doesn’t seem that the apostles get that curious about these widows, their stories — their lives.

The apostles lumped the widows into a stereotype — telling a story that had already been written for them. A lowly, destitute group. A group that was “needy” — that could belong kind of in an annex to the Christian community they were growing. Missing of course the need that would bind them all — the need of human connection.

The widows were surrounded by people, by crowds, by whole people groups, by judges and court personnel, by the religious and the sacred — but personal and human encounter and connection didn’t happen. Their stories weren’t listened to — new stories weren’t possible. They were lonely.

Can you imagine if the apostles had just given the widows a safe space to grieve and eat? Can you imagine the “word of God” that would have spread from these widows mouths — what a ministry that would have been. I mean not as much a “teaching ministry” — but a “living ministry” – I guess.

Vivek Murthy says that

“loneliness is the subjective feeling that you’re lacking the social connections you need. It can feel like being stranded, abandoned, or cut off from the people with whom you belong — even if you’re surrounded by other people!* What’s missing when you’re lonely is the feeling of closeness, trust, and the affection of genuine friends, loved ones, and COMMUNITY.” (8 Murthy).

And there are three dimensions of loneliness

• Intimate loneliness — where there is a lack of a close confidante or intimate partner —
• Relational loneliness — where there is a lack of quality friendships and social companionship and support
• Collective loneliness — a hunger for a network/community of people who share your sense of purpose/interests.

*This explains why you could have a very close, supportive partnership – a great marriage — and still feel lonely for friends/community. (8 Murthy)

It’s why loneliness is considered a health crisis — it’s why the Surgeon General has laid out a strategy and commitment to taking actions to establish connection with others as a core value of this nation.

It’s so important because

“such a world, where we can recognize that relationships are just as essential to our well-being as the air we breathe and the food we eat, is a world where everyone is healthier, physically and mentally. It is a world where we look out for one another, and where we create opportunities to uplift one another. A world where our highs are higher because we celebrate them together; where our lows are more manageable because we respond to them together; and where our recovery is faster because we grieve and rebuild together.” – (Murthy)

In 2016 after the election — The People’s Supper (org I mentioned at the start), visioned these very same things as they set out to hold those 100 dinners in 100 days post election. Yet in a nation whose relational social fabric was already so splintered — coming to the table was the hardest barrier to crack.

They underestimated the vulnerability, the trust and the time that it takes to come back to a table- a nation – a social fabric that had in many eyes failed them. Yet they keep trying. Their recent initiative called “breaking bread and building bonds” is a partnership with the mayor of NY holding 1,000 meals citywide — to these same ends — believing that social connection can mend and heal. Very much an on-going work in progress.

This is the holy work — cultivating relationships — inside and outside of a church building.

At Reservoir we are invested in continuing to grow and create the Beloved Community we are called to be — one where

“loneliness and nihilism are replaced with connection, sacred purpose, and respect for human dignity, where we recognize that our own wholeness and flourishing is tied to the flourishing of others” (Russell 231- 232).

Where we not only welcome everyone without exception but we try our best to create environments of belonging. And learn with humility from the missteps we make.

As you heard we are running Beloved Tables — meals for connection. I have been referring to them as the “warm up thing” that gets us ready for the “real thing” — for saying “yes” to community. But I think they actually are “the thing.” They are the tables where being seen, heard, and known is what’s being served. It is believing that every person and voice matters and embracing our diverse stories — held by the binding force and energy of God’s love that keeps our universe moving, where rich connection and constant curiosity exist.

COMMUNITY GROUPS

You’ll have a chance today to learn more about our community groups by visiting this link. And my goodness I wish I could tell you all the amazing stories I’ve been in the presence of in community groups — how much embrace, how much stretching and connection has occurred — but they aren’t my stories to tell. But I CAN tell you they’ve influenced my story, they’ve broadened and expanded my view of God in ways that far exceed only the traditional “sacred” ways of knowing God — stories of musicians, and cancer-survivors and artists and rejection and heartache and parenting and single-hood and aging… it’s all there. The story of life. That we get to write together, with Jesus right in the center guiding us along.

Connection, my friends — it’s how we’ll thrive — it is what will save us unto the Kin-dom of God here and now.

Prayer…

God we pray with trust and trouble and hope in our hearts. Help us oh God to find one another above the noise, and the distractions — help our fractured and sensitive hearts — Hearts that are made to love and scared to love too…bring us into your deep embrace and sustain us with meals, and mercy, laughter and learning, forgiveness and freedom — unto a community of beautiful people – who are still learning what it is to follow you today.

Help us today, God. Amen.

Resources

Book: Together | The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, Vivek Murthy

“Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation”, 2023 | The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community

Article: “Neglected Widows in Acts 6:1-7”, F. Scott Spencer

The Catholic Biblical Quarterly , Vol. 56, No. 4 (October, 1994), pp. 715-733

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I moved to Boston for this job here at Reservoir Church from San Francisco about seven years ago. At that time, I knew only a few things about Reservoir Church.

• 1. That it was a church that affirms LGBTQIA folks.
• 1. That they were specifically seeking out a person of color to join the pastoral leadership team.

And honestly, that’s all I needed to know at that point in my life. A church that likes the gays also usually affirms and respects women. Because there are plenty of churches that blatantly say women or gays are not allowed to be in leadership (and plenty more that’ll never say it explicitly but string you along to do all the service, work, help but never leadership or vision or teaching), so this was critical to know for me.

We’re in a new school year, also in church world a new ministry year…as a time of starting things anew, a new school, new program, maybe for some of you, new city, new church. But, also for the old timers and those who have been here a few months to a year or so, it’s a good time for us share with one another who we are – Reservoir Church, what we are doing here, and why we do ’em like that. So we’re in a brief short sermon series called “We Are Reservoir.” And, as Steve said to our staff earlier this week, this series is less about the “sermon series” but it’s more about everything we do, what we do, that makes us who we are.

To display who we are, today I’ll focus on one of our values: Everyone.

Everyone is one of our core values that you’ll find on our website under Vision and Values. FYI, our Vision statement is:

We find Jesus utterly compelling and believe that a life connected to him simply has more—joy, hope, wholeness, and vitality. We envision a day when many in North Cambridge and Greater Boston (and I think the world since we’ve started online worship) are connecting with Jesus and our church in deep ways and absolutely thriving as a result. We also seek to be a physically, emotionally and spiritually safe place. (I love that last sentence)

Our Core Values include Connection, Everyone, Action, Freedom, and Humility. Like I said, we’re not going to go through all of them in our sermon series but Steve, Ivy, and myself are going to touch on aspects of them. For me today, mainly Everyone. You can read more about the rest on our website.

For Everyone, it says:

We seek to welcome people in all their diversity, without condition or exception, to embrace a life connected to Jesus and others.

The key word here is all. And the language is “seek to welcome.” It’s not forced, there’s no prerequisite, it’s not the end all be all or else, it’s a longing and an invitation. It’s not passive but it’s not aggressive either. Seek to welcome.

Here’s a practical way it shows up in our worship.

Have you guys noticed the words that we say when we’re doing communion? It’s kind of casual, and no strict liturgical wording that’s set but we always say something along the lines of, “everyone’s welcome to the table.” This really messed with my Presbyterian upbringing, that was strict about “crossing the line of faith” or “baptized into the family.” Because what did that really mean?

What about the folks that didn’t “cross the line” or not baptized, then are they not family? And that might be one of the “craziest” things about Reservoir in my opinion. For membership, we say, “You belong before you believe.” I have no idea where that line is from. But it’s doubling down on the Everyone value. Baptism is not a prerequisite to membership, an invitation maybe but not a must. And I’ll tell you, many many churches would lose their shoes over this.

Because the thing is, I remember having this question when I was young, a teenager. If they are not believers of Christ, if they are not baptized, all those people, are they going to hell?

Back in 2011 a book by Rob Bell came out that did some sifting of our core theologies in the church circles. It’s called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. It caused some kind of ruckus. Because essentially the book concluded in one sense, that there is no hell. To which many many people got offended and really caught up on. Now I’m not going to fully get into it. It’ll become a really boring sermon.

I’m pretty sure there’s a Reservoir blog post about this somewhere, and if you’ve been around long enough, you might know the gist of how we approach the theology around hell and brimstone. If you’re new, and right now offended or confused, that’s okay, you’re gonna be okay, let’s give it time and talk it through. I won’t answer all your questions in one sermon. (Sermons often never do but relationships and meals and coffee and texting actually does, in a real meaningful way!!!) I think the sermon’s job is to jab. I’m just poking you guys. And then you guys need to work it out in your community, perhaps at a table. A Beloved Table possibly?

Look. There are biblical textual interpretations that point to our modern day concept of heaven and hell being wildly different from the biblical ancient near east’s understanding of it. But furthermore I think it is shocking to some of us to hear things like,

“maybe our understanding of hell is not exactly what it is”

because for so long, many church and Christian books and theology pounded this hell notion into us. And lastly, I think it touches upon our real sense of justice- that there is right and wrong, and good and bad, and heaven and hell. Although I think it might be a surface level or the first step towards recognizing justice.

Our world is shifting to get at the sophistication of this concept too. I remember back in the day superhero stories or children stories were more black and white. The hero saves and the evil is defeated. And I read more modern day superhero books or watch the shows and they curve the story of the “evil villain” towards a moment of learning and/or our understanding of their motives nowadays.

Spidey defeats the evil Green Goblin! And Green Goblin was just trying to steal the books from the library so he could learn more. Or like the musical Wicked, we get the back story, the compassionate story of the struggle of the evil Wicked Witch of the West. I love me a back story of a witch. Because it turns out, hurt people hurt people.

And yet it’s easier, simpler, to villainize them and say, they are bad. They need to be punished. But that is not the way of Jesus.

In all the stories of Jesus interacting with people, they all had somewhat tainted reputations. They all failed in some way. They all were not enough or lacked something. They were sinners. Or rich rulers that took advantage of their people. They were Pharisees or from a foreign land like Ethiopia. But the Bible shows that again and again, every one of them is claimed and loved. We know that right? That God’s love is big and grand. But I do think it’s harder in practice. Because your initial child-like sense of justice screams when you see bad people getting away with it, we cry like a child, “It’s not fair!”

This was especially hard for me when I began to be awakened to racial injustice, sexual violence, gender discrimination, and economical inequality. Things that are not just “issues” but actually touched my life personally and the people closest to me. And in the beginning of such an awakening journey, you start finding someone to blame. The perpetrator, the system, your parents, really anything to blame. I remember in my own healing journey from sexual abuse, I journeyed alongside a book called The Wounded Heart, which is such such such a good book. If you’ve experienced sexual abuse, please check out this book by Dan Allender, The Wounded Heart.

I’m not going to say this lightly, please understand, it’s not an easy journey, it’s definitely not forgive and forget. But there was a moment in my healing journey that I (out of my own volition, not because anyone told me to, because if they did, that would be insensitive and triggering), I imagined my abuser standing in church, holding the communion plate, and wondering what it would feel like for me to go up and receive communion from this man. This sick, horrible man that really really hurt me. That God loves him, and even welcomes him. Does that make God a sick God?

If we really try to understand the expansiveness of God’s love, it should offend us.

• Even him?
• Even them?
• Do you know what they’ve done?
• Do you know the damage they’ve caused?

God does. And God loves all. It knocks on our knee jerk justice, but God’s justice is greater than our justice. Yes, even those people.

I’m going to make a hard pivot to Universalism. Cause I don’t have a lot of time left.

Christian universalism is a Christian theological school that believes all people will be saved and restored to a relationship with God. This doctrine is based on the belief that a loving God would not condemn some people to eternal punishment.

And sometimes universalism is super annoying. Cause it’s like. Oh everyone, everything, whatever, anything! It feels wishy washy. It doesn’t feel like it has any grip on anything and can even sometimes feel extremely naive.

My parents came to visit me a few years ago. They are strict Presbyterians. And we have a pretty good relationship these days. They love talking to me about church and ministry. But we also know that we have some differences. They asked me to pray for one of our family meals. I prayed and then at the end, I simply said,

“Thanks God. Amen!”

And we all ate. On the last day of their trip my mom said,

“I need to talk to you about something. When you prayed, you didn’t say ‘In Jesus Name.’”

Now my parents are more traditional and I know that. I was annoyed as their daughter that this is the last thing they want to talk to me about, calling me out on wording in prayer. I was offended but I’ve done some maturing in how to engage conversations like this. I said my piece,

“Yeah, I do believe that Jesus connects us to God, but I also am not strict on the magic words, so sometimes I say it, sometimes I don’t. I think God always hears us.”

It was a healthy discussion.

You see, when universalism goes too far, it can feel like the words are just going to fall flat on their faces, just as my parents felt that fear. But what I really think universalism is doing is fighting against the strict particularity and the confidence in that if we do it this way, if we only do it this particular way, we’re doing it right. Because it’s been frankly abusive and presumptuous, we have to say these words, with these people, at this time, in this manner, for this reason.

It lacks the freedom and humility (the other values we have), and it lacks creativity too! And yes, it is harder. It is easier to say, it has to be done this way, for all people, at all times. Yes it’s harder to journey with, what, you’re dating someone who practices Buddhism, what you’re reading about tarot cards, what you love Oprah, oh no they are on slippery slopes! They’re falling away from the faith, NOOOOO!!!

To embrace a life connected to Jesus and others, we don’t say in fear, don’t listen to non-Christian music. And don’t read any other books from other religions. Because we’re not possessive. God is not possessive. This jealous God thing, it’s like kind of cute when a boyfriend is jealous, but it’s not cute when your husband is jealous.

Jealous God is not a thing. God is not petty. God loves. God trusts. God cares. And no matter what you do, God will always pursue you in every way possible. And many of us, a lot of us at this church believe that Jesus is that persuasive and compelling and beautiful way and that Holy Spirit is accessible and powerful to you now.

But do we know for sure that it’s the only way? We honestly don’t and we never will and that’s just being human. And people get bent up on text like, but Jesus said,

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Look, it only says this in John. Not Matthew, not Luke, or Mark. And John was the most poetic guy ever!

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God.”

It’s not meant to be taken literally. Again, I won’t go into it, ooooh why do I feel so pressed for time today? But there’s debate whether or not Jesus really said this, or if it’s a mistranslation, or that it might be impossible to translate idioms. Maybe it was a hyperbole. I’m not trying to debunk the statement I’m just injecting humility into us, but really, catapulting us to the expansive love of God.

I saw this awesome post on Instagram by Bri Rivera, our youth group director, she’s amazing. It was a quote by Richard Rohr that says,

“A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else. That is a definition that will never fail you, always demand more of you, and give you no reasons to fight, exclude, or reject anyone.”

Everything and everyone. Even non-Christians! Non-believers!

Wider is God’s love than the ocean. Small are our minds, even our greatest minds. Wider is God’s grace and mercy that covers all.

Cause when you really begin to do that, do you know what happens? When you come to a place when you feel like you did the worst thing, you made a huge mistake, you feel unworthy, you will know and be familiar with the concept of unconditional love and grace for them, and for you, yes even you.

When I really let that person down.

When I feel extremely depressed that I can’t do anything or function, I’m useless and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

When I can’t keep a job.

Or find the right person.

When I keep pushing people away and no one chases after me.

When I feel so alone, please know that Everyone, includes you.

Paul said this in

1 Timothy 1: 12-17

12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service.

13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.

14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.

16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.

17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

He calls himself the worst. Do you ever feel that way? You don’t have it all right? Maybe you’re not the best Christian, you go in and out of faith you say, an on and off church goer. Doesn’t matter, I’m sorry, God is always with you no matter where you go, even in the depth,

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

Psalms 139:7-10

If you know this, then let’s practice it in our community. Everyone. Really practice that everyone Richard Rohr was talking about. That might mean going to your edge. Someone who’s not like you, who you don’t understand, who you can probably assume that your lives are so different that you speak different languages. Go to them and engage in Christ love. Invite them to your community group. Invite them to an awkward relationship with you because you’re awkward and you don’t know how to talk to people that’s wildly different from you.

Go to your edge and take action (another value! It’s like Reservoir values bingo today!), take the action of including, affirming, loving, and caring. And point them to Jesus, not forcefully, affirm who they are, their culture, their diversity, their uniqueness, what they are going through, who they are, and say, yes and, check this out. Look at this shiny thing I’ve found, I love it, wanna hear about it? If it works for you. No pressure.

You’re welcome and invited, just as you are, in all your complexity, without condition or exception, to embrace a life connected to Jesus and others. That’s what we seek to do here at Reservoir church. And if you want to, you’re invited to membership to do the thing with us as an invested, committed, taking ownership, like a co-op. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But also let’s do this together intentionally and strategically.

That’s what We Are Reservoir is saying. So yeah if you want to join as a member, just talk to one of the pastors, reach out. I’m thrilled about what we do here. Look, it’s hard out there, to find a church, but really there’s a really good thing going on here, not the most right way or the only way, but I’m just telling you, you might love it. I do. We’re really lucky to have this community and one another. Thank you guys, for being a wonderful church to be a pastor at. You are Reservoir and I love it. Okay I’m done. Let me pray for us.

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Well folks this is the last sermon before we start our more organized sermon series for September and beyond. Next week we’ll start our series that we love to return to each Fall — “We are Reservoir” — followed by a meaningful new series that will lead us into October and November.

What I love though about our summer weeks is that while for the most part we preach on whatever we feel so led to speak on — our sermons sometimes unsurprisingly play off of one another. An affirmation not only that we pay attention and listen to one another, but also that the spirit of God is at work, summoning us to listen deeper.

Steve’s sermon last week (if you didn’t have the chance to hear it, I encourage you to find some time to do so) it’s one of those experiences that completely undoes you and also somehow puts you back together again in a 25 minute span.

So if at some point this week you feel like

“You know what I need right now? To be totally re-arranged — I need some heart whiplash!”

like in a good way — listen to Steve’s sermon. He talks about the beauty, the ache of what it is to love, and the gift of what it is to be present to what is, the “‘what-is’ of now”, to find reality as the friend of God.

I had noted in our sermon planning document that this week I’d preach on Psalm 118. And as I listened to Steve’s sermon I thought,

“great! This follows suit” — one of Psalm 118’s more well known verses is “this is the day the Lord has made – let us rejoice and be glad in it!”

And I thought —

“oof, I need that truth as the summer ends (and the days get shorter, and colder and darker)… I need these words as an embodied practice as I look at our national landscape this Fall… and for all of the reasons it’s a beautiful daily reminder of what a gift each day can be.”

However, as I returned to the Psalm this week — I kept being drawn to the first few verses — would you read them with me?

Psalm 118: 1-5 (Common English Bible)

1 Give thanks to the Lord because God is good,
because God’s faithful love lasts forever.

2 Let Israel say it:
“God’s faithful love lasts forever!”

3 Let the house of Aaron say it:
“God’s faithful love lasts forever!”

4 Let those who honor the Lord say it:
“God’s faithful love lasts forever!”

5 In tight circumstances, I cried out to the Lord.
The Lord answered me with wide-open spaces.

These are the verses we’ll explore and take in this morning. We’ll think about tight circumstances, wide-open spaces and what that means with a backdrop of God’s enduring faithful love — and we’ll touch on a couple of recurrent themes from last week’s sermon as well.

Prayer

God of this morning and every morning — help us to lean in as much as we can today. To you, to this community, to ourselves. Remind us what wide open spaces feel like. How it is to wander in them and explore and discover and be held by your loving presence even at the furthest edges – even when we are at the edge of ourselves. Help us to find the treasures of wonder and awe placed in these wide expanses and also placed in the micro moments of our everyday lives. Oh God of the ordinary and the holy — help us to find these truths wrapped around each other and us this morning. Amen.

I’ve been remembering some of my “back to school moments” which has been a notable exercise. So many of my memories are so clear and detailed — I can quickly feel the energy, the emotions — a lot of it really revolving around choosing those first day outfits. For me, this also entailed writing in sharpie on my white, canvas sneakers whatever brand name was in that year — Keds, Capezio, Esprit. Making sure I wasn’t labeled as the poor kid with department store shoes on, ugh — so many more memories — all of them key formative moments of my childhood. I could quickly tell you a story of every “Ivy” that was represented in each era. Especially the culotte era (which wasn’t of my choosing), but it overlapped with the Milli Vanilli era — which surprisingly worked really well together.

Similarly, my first day of grad school was memorable — I met one of my very best friends in my first class. Who still is one of my very best friends. We synched up for a group project and she invited me to a Celtics game and we got to learning each other’s stories rather quickly in the nosebleed seats of the Garden.

She was at a pivotal juncture in her life — leaving a job in the corporate world of which she had hustled and put herself through college — and was now exploring this whole new field of public health and advocacy. The impetus was the abrupt death of her Dad, leaving her unmoored with grief and questions and a fierce drive and determination to make sense of it all, find answers and create a new path. more on this in a moment

Psalm 118

Psalm 118 is one of six Egyptian Hallel Psalms that were recited during the Passover and other major Jewish festivals. The Hallel Psalms celebrated the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian slavery.

These Psalms (113 -118), much like the Hebrew word “hallel” from which the word “hallelujah” originates, give thanks and praise to God — highlighting the characteristics that distinguish God from other deities of the time. The repetition in these first four verses of “God’s faithful love that lasts forever!” is as much a profession as it is a lived experience of the ancestors and people of God. A song to be sung and a story kept alive of not only a God of the heavens — but one to be found in the fleshy, Earth-level journey of life as well.

Parts of these Hallel Psalms ripple through the Gospels. On the occasion of Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem — annunciating the joy, the hope, the celebration of the messiah, the savior everyone had been waiting for. And it’s also thought that some of this Psalm was sung at the end of the Last Supper – as Jesus and his followers hoped that this good God could help as God had done in the past — make a way forward in the excruciating hours that would come.

This is a Psalm of thanksgiving and of praise.

And what’s to be noted about a psalm of thanksgiving is, that first of all, it is a response to a heard lament.

It’s why this verse 5 — after the rousing community praise of such a good God — stands out to me, let’s read it again,

“In tight circumstances, I cried out to the Lord. The Lord answered me with wide-open spaces.”

I don’t know — it could be just me —

But there is something about this verse, maybe this translation – that just catches my breath. A knowing of that feeling in your body? Tight spaces. Points in your life — in a day — where you just can’t get enough elbow-room from your circumstances, or the thoughts in your head, or the hurt, or the worry, from the voices that threaten to shape you into narrower versions of yourself. Not enough elbow room for anything to slide in alongside — -not hope, not faith, not a prayer.

And yet it says,

“In tight circumstances — the Lord answers with wide-open spaces.”

Another translation says,

“in my distress – the Lord answers with freedom.”

Gah.

Psychologists say that common causes of psychological distress include:

• Traumatic experiences
• Major life events (even if those major life events are positive)
• Everyday stressors, such as workplace stress, family stress, and relationships
• Health issues
• Financial difficulties
• Losing a job, a loved one, or a familiar routine
• Discrimination, oppression, or microaggressions

Which — sounds — you know, like a lot of life. Pretty all encompassing.

And so what do we do with that!? What’s the answer to such a plethora of tight spaces?

This too, is what my grad school friend was trying to get to the bottom of.

STORY

If there’s one thing about my friend that was and still is true — she loves a good answer. What’s that saying,

“there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers?”

Yah she would say,

“there are only good questions and good answers.”

And she was truly on a hunt for those good answers. Her Dad’s death had left her with mounting spiritual questions — and also questions about what types of cancers get research funding, who gets into trial pools, who gets all the information about treatment and access — what societal barriers exist and how do we change them! She was going to shape those answers into being… if she had to single-handedly do it.

And while centering her life around this, while in the wake of immense grief — studying, interviewing and starting over — my friend also would find out that she was losing her hearing.

Throughout her life she had periodic appointments and adjustments to her hearing aids. But it was never clearly relayed to her that her hearing loss was progressive. So progressive at this point that hearing aids would no longer do anything. And her choices were to be implanted — to get a cochlear implant — or carry on as long as possible with lip-reading. And as you might imagine my friend felt locked in to a body that was betraying her — grief and fear were more audible than anything.

Grief and fear know no bounds. They seem to both prowl in the wide open spaces of our lives and also lock us into tight spaces.

“Locked-in”

In the gospel of John there is a scene that plays out between the resurrected Jesus and his disciples that I think helps us imagine some ways to move from tight spaces to wide-open spaces with God. The scene reads like this in

John 20:19

“the doors were locked where the disciples were… for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19)

Jesus appears among them. The last they saw Jesus he was being killed. But here is the resurrected Jesus — free of his tomb. He stands with the disciples who are locked in a tomb of grief and of fear. Fear of the Jewish authorities, fear of themselves, fear of Jesus who is now with them. And yet Jesus appears and doesn’t chide or admonish, instead he says

“Peace be with you”

which in the Aramaic of his day was simply a standard – ordinary – greeting.

“Hello.”

Hello

“welcoming them to a place of deep encounter: encounter with themselves, with their fear, with each other and with the incarnate one in their midst.” (Back cover of In the Shelter, Padraig O’Tuama)

God’s faithful love lasts forever, and sometimes our way to experiencing that is by simply saying “hello” to what is in the room with us.

The good questions my friend kept asking on repeat, (in a variety of ways) were

• What does this all mean?

• And what does this mean of God?

• How do I greet this day? This life?

We both were pulling from our childhood faith traditions and experiences (hers Catholic and mine evangelical), to make sense of these questions. Questions that she & I knew weren’t just hers but were universal questions of being human. And we were trying on answers that had long been formed for us.. Trying our best to evolve our faith — bringing new ideas and ancient paths together. I absolutely know that early on in our conversations — our many, many late night conversations that I offered her answers — written in Sharpie — that kept her locked in a tight space. Answers that were “on brand” to the Christianity I was raised in — like “well you know ….nevertheless God’s faithful love lasts forever.” And she’d call my bluff — she’d say “you know that’s fake.”

Now, here’s the thing — it’s not fake. I do believe that faith is rooted in the unconditional never-ending love of God. And a verse like this one, “God’s faithful love lasts forever” is a promise of God, BUT IT IS also an invitation to a lived experience of such a promise, and such a love and such a truth. And that is very different than an answer. It is something to discover in our loneliest places and our deepest questions, one to be explored, one to wander around in a bit, to be doubted — as much as regarded as undeniable, unshakeable in our laments in our distress. Because then it really can break open and give voice to what needs to be heard in our spirit in our body — and that is freeing.

In the midst of losing all of her hearing — my friend found she was listening to and greeting her life in a different way. She took on a spiritual practice of sorts of telling the truth of the things happening in her life — of saying “hello” to these things even if she didn’t like them, even if they weren’t convenient, or wise, or holy, or easy, or CERTAIN.

Jesus shows these disciples and us the art of greeting our life as it is — greeting it with fear or not fear — or greeting the fear with which you greet your life. Greeting it with integrity.

Jesus again and again throughout the gospels greets people who are in tight spaces or who have been put in tight places — and invites them into freedom. Most often, by greeting them where they are at — right where their story intersects with God’s story. As rough and undone as it might be. This is an honest faith, a real faith.

The woman with the condition of bleeding — he greets her in the tight margins of her life, at the edges of society, at the edges of a cloak — and invites her into the abundance of compassion and belonging and love.

The woman at the well – – he greets her in her thirst for being known – and invites her into the expanse of compassion and belonging and love.

And he greets a tax collector Zaccheus, and he greets lepers, and a centurion, and a eunuch, and Matthew, Mark, and Martha, and Thomas and Judas, and Pontius Pilate, and Philip and Simon, and Mary, and you and me. He greets us with “hello,” and opens our stories unto wide-open places — unto compassion and belonging and love and mercy and hope. And to the wild and beautiful journey of this world — where we hope our stories melded with the story of God can create more than destroy.

My friend got two cochlear implants. And I was with her on “activation” day, witnessing sound and music be part of her story again. Over the last 20 years (or so), I’ve gotten to witness her story evolve. Continue to say ‘hello’ to her real emotions, her on-going questions, and (quite literally) “hello” to new people she’s met — and ‘hello’ to becoming a public policy advisor at the State house for disability access. “Hello” to the director of disabilities for the State of Massachusetts. Her advocacy work was fueled by the stories she listened to — the stories of people who faced challenges and who challenged the status quo, the stories of people who were protested against and those who protested the answers of law-makers that said “it’s just the way things are.”

Their stories.

Her story.

God’s story.

Breaking open — wild and wide-open spaces — never before perceived.

I met up with her recently for dinner to celebrate clear margins after a surgery she had, “hello to beating breast cancer.” And as we clinked glasses, she said

‘everyday is truly a gift, if we could only fully unwrap it.’

I guess part of the gift is in the ongoing unwrapping — and the answers we so often seek are in our unfolding stories — who said,

“God comes to us disguised as our very lives?” (Paula D’Arcy)

I think that’s true — our very lives, our stories that aren’t finished. Our stories that are nestled in the story of God. These are stories that can’t be contained — In the gospel of John it says,

“Now there are also many other things that Jesus did, many other stories. .. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

Jesus is continuing to open and unfold our stories unto wide-open spaces .. they are indeed still being written as we live our very lives. Our lives, in the small moments of every day hold so much that is larger — so many treasures that allow us to feel the truth of,

“God’s faithful love lasts forever.”

“God’s faithful love lasts forever.”

In these unknown months ahead, I need these direct promises of God front and center — without any nuance – the goodness of God just laid bare. I need them to be spoken and shared as everlasting truths. Through stories and through scripture and through cries — the goodness of God, the mercy of God, the steadfastness of God, the God that will never leave or forsake us, the God that is for us, that will help us. Believing that there is contagious hope in the power of such truths, believing that there is more wide open space than I can perceive. A wide open space where we can be curious, and dream and imagine together new ways of being human to one another – – to being a nation to other nations — new ways of weaving our stories together — ancient and new.

And much of that starts with facing and saying “hello” to what is .… A potent spiritual practice. I want to leave us with a poem that is a prayer, a blessing, a practice all-in-one. Perhaps you can continue to unwrap it in the tight spaces you might find yourself in — and adapt it to be your own.

I invite you to close your eyes — and take in the words of poet and theologian Padraig O’Tuama of which this sermon is greatly inspired by, here you go:

Neither I nor the poets I love have found the keys to the kingdom of prayer and we cannot force God to stumble over us where we sit. But I know that it’s a good idea to sit anyway. So every morning, I kneel, waiting, making friends with the habit of listening, hoping that I’m being listened to. There, I greet God in my own disorder. I say hello to my chaos, my unmade decisions, my unmade bed, my desire and my trouble. I say hello to distraction and privilege, I greet the day and I greet my beloved and bewildering Jesus. I recognize and greet my burdens, my luck, my controlled and uncontrollable story. I greet my untold stories, my unfolding story, my unloved body, my own body. I greet the things I think will happen and I say hello to everything I do not know about the day. I greet my own small world and I hope that I can meet the bigger world that day. I greet my story and hope that I can forget my story during the day, and hope that I can hear some stories, and greet some surprising stories during the long day ahead. I greet God, and I greet the God who is more God than the God I greet.

“Hello” to God’s Faithful love, that lasts forever. – -Amen

—- Padraig O’Tuama

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It’s been a big couple of weeks in my household. Everyone is going away. We’ve gone from five people to two really fast. I spend eight of the last 11 days on road trips with each of my kids and I’m a little worn out. My back, my heart… So let’s hang in with each other today and see where this goes.

Today I’m going to read a scripture first, and get into the stories and teaching after that. This is a long one, a bunch of the 12th chapter of the good news of Jesus from Luke. It’s a good one too. It goes like this.

Luke 12:13-34 (Common English Bible)

13 Someone from the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

14 Jesus said to him, “Man, who appointed me as judge or referee between you and your brother?”

15 Then Jesus said to them, “Watch out! Guard yourself against all kinds of greed. After all, one’s life isn’t determined by one’s possessions, even when someone is very wealthy.”

16 Then he told them a parable: “A certain rich man’s land produced a bountiful crop.

17 He said to himself, What will I do? I have no place to store my harvest!

18 Then he thought, Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. That’s where I’ll store all my grain and goods.

19 I’ll say to myself, You have stored up plenty of goods, enough for several years. Take it easy! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.

20 But God said to him, ‘Fool, tonight you will die. Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?’

21 This is the way it will be for those who hoard things for themselves and aren’t rich toward God.”

22 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.

23 There is more to life than food and more to the body than clothing.

24 Consider the ravens: they neither plant nor harvest, they have no silo or barn, yet God feeds them. You are worth so much more than birds!

25 Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life?

26 If you can’t do such a small thing, why worry about the rest?

27 Notice how the lilies grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these.

28 If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, how much more will God do for you, you people of weak faith!

29 Don’t chase after what you will eat and what you will drink. Stop worrying.

30 All the nations of the world long for these things. Your Father knows that you need them.

31 Instead, desire his kingdom and these things will be given to you as well.

32 “Don’t be afraid, little flock, because your Father delights in giving you the kingdom.

33 Sell your possessions and give to those in need. Make for yourselves wallets that don’t wear out—a treasure in heaven that never runs out. No thief comes near there, and no moth destroys.

34 Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too.

This summer I had August 13th circled on my calendar.

That’s not really true. I keep an electronic calendar, and you can’t circle anything. But August 13th was circled on my mental calendar, at least, because it was the date of a new beginning that for me felt more like an ending.

Our youngest child graduated from high school this past spring and turned 18 this summer. And he decided to go to college afterwards and after sorting through the admissions and scholarship offers and all that, the place he decided to go was way down in Nashville, Tennessee.

Probably the cheapest and easiest way to get him there would have been to put him on a bus, or if not that, a plane and send him off. But we weren’t really ready to say goodbye, so Grace and I decided that we’d visit him together in Nashville this fall, and that he and I would take a road trip in August to move him in.

I was really excited to get three and a half more days in with our youngest child before I didn’t get to see him for a while. We knew that just after this road trip too, our other two children would be moving back out of state for the fall too.

So August 13th was a big day.

For 22 years, just about every night, Grace and I have had one or two or three children sleeping in our home. That’s something like 8,000 nights of watching over these kids of ours, being on call for their needs, telling stories to one another about the beautiful or maddening or confusing things they said or did that day, making sure they were fed and taken care of in the morning, making plans for them, organizing our lives with them in it day to day.

Parents, and any future parents in the room too, the teenage years are an interesting time, because your kids say and do things that make it easier to say goodbye to them when the time comes. You’re more ready than you used to be because you need them to try life on their own. You just need some space sometimes.

And kids, and any of us who remember being kids well, you know too that the teenage years are an interesting time, because your parents say and do things that make it easier to say goodbye to them when the time comes. You’re more ready for that than you used to be because you need to try your life on your own. You just need some space sometimes.

And that’s true. Our three kids are all excited about some of what they’re up to this year, and excited to be moving forward in their lives. And Grace and me, we’ve got some things about our new life we’re looking forward to.

But when the time comes, sometimes you’re less ready than you think. Everybody.

In one of our road trips, one of my kids put this song called “Eighteen” on. And as it played, my kid choked up a little and was like – oo, this one cuts kind of close to home.

It was going:

Don’t wanna be eighteen with responsibilities

Sometimes I get scared of growing up

Entering a world with broken dreams

Sometimes I get scared and throw it all up/

And June the third is

Coming closer and I’m

Nowhere near closure/

Don’t wanna be eighteen with a messy room

Still wonder what lingers under my bed at night

Kinda wish I stayed at my mother’s home

You get the idea… Sometimes you’re not so ready.

Parents too.

I’d circled August 13th on my calendar not just to remember when the first road trip was to get ready. After all, I kind of screwed that up. I talked about August 13th so much that John, our youngest at one point was like,

we’re leaving on Tuesday, right?

And I was like, no,

where’d you get that idea, our trip starts on Wednesday.

And he was like,

Dad, you’ve been saying August 13th.

And I realized that this day I’d been dreading for like two months, in some ways this day I’d been dreading for like 10 years, I had wrong. It wasn’t even August 13th, it was the next day after all.

But the dread was real.

I didn’t only dread it. I was really excited about the trip, excited about seeing Washington DC with my boy, about the time in car listening to music and telling stories, and seeing the country, and just being silent next to one another, where I could smell him and listen to him breathe and peak over at him while he napped one more time before he was off. I was excited about this trip.

But I dreaded what came after it. For him, it was a beginning, but it felt like the last ending of our kids’ childhoods. Which in a way it was. Their lives aren’t ending, and our lives aren’t ending, and our time together isn’t either. This Thanksgiving and this Christmas we’ll all be home together, and who knows how often and how long they’ll all be coming and going for years to come. But still, a season is ending.

And sometimes, it’s like whew… we could use some more time to ourselves. And then sometimes, it’s just like:

God, we’re gonna to miss them. And my God, are they going to be OK? And after 8,000 nights of organizing so much of our lives around them, what will life be like now? Are we ready for that? Am I ready for that?

So all summer, I found myself thinking about August 13th, talking about August 13th, getting ready, bracing myself, kind of holding my breath. Even while I was aware that it was a time to be present. I had work to do, work that I care about. I had moments to treasure, those with my kids and other moments too, and I didn’t want to miss them or only be half-present because I couldn’t stop holding my breath, bracing myself, worrying about August 13th. But it was hard to stop thinking about.

I don’t know what you’re August 13th is – what you’re looking forward to in the future, or what’s coming or maybe coming that you dread a little. What makes you brace yourself or hold your breath for sometimes, or what you’re just getting ready for, but I’d like to notice how this teaching of Jesus might speak to us in all this.

At first, Jesus seems like he’s teaching about wealth, and how much it screws us up. Luke begins this section of teaching with the context of two brothers arguing over an inheritance. Which sounds bizarre, unless you’ve known families who have had a mother or father pass away, and then maybe you know that arguments or bitterness around family finances and inheritances are absurdly common, even when the inheritance is small.

And Jesus teaches about things to do with money and wealth, and he is like:

watch out, this will mess up your life. Greed is a toxic poison.

And wealth can be a powerful cancer on the soul too, both having wealth and not having it but wishing you did. So on the surface, Jesus is teaching about these things.

And there’s all kinds of interesting things we could talk about along these lines.

• Like what’s the difference between being greedy and having reasonable, healthy wants for our lives?
• How much savings or insurance or planning is too much?
• Or what does it mean to live in the Way of Jesus in a society that is wealthier than anything Jesus could have imagined?

For Jesus, being poor was not having what you needed for today. Jesus taught that in some ways, those who are poor are God’s favorites. There’s blessing for them. But he knew it was hard too. He taught us to pray to God for enough to eat today, because he knew what it was like to not eat enough for today, and it’s hard.

I think for Jesus, being rich was not just having what you needed for today, but for tomorrow too, and for many other tomorrows after that. And in Jesus’ world, there weren’t that many people like this. But Jesus seemed to think that it was hard to be rich and be close to God and be full of love and be whole-hearted.

Jesus after all mocks two different rich people in these stories – one fictional and one real. The guy who solves his abundance problem by planning on building more and more barns looks like a fool when he realizes that his life is ending. And in the teaching about the birds and the fields and not worrying and all, there’s a subtle jab at the legendary King Solomon, the wealthiest person in Jesus’ cultural heritage. Jesus saying even the richest man who ever lived couldn’t make himself or his fancy buildings look as beautiful as the flowers of the field.

So I wonder how Jesus might want to shake us up a little, what all this teaching about wealth and worrying means in a time and place where on Jesus’ terms, many of us are pretty rich. We have much more than we need for today or tomorrow or many tomorrows after that. And we spend all kinds of time obsessing over our futures.

But today, I want to take this in another direction, one that is also in this passage.

I think about that man building the barns. And I think – oh, we plan for the future sometimes because we’re greedy. We just want more salary, bigger houses, fancier vacations or whatever. But I think sometimes we act this way not from greed, but from past experiences of trauma or from current anxiety.

Maybe this guy is set on storing up more and more grain because he knows what it’s like for him and his household to be hungry. Maybe there was a famine a few years ago. Maybe it wasn’t in his life, but he grew up on stories from his parents or grandparents about the times when there was never enough. We transmit trauma, we understand, through our stories we pass on like this and even through our genes. We’re learning this is real, that we can pass on the marks of trauma for generations to come.

And so maybe he was just afraid and had good reason to be.

Maybe I was bracing myself for August 13th because I loved my kids so much. Or maybe because I wrapped my imagination or soul around them so much that I couldn’t imagine what day to day life would like with less of them in it. Or maybe we know that sometimes when we nudge a bird out of the nest, their wings weren’t ready, or a big gust of wind comes along and they fall. And some of those falls hurt bad. So we get really nervous about the next nest leaving experience.

And all of this makes sense. We have reasons to plan and worry and even to be afraid.

But still, Jesus is like:

you can’t fully brace yourself for the future, can you?

Because you have no idea what it holds. It might be much worse than you expect, it might be much better, but you can guarantee that it will be different than what you know. And after all, tomorrow isn’t even promised. You might not even be there.

And then he’s like,

hey, on the positive side, there is also more to life.

More to the body than planning for your next meal, more to life than the stuff you’re worrying about.

There’s what you’re treasuring, where you focus lies, where your heart is.

There’s more to life.

There are the gifts of God, the treasure of heaven, what Jesus calls the kingdom – the realm of God, the common wealth of God, the reality, the experience of God that your Mother and Father God is so delighted to give you.

What is this, friends? What is this? What does Jesus so much want us not to miss?

On August 13th, or actually August 14th, we started to send off the first of the three children we sent off this past week and a half. John and I had an extraordinary three days on the road together.

I tried to not think too much about what was going to happen at the end of those three days. And mostly, by the grace of God, that worked out well.

That first road trip, all the road trips really, were just amazing. There was a lot of driving and looking around thinking: this land is so beautiful. This field, that farm, that mountain view, those animals, that sunrise, sunset, cloudscape – all so beautiful. And these children, this family, this life I’m in – so beautiful too. And as my kid and I shared all this beauty, and all this sweet time and memories together, I thought – these are the gifts of God – all this beauty, all this love.

And then after I dropped him off and spend a day crying at every little memory of him as I drove away, I thought – wow, this is hard, but this too is the gift of God – to love someone so much that your heart aches when you part, and to love someone so much that just to think about them when they’re gone, just to hope and yearn on their behalf for the life you hope for them makes you cry. That’s love too, and it’s good. And so this day as the gifts of the kingdom too.

The gifts aren’t in the past or the future, they’re right here. Right now.

After all, reality is the friend of God.

God doesn’t live in our fantasies of the future, be they good or bad. They aren’t real, at least not yet. God isn’t there.

And the past too. God doesn’t live in the past, so it might be best for us not to either – the past as it really happened, or maybe the past of our nostalgia that never really happened at all. Either way, God isn’t there too.

God is alive here, now. God is the God of the living.

This reality is the only one we have, whether we like it or not. And it is the only one God has too. And so reality is God’s friend – it’s the space where God can offer possibilities, where God can try to draw us all toward what’s best, what’s truest, what’s most beautiful, what’s most hopeful and loving.

Reality is the friend of God.

Or as the Bible puts it – this is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. This day, no matter what it’s like this day.

Or as my yoga teacher likes to say,

we can be nowhere or we can be now, here.

Same letters, same order, but profoundly different experiences. Now here, or nowhere. Those are our only two choices.

I think I missed some things this summer as I braced myself again and again for what was coming. I know I’ve missed some things my whole life when I haven’t let reality be my friend. Where I’ve gotten stuck in the past or the future. Where I’ve been nowhere, instead of now here.

So these past couple of weeks, I was determined to be alive to the gift of each day. I asked God’s help for this. And they’ve been a little much, these particular days, but they’ve been good too.

Even that day, August 17th, when I had to say goodbye to our youngest child. He has this habit sometimes of saying “You too” to whatever we say to him. It’s kind of a joke. But this time it hit different.

Because I said:

I know that you’re ready for your next adventure. And I know you’re ready for an adventure that you’re in charge of, where Mom and I are cheering you on but we’re not there by your side.

I said:

I feel like I’m not ready, but you are. So have a wonderful adventure.

And he took that in for himself, but then he looked at me with a little spark in his eye and he said,

you too, Dad. You too.

And we hugged hard and long, and I walked away and spent the next 10 hours driving north crying those tears of pain and love and friendship and hope and worry. But also crying because John was right. It’s time for my next adventure too. It’s time for Grace and me for our next adventures, to embrace this reality, this day, this now for all that it can be. For what blessing our children from a distance can look like, for what entrusting them to themselves and to the care and love of others and to the care and love of God looks like. And a time for what our lives and our marriage can look like with a little less of our kids in the center of it all.

And though we don’t feel ready, this reality for us is our only choice, and it too can be so, so good.

I don’t want to spend all my energy in the past, either in my nostalgia or my regrets. And I don’t want to spend too much energy in my worries about the future, mine or my children’s. I want to be now, here, where God is, where all the good stuff is.

The late Jurgen Moltmann was one of our most important theologians of the past century, one of our best thinkers about God. And he liked to talk about God by talking about friendship.

Moltmann said,

when the people denounced Jesus by calling him the friend of tax collectors and sinners, they were expressing a profound truth from Jesus’ own point of view. As a friend, Jesus offers the unlovable the friendship of God.

As a friend, Jesus offers the unlovable the friendship of God.

The scriptures teach us that God is love. But that’s kind of abstract. God is love. What does that mean?

Jesus gives us an embodied picture of that love, and shows us that love looks like friendship. Jesus is the friend of sinners, offering the lovable and the unlovable people the friendship of God, offering the lovable and the unlovable parts of us all the friendship of God. And so what it means to be the church is to be a society of Jesus’ friends, friends of God who live in an open community of friendship to all people.

This after all is what God is doing each day, every day to all of creation. God loves creation through accompanying friendship. God loves reality, however beautiful or awful or everywhere in between, by being its friend.

Reality is the friend of God.

This is the gift of the kingdom, or at least a big part of it. We’re not going to find God’s gifts for our lives through our worries. And we’re not going to find them in the skills or the wealth or the capital or opportunity of any kind that we try to pile up for tomorrow.

The gift of God is now, here.

It is living the best adventure we can this day that God has made. By being present with God to this reality with all the hope, faith, and love that we’ve got.

Friends, whatever this summer has brought, and whatever this fall will bring your way, God is your friend, loving you in all the lovable and not so lovable parts of yourself and your world. And your reality is God’s friend too, it’s where God is alive today with all God’s help.

May the same be true for me and for you and for us all.

The post Reality is the Friend of God first appeared on Reservoir Church.

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People sometimes ask me

“how did you decide to become a pastor?”

It’s a big question. I’m always wondering, hmmm, which version do they want? Because as you might guess, it was a series of events that built on one another. It was a season of discernment, of being uncertain, of questioning, of wanting and wondering.

• Because how can you be sure that you’re being called by God?
• How does one hear or know this “sense of calling” as they say in the ordained ministry world?
• How do you hear God’s voice?

This is a question that I’m very curious about, how does one hear or experience God. Even though I have personally experienced it, I’m so curious how others experience it. Like, I want details. When people tell me things like,

“there was a time in my life when I felt really connected to God.”

I’m like, when, how, what did that look like. They’d say,

“Well when I pray…”

and I’d say,

“what time of the day, like on a couch or on a bed? Do you kneel or journal?”

• Have you been called by God?
• Maybe not into ordained ministry but to something?
• Have you heard from God directly and convincingly, even as it might’ve felt fleeting and mysterious?

I want to talk about calling today by taking a look at a call story from the Bible, there’s many, but I picked the call story of Mary Magdalene. And I’ll share a piece of my calling experience. And Moana’s, yes the Disney princess. And see if there’s any themes or movements that might help take us through an experience of a calling. What that looks like, feels like. That might even help us recognize not only the big calling for big changes, but even small little gentle callings of God’s holy voice in our everyday lives and how to pay attention, listen, and move through them.

Let me read for us from the Bible, a story of the calling of Mary Magdalene, not when she first met Jesus but after his death and after his resurrection, when she re-encountered the resurrected Jesus. It comes from

John 20:11-18.

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look[a] into the tomb;

12 and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.

13 They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’

14 When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

15 Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’

16 Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew,[b] ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).

17 Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’

18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

I want to highlight 3 movements that happen in this story that I resonate with, and that I think could often happen in a calling story.

1. Confusion. 2. Recognition. 3. Announcement

First, confusion. Confusion and also sadness.

I grew up in the church and there was this thing that many of my friends in my subculture went through. The last night of the youth group retreat when you give your life to Jesus. Trigger warning, as some have mixed experiences of possibly manipulated moments from these kinds of environments – but I mention it because I think some of those experiences also capture and reveal some real felt feelings.

So growing up, our youth group would have a weekend retreat at a retreat center. Through the weekend we’d play games, worship, do skits, just hang out, whatever. But on the last night, we’d all gather around campfire at night, and we’d just sing and sing praise songs in the dark, mixed with prayer from the pastor, and you’d be invited, like an alter call to give your life to God. I always found that it was interesting that we would all end up crying. There was, admittedly, some toxic theology, looking back, about shame, and guilt, and sin, and also I do think (when you really get very very honest with God and with yourself) there is a release of emotions. Of things that you were managing to hold together, like lies you told to your parents, wrong things you’ve done to your friends, or something bad you did even when you knew it was bad to do. On this last night of retreat, you could let it all go, and there’s liberation and lots of tears.

Mary of Magdalene (by the way Magdalene is not her last name but that’s most likely a description of her origin, Mary from the town of Magdalene), was probably just simply sad because her good friend and teacher had just died. But I did want to point this out because I think that is often sometimes the moment we find God. When we’ve had a great loss, and there’s some open space or room, a need to hear from God. Now I’m not saying we all experience this exactly the same. Again, I’m just using a few stories of Mary, me, Moana, to draw broad strokes to see if it resonates with us. But a state of confusion, filled with sadness sometimes is an opening to a holy moment.

In my call story, I was also in a time in my life when I felt lost. I was in a new city, San Francisco, moved up there after college for a job, working a job that was grueling and unsure if I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. I didn’t know many people and felt uncertain about my identity in my mid-twenties. I had not been going to church at the time, probably for a few years, and after feeling somewhat lonely, I decided to check out a church one Sunday morning.

I heard a sermon on the woman with the alabaster jar, a Bible story of another woman, apparently a sinful woman touching and anointing Jesus’ feet with her expensive perfume and her tears. From the beginning of the sermon to the end of that worship service, I soaked my little paper worship bulletin I had held in my lap. I identified myself with the woman, who Jesus said,

“loves much because she has been forgiven much.”

That Sunday thrust me into a whole season of my life, I think probably about three – four months where I needed to keep connecting with God every night before bed with some scripture reading, journaling, and prayer time. A thing that I grew up calling it “Quiet Times,” when you are supposed to spend quiet time with God every day – that I never did regularly with much shame and guilt for never doing it, like a bad Christian does, that was me. But these months, I did it not out of obligation or duty but because I just needed to make sure and confirm and re-confirm that I in fact had heard God in that one sermon. A devotional book accompanied me through this time called “My Utmost for High Highest” By Oswald Chambers. It had a bible text, a short reflection paragraph for each day of the year and I read every single one.

On August 5th, it read like this:

Title: The Bewildering Call of God

Scripture text: “…and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished.”…But they understood none of these things… —Luke 18:31, 34

Reflection reads:

God called Jesus Christ to what seemed an absolute disaster. And Jesus Christ called His disciples to see Him put to death, leading every one of them to the place where their hearts were broken. His life was an absolute failure from every standpoint except God’s. But what seemed to be a failure from human’s standpoint was a triumph from God’s standpoint, because God’s purpose is never the same as human’s purpose.

(it continues) This bewildering call of God comes into our lives as well. The call of God can never be understood absolutely or explained externally; it is a call that can only be perceived and understood internally by our true inner-nature. The call of God is like the call of the sea— no one hears it except the person who has the nature of the sea in him. What God calls us to cannot be definitely stated, because His call is simply to be His friend to accomplish His own purposes. Our real test is in truly believing that God knows what He desires. The things that happen do not happen by chance— they happen entirely by the decree of God. God is sovereignly working out His own purposes.

I felt like I understood none of these things. I was a disaster. I was a failure. When I read the words,

“The call of God is like the call of the sea— no one hears it except the person who has the nature of the sea in him.”

I remember my breath both quickening and deepening at the same time. Like you’re trying to swallow something bigger than you’re supposed to. Like looking out to a vast ocean and feeling it all. How the waves both beckon you and scare you at the same time.

I pictured a sea man on a boat. Free and wild. A little dirty and haggard, and maybe no one else understands why he would choose to live on a boat. But he’s happy. He feels free.

You know how when you go to the beach with a group, there’s always that one person who jumps into the water? It doesn’t matter if it’s cold or no one else is going in. They have to go in. I’m that person. I don’t know why – I’m not even a good swimmer, and the ocean frankly scares me. But I have to go in. This is how I felt God call me into ministry.

In the midst of confusion, sadness, all the emotions from guilt to freedom, and then I believe comes a moment of recognition. I love how for Mary, it takes her a while. She sees the angels; she doesn’t get it. She’s weeping, and they’re like,

why are you crying?

And she’s like

I don’t know where Jesus is!

Jesus comes out, she still doesn’t get it. And Jesus is like

why are you weeping,

(there’s a lot of why questions during a calling, okay?) and she’s like,

well if you took him, tell me where he is!

But then, in an instant, Jesus calls her name and she hears it clearly, recognizably, and in that moment she knows. She completely knows.

In my confusion, some things for very strange reasons felt so very clear. Especially when it didn’t make any sense. It shouldn’t have made any sense, and yet, it made all the sense. Which is how my closest friends and family responded when I first told them that I was going to seminary to become a pastor. The initial confusion, (what?) and then like it all made sense to them, (oh. I see.). I’m not all too sure what that means but I’ll take it. It’s like my life flashed before them and then God covered it with grace right before their eyes.

And what I loved most about what I read in that August 5th devotional, was that it also was misunderstood by everyone else. It said that it was an internal thing. And it sure was. A lot of guys were confused, how I, a girl, was going to be a pastor. Was I going to seminary to find a husband or to become a Sunday school teacher? When I said no, they were utterly confused. Yeah, I know! Crazy to think! But it was like that back in my day! It was wild and crazy to think a little ‘ol girl could lead or teach or preach or guide people. Wild right?

And that’s why I love the modern day Disney princess stories of not only falling asleep and waking up to kiss a prince but seeking, venturing, taking action, and going against the tide. The movie Moana made my heart swell. I often get the sudden urge to just run and stop dramatically and sing, “I Am Moana!” I’m pretty sure I’ve done that in another sermon, another illustration right here not too long ago.

Confusion, Recognition, and Announcement.

You see, for Moana too, even as she felt this strong calling, it was often conflicting for her. Her community was confused and her father disagreed with her. She wasn’t sure of herself, why she felt this longing. But there was just something absolutely sure, that she could not deny, she ran back to the water again and again because,

“It CALLLS~~~~ me!”

And lastly, the other scene I love from Moana is when she discovers the true story of their people, she runs back to her community saying,

“we were voyagers!”

She can’t help herself, the excitement. And so she moved from confusion, to recognition of her calling and then to announcement. Sorry, spoiler alert, they were voyagers.

Mary did this too.

“Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.”

But also, right before that, I want to note and point out Jesus saying to her,

“Do not hold onto me.”

Sorry, in my 2nd point, Recognition, there is an addendum I’d like to add. It’s fleeting. The holy voice comes and then it goes. It’s not something you can freeze and lock down and keep in a museum.

There are many holy moments captured in the Bible. For example, even for the Israelites, there are these big moments when God shows up, like the 10 commandments, but the rest of the stories are all mostly about remembering those moments, because they just keep forgetting and forgetting time and time again. And that’s actually the main story, what we do all those other regular times in our lives when we’re not on the mountain top getting a clear calling from the Lord.

And so the antidote to that is my 3rd point, announcement.

When you have that moment, even if it came, and went, go and share. Go and talk it out and work it through to see what it did to you and confirm and make sure or refine the experience through your wisdom board, closest friends, or community group.

And maybe for many of us, it isn’t a moment where Jesus literally called our names. Or one moment even, that we can point to. Maybe it was a series of things that strangely strung together to ignite something in you but you don’t know where it’s going. Like the Christmas song says,

“go tell it on the mountain!”

Go and announce! Go back to your village yelling like a mad woman that just discovered a bunch of old ships.

Is God calling you? We never would’ve known if Jesus called Mary Magdalene if she didn’t go and tell and tell again and they told someone else and told John and John wrote it down to tell it again and so forth.

• What are you hearing from God?
• Could you tell a friend about something that you’re sensing, or feeling, or hearing in your life to sift through together?
• Can you go find a sounding board to help you recognize the call of God in your life, and maybe look at you confused at first and then nod with you in recognition?

Let me end with this.

The Gottman Institute, the leading research based marriage and relationship experts point to this thing they call “bids” that

“are the building blocks of healthy relationships. They are those meaningful daily endeavors when you invite your partner into your world and ask to enter theirs.”

They can be and often are small things, not grand gestures because it’s easier to say,

“Oh there’s this guy on the bus who brought on the cutest dog ”

which means listen to a small part of my day, rather than saying

“I want to be heard and connected with!”

Gottman says that when someone offers their bid, and this can be with kids or friends too, when they say something to try to get your attention, you can either ignore it and turn away from it or turn toward it and give it acknowledgement. And that, that creates connection, like you’re on the same side. With my husband it can be as small as, when we’re walking and I notice a flower, a broken brick, or a weird looking car, it honestly could be anything, and I say, “oh look!” and he turns and looks in the same direction that I am looking and sees and notices what I saw and noticed.

It’s small but Gottman studies

“found a critical difference in how masters and disasters respond to bids for connection. In the Love Lab, masters turned towards each other 86% of the time. Disasters turned towards each other only 33% of the time.”

I guess the masters are what they called masters of relationship and disasters. The founder, John Gottman is

“the guy that can predict divorce with over 90% accuracy,”

so… I’ll take note. He also recommends kissing for more than 6 seconds daily for relationships.

I wonder if God is offering bids to you. And if you are paying attention or turning towards the things that God is trying to point out to you. When you get in the habit of ignoring bids, you don’t even notice that they are trying to offer bids. But be open, see, notice, and listen, and see if God is offering small bids to you this week. Maybe we’re not getting dramatic gestures of God calling our name with a booming voice, and also maybe we’re out of practice. But even if we are, it doesn’t matter.

God will always be offering bid after bid. Even when it feels like everything seems to be going wrong, and there’s great distress and confusion and loss and sadness, listen and look into the tomb for angels. And engage in honest conversations, “why God?”, and when you have a flash of recognition, even if it’s fleeting, go, go and announce it and find a community to talk it through with. I pray that we may have the ears to ear, eyes to see, hearts to feel the great bid and calling from God for our lives. Let me pray for us.

The post Calling of the Sea, The Bewildering Call of God first appeared on Reservoir Church.

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What we call people matters.

I have many affectionate little nicknames for my wife Grace and I get no complaint about any of them. They’re signs of my affection and of our intimacy.

But the other day, she noticed I was using a nickname I often use for her, but this time I was calling someone else with it. Don’t worry, it wasn’t another woman. It wasn’t even another person. But I was using this same nickname once reserved solely for her, with our dog.

And she was like:

hey, now, don’t call me the same thing you call our dog.

And I was like:

oh, come on, you’re two of my favorite creatures on earth.

And somehow that didn’t fly. So I was like:

alright, I will not use that name on our dog again.

And I think I’ve held up that commitment pretty well so far, as Grace deserves.

What we call people – and I guess even non-people persons – matters.

The same is true with what we call God.

A couple years ago, my prayer life was flagging.

Some of my views of God had changed over time, and so some of my old ways of talking to God didn’t fit as well any more.

I also had gone through some hard experiences in the months and years prior, and I didn’t exactly know how to talk to God about these things. On the one hand, I deeply believe what the scriptures say about God, that nothing is hidden from God’s sight, that everything is naked and exposed before the one to whom we have to give an answer.

I didn’t think I had to inform God about my experiences, but I didn’t just want to bottle them up either. I wanted to talk about them, and I wasn’t always sure how.

So I was praying less often, less naturally, probably less deeply.

I mostly didn’t feel guilty about praying less than I used to, but at some point, I did want this to change. I found myself wanting to learn to pray more again.

And one thing that helped a lot was a set of written prayers I stumbled upon. A structure for prayer, a set of words for prayer, that I could walk into and make it my own.

And the prayers begin like this:

Prayer Version #1

Eternal God, Creator of heaven and Earth,

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

God of Israel,

God and father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

True and Living God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

Have mercy and hear our prayer.

The prayer opens by asking for God’s attention and for God’s mercy – God’s solidarity and help in all things.

But even before that, just like when we ask for anyone’s attention and help, it begins with an address, with a name.

I appreciate the specificity of this.

When I was young, I used to start my prayers like: Dear God – and it’s like one, that’s a weird way to talk to someone, it sounds like you’re writing a letter out loud. But also the name “God” – it’s kind of vague, like a name that could mean anything, like a big box someone’s carrying and you have no idea what’s inside – it could be a guitar or a gun or groceries, it’s just generic.

When we say God, we could mean all kinds of things. So saying: dear God, or hey, God, or whatever doesn’t ground me in any particular kind of person on the other end of my prayers. It’s vague, like I have no idea who I’m talking to and whether or not they’re listening.

So this prayer names God, which I find helpful.

It calls God “eternal” – someone who has been around forever and is very much still here.

It names God as the creator of everything – me, you, wherever we are or could ever be. Things seen and known to us, things as of yet unseen and unknown too.

Creator God, still yet creative God, could you hear my prayer?

And then it grounds this eternal, creator God in some specific stories.

God, the one grounded in the story and history of scripture – the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, of Israel – this particular God that Jews and Christians and Muslims have been calling on for centuries, this God who we read about in the Bible.

And not only that, but the God and father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the God Jesus talked about, the God Jesus loves. God who looks and sounds and acts like Jesus, God who is present by God’s Spirit, the God I call my father, who is true and real and very much alive, I’d love to have your attention.

Could you be yet again kind, helpful, merciful, and hear my prayer?

It both grounds me and opens me up when I talk to God this way, remembering just who it is that’s listening. I have a better sense in my heart, in my consciousness, of who I’m talking to, of the miracle that I have this eternal, creator God’s attention.

And all this helps me pray.

But good as this is, I remembered something that would make it even better. When I started using this address, this greeting for God in my prayers, I remembered some encouragement from an author named Wil Gafney. Wil Gafney is a womanist theologian. A womanist is someone who says it’s worth thinking about life through the lens of Black women’s experiences, so a womanist theologian says Black women’s experiences have an important role in teaching us what God is like.

And the line I remembered from Wil Gafney was her encouragement that when we say formulas like the one in this prayer, like this formula from the Bible – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Wil Gafney says: say the women’s names too. Say the name of the women in the story as well, and see what that does.

So I decided to keep these traditional words for God in how I start my morning prayers, but to say the names of the women in the story as well.

So now, this address starts like this:

Prayer Version #2

Eternal God, Creator of heaven and Earth,

God of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Keturah

God of Isaac and Rebekah,

God of Jacob, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah

God of Israel….

And I want to tell you what it’s been like the past couple of years to pray to this God, the God that we name and address like this.

At first it was a memory stretch. Dang, these three men had a lot of women in their lives.

• How do I remember them all?
• Like who in the world was Keturah?
• Who are these people, and why does it matter?

But the more I say their names, the more I choose to inhabit a particular tradition and faith in God, and the more important places that takes me.

I’m talking about the significance of remembering the founding mothers of our faith, but let me start with even the value of the founding fathers.

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is the God of our broken, yet heroic selves.

These founding fathers of the faith are ordinary people, in some ways extraordinarily flawed people, that end up on these epic, heroes journeys.

Our founding senior pastor Dave Schmelzer used to talk a lot about the life of faith as being a kind of a hero’s journey. A hero’s journey is when an ordinary person stumbles into a deeper question or a deeper adventure in life. And the pursuit of this question or adventure calls them into a deeper life. Out of their tried and true comfort zone into the unknown, where challenges and temptations abound. Where new friends and new enemies emerge, where getting what you want in life, or fulfilling the purpose of your life requires great cost but yields great return too. It changes you, and sometimes it changes the world too, or some little piece of it at least.

I’ve resonated with this. The best and most important things in my life have called me beyond myself, even as they’ve called me to engage some of the deepest, most persistent themes of my life story that run all the way back through childhood.

When we think of hero’s journeys, often we think of our work. And I get that. I used to listen to the podcast How I Built This, which tells entrepreneurs’ stories, because I respect what I learn about leadership from my friends and our church board members who start businesses. And the arcs of these entrepreneurs are usually hero’s journeys – people stumble into some bold, big thing they want to try, and on their way to anything like success, there are usually moments where they almost lose it all. And all this requires resilience and talent, but also a lot of help and a lot of luck. And I think that’s been true in the work I’ve been called to do as a teacher and a school leader and a pastor, and it’s true of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob too – God walked with them and inspired and strengthened them in the big work to which they were called.

But for me, I’ve felt this even more in my personal, relational life. I’m trying to be a nurturing father to my kids and a supportive, intimate partner to my spouse, when I come from a long line of aloof men who didn’t always know how to do those things. And I’m trying to be a middle aged man who actually has friends, when again, the men in the culture I come from don’t. And so even this stuff has felt like a hero’s journey, calling me out to new ways of being in the world, and new ways of being in myself.

So when I pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I remember that we’re not the first people God has called to big adventures, to new work and new ways of living, or to challenging circumstances. We’re not the first flawed people trying to do hard things.

Here’s a little snapshot from Jacob’s life.

Genesis 32:22-26 (Common English Bible)

22 Jacob got up during the night, took his two wives, his two women servants, and his eleven sons, and crossed the Jabbok River’s shallow water.

23 He took them and everything that belonged to him, and he helped them cross the river.

24 But Jacob stayed apart by himself, and a man wrestled with him until dawn broke.

25 When the man saw that he couldn’t defeat Jacob, he grabbed Jacob’s thigh and tore a muscle in Jacob’s thigh as he wrestled with him.

26 The man said, “Let me go because the dawn is breaking.”

But Jacob said, “I won’t let you go until you bless me.”

Jacob is a man with a lot of baggage. He’s a polygamist, he’s got a big and messy family where people mostly don’t get along. He’s a pretty wealthy person at this point, but he’s come by it through incessant struggle and hustle, over decades. And in this scene he’s getting ready to meet up with a brother he hasn’t seen in years, a brother he thinks has reason to hate him, because in all his hustle, Jacob has done some people wrong over the years, his brother included.

But beneath all of this drama, Jacob really just wants a blessing. His father never knew how to love him well, and all his blessing has been gained through hustle and hard work and theft, but Jacob wonders:

is there someone who really knows me and sees good in me? Can I be loved? Can I be believed in?

This is where that name Israel comes from – it’s a new name for Jacob before it’s a new name for an ancient people. It means “struggle with God.” Because that’s the invitation of faith – to struggle with our deepest questions and longings, to struggle over those with God and find blessing, to find that God sees us and loves us and believes in us even as God humbles us and calls us to change.

So when I learn to pray to the God of Jacob, I remember that God has room for my biggest questions and fears. God has room for the knotty, ill-formed parts of me. And God knows the ways in which I’m still the same little kid just looking for his parents’ attention, hoping he’ll be seen and loved and encouraged.

That God had room for Jacob, had time for Jacob, had hope for Jacob. And that God has room and time and hope for you and me.

What a gift.

The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of our broken selves and deepest longings, and heroic journeys.

But what happens when you add the women? Well, when you restore these women into God’s story, you introduce a lot more. Because adding just the stories of these eight women into how we name God, you add in stories of heartbreak, of infertility, of weeping, of discrimination, and sex trafficking and sexual violence.

You add in rivalries and betrayals, people defined by their physical beauty and people defined by their lack of physical appeal. You get people who use people and the people who are used. All of them mattering to God, all of them worthy of God’s love and attention and place in God’s big story.

Take Rachel, she’s the archetype in the Bible of maternal yearning and maternal grief too. In Jewish literary and spiritual tradition, Rachel is always weeping. Because that’s part of what mothers do. Mothers grow babies in their bodies, and feed them with their bodies, and birth them into the world. And sometimes things go great, but usually some things go wrong. And mothers worry and weep, and sometimes they lose their children and they keep on weeping.

The God we pray to isn’t just the God of Jacob but the God of Rachel as well, the God of our weary years, as the song says, and the God of our silent tears.

And what happens when you add Bilhah and Zilpah in too?

Well, first you have to find out who the heck these two women were, and then you find out and you think, my God. A man married off his two daughters to a distant relative of his. And then when there were fertility issues, he took two slaves of his and gave them as concubines, as sex slaves to his son in law.

And now we see God isn’t just the God of our heroic selves and deep aspirations, but God is the God of the victims, the God of our invisible selves and the God of our unthinkable disasters.

The story of Genesis gives bits of this. We learn this about Bilhah:

Genesis 29:29 (Common English Bible)

29 Laban also gave his woman servant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel to be her maidservant.

It’s more polite than the way I put it. But the story is that Rachel’s father Laban gives Rachel a slave to make her life easier. And then this ensues. ***

Genesis 30:1-6 (Common English Bible)

30 Rachel noticed that she was not bearing children for Jacob, so because she envied her sister Leah, she told Jacob, “If you don’t give me sons, I’m going to die!”

2 That made Jacob angry with Rachel, so he asked her, “Can I take God’s place, who has not allowed you to conceive?”

3 Rachel responded, “Here’s my handmaid Bilhah. Go have sex with her. She can bear children on my knees so I can have children through her.”

4 So Rachel gave Jacob her woman servant Bilhah to be his wife, and Jacob had sex with her.

5 Bilhah conceived and bore a son for Jacob.

6 Then Rachel said, “God has vindicated me! He has heard my voice and has given me a son.” Therefore, she named him Dan.

So Bilhah isn’t just a slave, now she’s a sex slave. Surrogate is too polite a term. Bilhah has no choice, no agency here. Her children are accounted as Rachel’s, not her own, and she has no standing she gains, no reward.

Heart-breaking, not part of God’s good longings for the human family that anyone would be used and abused like this, and yet real too. For all our families, if we look long or wide or deep enough, have abuse in them somewhere. They have unbearable injustices and heartbreak somewhere. And some of us, truthfully, don’t need to look long or hard enough in our lives for these stories.

But God is big enough, good enough, wide enough to include stories like this among the founding mothers of our faith. And when we name God by these stories too – God of Jacob and Leah and Bilhah and Zilpah – we remember that God has room and heart and blessing still for the crushed and invisible people of our generation, and for the crushed and invisible parts of ourselves.

God is the God even of our great disasters, which God knows and sees with tears and love, and hope and care.

When we name God like this in our prayers, we signal to God and to ourselves that prayer isn’t a time for thin words and cover up and fake smiles. Prayer is a time for our whole messy selves to engage God in all of God’s deep knowing and in all of the wideness of God’s mercy. And there we can tell the truth about our lives. And we can tell the truth about our world. And we can trust that God has time and love and hope for it all. And see what comes of that.

There was a 19th century songwriter that wrote a song about this. It’s called “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy.” It was written by a man named Frederick William Faber.

He was raised as the kind of Christian who thought that God chose some people for salvation and blessing in this life and in the life to come. And that many other people were not chosen or blessed by God. So as a child and a young adult, Faber would have been taught to think that most of the world was damned. Jews, Muslims, Catholics, the indigenous peoples of the earth that his country – the British Empire – was busy colonizing at the time. He wouldn’t have thought they were part of God’s story until Faber had a change of heart, a change of faith and became a new kind of Christian.

Religious deconstruction and reconstruction isn’t new, my friends. Faber hung on for a deeper truth, and in his last decade of life, ill in bed in his 40s before he died too young, he wrote the hymn “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy,”

It says:

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice,
which is more than liberty.

There is welcome for the sinner,
and more graces for the good.
There is mercy with the Savior,
there is healing in his blood.

But we make God’s love too narrow
by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness
with a zeal God will not own.

For the love of God is broader
than the measures of the mind,
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.

What we call people matters. What we call God matters. If we just call the God of our prayers something vague like God, we can easily invest the divine with a bunch of garbage, or have God get vaguer and smaller over time until it seems this God is nothing but a figment of our imagination.

But pray to God as eternal creator of heaven and earth, God of Abraham and Jacob and Rachel and Bilhah and all the rest of the founding fathers and mothers, God and father and mother of our lord and savior Jesus Christ, and we remember there’s a wideness in God’s mercy. We’ll get a bigger God, a God with room for everybody – stranger, friend, and foe – and a God who even has room for all of our selves. God of our broken but heroic selves. God of our weeping selves. Even God of our invisible selves and our great disasters. The God who loves to give us attention and solidarity and love and help all of this.

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John 15:9-17

9 “As Abba has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Abba’s commands and remain in their love.

11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

14 You are my friends if you do what I command.

15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know their master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Abba I have made known to you.

16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name Abba will give you.

17 This is my command: Love each other.

In Brene Brown’s book Dare to Lead, a book about developing brave leaders and courageous cultures, she tells a story about her daughter, Ellen, and a difficult experience she had related to trust with her classmates in elementary school.

One day after school Ellen came home crying, distressed, and Brene asked her daughter what happened. Ellen told her that she told a few of her friends something embarrassing and asked them to promise not to tell anyone but later in the day her entire classroom was laughing and talking about the thing. The teacher took out a bunch of marbles from their marble jar. When the class collectively makes good decisions they put marbles into the jar. When they collectively make bad decisions, marbles come out. Ellen said to her mom,

“I will never trust anyone ever again in my life.”

During the summer we don’t have a particular preaching series, but the Kids Church and Youth theme for the summer has been, “I Am the Church,” thinking about how we are the church and who am I in this community. They’ve been doing show and tell and tracing their bodies on butcher paper and decorating them, and making friendship bracelets. So I wanted to bring the friendship bracelets over to the grown ups and talk about what it means to be the church here.

As I was thinking about our church community and today’s text about love and friendship, this story from Brene struck me. Brene Brown, a research and data based expert on vulnerability and shame, translating really what love and belonging is for the work environment and leadership, made me wonder what her book would be like if the title was Dare to Church. I think it could help translate a little bit of what Jesus was trying to say here in the Book of John in the modern day context.

For the ancient near East context, the metaphor for God, the father in heaven God, moving from master-servant to friendship is a provocative one. The societal system was set up in a hierarchical manner, where status, title, social connections and means determined how you related with one another. A part of me wanted to say, yes back in the day, the caste system really was so strict and absurd, but I find myself that it isn’t too different to today.

I mean we’re able to quite subtly give cues with what brands we are able to afford and wear, or where we work, what we do, pretty immediately being able to place one another in the pecking order of our society. No, we don’t do this in our church at all but everyone else does it out there all the time.

That’s what I do love about the church. I’ve been in ministry for a few decades now, and grew up in church as a pastor’s kid. One of my favorite things about growing up as a pastor’s kid is that I knew all kinds of people and their lives. My dad, the pastor, and our family would be invited to a church member’s house. One that had literally pillars at their front door, winding down staircases, a room of mirrors for their ballroom dancing practices, and a backyard with a swimming pool in one area, a babbling brook in another, and even a little safe haven enclosed by hedges with ornate bench for your morning meditation, they owned a few pharmacies in town.

In the same week we’d visit another church member, who runs a bargain fashion store in a strip mall next to the grocery store. She’d give me and my sister a bag of clothes to take home. We knew professors, doctors, dentists, and laundromat, liquor store and bargain fashion store owners. Because the church was an equalizer. At church everyone, whether you are rich or important or poor and disregarded the rest of the week, on Sunday, we all got into our Sunday best and we sang together, we ate together, we prayed for each other. Not all churches are like this. Some churches are more… segregated. But you didn’t really have a choice in Korean immigrant churches.

Our church, Reservoir, is more diverse than any church I’ve been in. More diverse than a Korean church. And I see us connecting with one another with those in any other setting may never cross paths. I see us do it. And also we’re all creatures of comfort, going to the same people we know and already feel comfortable with.

And I just need to share with you, so many of you I meet with, tell me you’re lonely, that you don’t know many people at the church, that you feel disconnected. And I’m sitting there just knocking my brain, you two should know each other!

Some simple reasons may be, sure, our church has changed a lot through Covid and coming back together. We’re in Boston, it is actually a quite transient place, with grad/PhD/med students coming and going. And we have had many new families and folks join us in the last few years. Even folks who’ve been at Reservoir for 10+ years are like, “I don’t know anyone!” And also, I think there are some hard reasons that some of us, many of us are still not feeling connected. We’re afraid.

Like Brene’s daughter Ellen,

“I don’t ever want to trust anyone again!”

Maybe some of us feel this way. After all, we are a church that is trying hard to be an opening and welcoming place for, especially for folks who have been hurt by the church. One of our most attended classes is called Unpack, unpacking our church baggage at a church for crying out loud. We’ve got some hurt people, cautious people. We’ve got people. Who are not perfect. Who will disappoint you and make mistakes. Heck, there are some of you that I’ve personally offended by something I said or did. So how are we supposed to love?

We’re naturally drawn to people who have acted in such a way that would put marbles in and in again in the jar. People who have listened to you, honored your pain, remembered your important day or event. When people are mean, disrespectful, or judges you, the marbles come out. Brene asked her daughter if she had a friend who holds a full marble jar. Ellen said

“Yeah, Hannah and Emma are my marble jar friends.”

And she asked her how they got their marbles. Brene expected her to share some heavy lifting stories of friendship and connection. Instead she shared that at a soccer game Hannah saw that Umma and Oppa were there (those are Brene’s mom and step dad). And Brene said,

“and what happened?”

Ellen said, that’s it, she got a marble for just seeing her grandparents. And then she said,

“and Emma always does the half butt sit with me in the cafeteria.”

That’s when the cafeteria tables are all full and there aren’t many seats left and Emma scoots over to share a seat with her so they’re both sitting on half butt. Brene also shared her marble jar people and at first said, well I think it might be a little different for grown ups but then she thought about that same soccer game and how Aileen came up and said,

“hey David and DeAnne”

and Brene recalled how much it meant that she remembered their names.

Brene makes the point that she might’ve thought that trust is built through grand big gestures, but from this story and backed by much of her research and looking for trust earning behaviors and found that trust is in fact found in the smallest of moments. It made me begin to wonder how marble jars are filled or not filled in our relationships.

I really want to know how it is exactly that we should love. I mean, Jesus is summing up all that God commanded into one call:

Love one another.

So we have to ask ourselves,

• what does it mean to love one another?
• What does it mean to be a friend?

Such simple questions and we can easily wave it off like, yes yes, love, duh.

• But what does it look like?
• Is that really even what we’re trying to do here?
• If so, can we, like Brene Brown, think critically and strategically about how to do this well, how to do it better?

I’ll be honest, verse 13 doesn’t help me much.

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

I don’t get many chances to lay down my life for a friend. I mean you only get one chance to do that literally. And this line gets very quickly connected to Jesus’ death of course, helping us to conclude that Jesus is the greatest friend of all who laid down his life for us, according to one way of looking at the atonement theory, why Jesus died and what Jesus dying did.

But look, that’s just a theory, one very helpful, or had been very helpful at one time or another, way of thinking about what Jesus accomplished. It’s also a very literal implication of all that Jesus did into one act. Jesus didn’t die just to die and do the deed of dying for someone. He died because he did many things, like touch the leper, see the sinful woman, eat with outcasts, and call out injustices.

Not only so that he can appease God’s wrath of needing to bring punishment down on someone and Jesus took the fall for all our sins. That’s, again, one way to put it, and if that theological thinking has helped you understand God’s love, that’s really beautiful, it has for me too. (Steve actually has a really great blog post on atonement you can look it up on our website, search, Why Did Jesus Die?) But the metaphor is beyond that. There’s more metaphors to describe and get at what Jesus was doing, what God was doing, than just this one thing.

There’s another text that Jesus talks about, of “taking up your own cross” or death in

Matthew 16: 24-25

“24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

25 For whoever would save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

So since the whole laying your life down for a friend is only a one time deal, I wonder how else we could think about what it looks like to love one another every other day aside from your death day. So not grand gestures or big dramatic acts like Brene was thinking about in building trust, but the small things. What small way can we lay down our lives?

I can still think of some big ways, that’s smaller than death, but that many people have put their lives down for friendship. I know people who have lost their whole livelihood, community, family, because they decided to come out and say that they support their gay friend. They were excommunicated by their church and their small group leader, and pastor, and many of their friends because they decided to not say that being gay is a sin but instead that God loves them just as they are and in fact God delights in them for who they are. And because of that they’ve lost jobs, had to find another career path, moved to another community, lost connections, even family.

But even smaller ways, I can think of, are big moves. When we let go of our egos and let the other person speak and listen deeply even if you completely disagree with them. Or when we let go of the need to be good and helpful and be honest and humble with vulnerability and ask for help from someone you didn’t think could help you. Maybe lay down your life long work in defending a particular kind of theology to hear and listen to someone’s hardship that cannot be made sense through what the church has been teaching.

It tore my heart the other day, when I heard someone say that they were afraid to share what they had been through because they didn’t want to offend anyone or get them upset because very powerful and influential voices in the church in the last few decades had decided that they are against a certain social political issue. When the reality is the church, I mean the Christian church tradition hadn’t always thought that. Look, we can believe different things, we obviously do.

Look at us. We’re a mix. We’ve got a fetal cardiologist and administrative assistant. We’ve got Harvard PhDs and no college degree grandmas. And you know what, we all work hard to make our lives work and we all have big audacious hearts of hope and faith in God. Actually, some of us are struggling even as we move billions of dollars in the financial industry with addiction problems. Some of us are struggling with heartbreak and loneliness at home while leading a whole company. Some of us are barely making ends meet and struggling with debilitating health issues. And I see all of us, gathering together here, humbled, saying,

“Jesus I need you.”

Saying to one another

“hey I need you”

and we’re deciding to be a community together because we know that you can’t do this alone and you need a friend.

And I don’t mean just nice friends who say oh hi how are you, good, thank you, and you. That’s not good enough. As Brene Brown would say, you got to lean in with more courage and vulnerability than that because people can smell fake miles away. And if you really want to do the work of deeply connecting, you can’t stay on the surface level. She says

“daring is not saying, okay I’m willing to risk failure.”

Daring is saying,

“I know I’ll eventually fail. And I’m still all in.”

Have you failed with a relationship with someone, maybe with someone sitting here in this room? Yes? Good. Hey we don’t all gotta be BFF’s. If you haven’t, if you haven’t gotten a text from someone saying,

“hey we got to talk”

or had to apologize for a misstep to someone, then you’re not stepping. You’re missing out.

The definition of vulnerability as the emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure has been described in her studies as these, when asked tell me about the time of vulnerability: first date after a divorce, talking about race with my team, trying to get pregnant after my second miscarriage and so on. These are the moments that come up that actually bind us, make us trust one another, how we love one another in these moments. If we’re not doing such moments, then we’re not doing love, we’re just being nice.

C.S. Lewis says,

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

I hung out with a new friend the other day. We did a playdate with the girls. Her house was so cute and well designed, she has a great eye. And I stepped up my visiting someone’s home game by bringing a fun summer drink. It had pureed strawberries and blueberries, with slices of oranges and lemon, mixed with some cranberry juice and ice. I was proud of myself and she was so impressed. I was sad that I didn’t not bring a cute straw and basil with it. And a full cup of that beautiful pink and red drink with all kinds of fruit juices in it, was spilled by my daughter onto their living room rug. I got on my knees and dabbed and rubbed. She felt bad that I was on my knees. I felt bad that I ruined her pretty house. I still think about that rug and want to text her and say,

“sorry about that rug again!”

but haven’t because I don’t want her to make her feel bad for making me feel bad and text about stupid things that she probably moved on from that I’m obviously still caught up on because I’m neurotic and crazy and I don’t want her to know that just yet cause I want to hang out with her again.

You know what? I’ve been talking about how to be vulnerable. How to be a good friend. How we should lean in or take charge. But this is not a TedTalk or a self help book. There are some helpful tips but, the thing is none of this matters. We try so hard to be good little Christians, good church goers, good friends, a good community. None of these trys and efforts don’t really matter if you don’t know the good good Friend Jesus.

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.

11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

Do you hear Jesus saying to you, I love you?

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.

Do you hear Jesus saying to you, I am your friend?

I chose you, I approached you, I initiated, and I made you my friend when you didn’t even know it. I pursue you again and again. I text you. I call you. I come by your house. I make sure that you know my love, my joy. SO THAT YOU MIGHT GO AND BEAR FRUIT. And spill fruit juices all over someone’s house and they still call you for a next hangout.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

I can’t tell you to go now and work on your friendship with vulnerability, because without knowing that God is your friend, it’ll be a fruitless effort.

God is vulnerable with you. God came to us as Jesus to just sit next to us at the well, to call us down from climbing a tree, so that we can come over at night to discuss urgent things, to feed us bread and wine. God is your friend.

Let me pray for us.

Hey Friend, thank you for loving us first, when we knew nothing of it. Help us to find your love again and again. Help us to hear your voice and listen to your heart with our hearts. Help us to grow our friendship with you and with those around us. Help us our most dearest sweet kind friend who loves us beyond our own understanding. Give us your wisdom to know and understand this mighty love we have from you. We pray, in Jesus name Amen.

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As many of you know, before I was a pastor, I was a high school principal. And one of the moments that captures some of the tensions of that work happened during one of my interviews. As a finalist, I stood before the whole high school faculty to speak and answer questions. And one of them said:

Hey, we hear that next year’s freshman class is a difficult one. Those 8th graders at the middle school have a lot of troublemakers, and we have bad enough school discipline already, so what are you going to do about that? How will you control these kids?

Now I had some training and experience in student discipline. I have some philosophy and approach on these things. So there was a lot I could have said, but I had skipped my midday coffee by mistake, so I had a headache, I wasn’t thinking all that great. I felt like I was sort of bombing this faculty meeting interview already.

So I just asked:

What if we were to meet these kids first? These 8th graders who’ve never set foot in this school, who are about to be a quarter of our student body, what if we were to meet them before we assume how bad they will be? What if we were to try to know them and welcome them, before we try to solve the problems they haven’t yet created?

I don’t think that was a popular answer. I wasn’t always a popular principal.

But that moment was at the heart of what was complicated and challenging about that job. So many of the parents and adults of that community wanted a school leader who would command and control the students. Make them behave the way we wanted, so we could do school with them.

A high school principal is a small-time political figure, and so much of politics in any organization, at any scale, is about control. Who will control the people? Who will control the behaviors, the changes that threaten us?

In our communities of every size – relationships, families, schools, workplaces – so many of us are striving for control. But it’s illusive. We don’t usually manage to control people or things for very long, and even when we’re able to, the results aren’t often what we hoped they’d be. Same is true at a bigger scale – in our religions, in our countries. So many futile efforts to control big threats, big changes.

So today, I offer you a few thoughts on our issues with control and I offer another image for dealing with people or changes we don’t understand or may not like.

The Control of Bodies and the Body of Christ. These are words I’ve lifted from Willie James Jennings. I’ve been reading the book of Acts alongside his brilliant commentary on that part of the Bible. And we’ll be reading a bunch of the 15th chapter of Acts today, a section known as the Jerusalem council. I’ll read it in three parts and make some comments in between. Here’s how it starts:

Acts 15:1-5 (Common English Bible)

15 Some people came down from Judea teaching the family of believers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom we’ve received from Moses, you can’t be saved.”

2 Paul and Barnabas took sides against these Judeans and argued strongly against their position.

The church at Antioch appointed Paul, Barnabas, and several others from Antioch to go up to Jerusalem to set this question before the apostles and the elders.

3 The church sent this delegation on their way. They traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, telling stories about the conversion of the Gentiles to everyone. Their reports thrilled the brothers and sisters.

4 When they arrived in Jerusalem, the church, the apostles, and the elders all welcomed them. They gave a full report of what God had accomplished through their activity.

5 Some believers from among the Pharisees stood up and claimed, “The Gentiles must be circumcised. They must be required to keep the Law from Moses.”

So the good news of Jesus is traveling, just as Jesus wanted it to. From Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to all the ends of the earth.

But things change as they travel, don’t they? Change is the story of health, of growth, of life, of time, but we hate it, don’t we?

I hate that I can’t buy lunch for less than $5. Fifteen years ago, the last time I bought lunch out regularly, I could still get a Banh Mi in Boston’s Chinatown where I taught, for like $3.50. I lament the world of the year 2024 where that is no longer true. So I try not to buy lunch out, other than like from 7/11, maybe because I’m cheap – frugal more politely. Or maybe because I hate change.

Same with the Jerusalem church, the OG followers of Jesus. They loved the idea of their message going to the ends of the earth, but they thought it meant everyone would in time be like them. When that’s not the case – and these pork-eating, face shaving, uncircumcised Gentiles start joining the Jesus movement, it just seems so wrong.

They’re like: y’all get yourselves circumcised, as our law has always required. If we have to go through that, so do you!

Because just like in American politics today, our traditions and our way of life, our nostalgia for the way things used to be can get real important in the face of changes we don’t understand. And so we grasp for control, which usually means control of bodies that don’t act like we want them to.

Psychologists know that bodies scare us. At some level they disgust us. They leak and ooze and excrete uncomfortably, and eventually they die, and rot and decompose, and there is something in our deep evolutionary psychology that fears the body just as we fear change.

At the high school I took on as principal, the faculty wanted some peace and respect in the school. But they thought they’d get it by controlling bodies. They were like: if we crack down on all the boys wearing hats in the hallway, that’ll help. Same with those damn cell phones.

As a new principal, I was like: why do we care about whether a guy wears a hat in the hallway or not? So we changed that. Because a school becomes sick when it fixates on the control of bodies. We want you to behave and to conform, goes the message, to make our environment less troublesome. That’s a very different feel than wanting kids to belong, to grow.

We know that when teens feel wanted and liked and when they are engaged in activities that are building them up toward a better future, they act more productively and respectfully as well. They don’t need their body controlled as much as they need to be part of a healthy body.

The same is true in our marriages. When we form an intimate partnership, we fast discover our many differences, and the threatened spouse, the threatened partner, tries to subtly control their beloved, because they can’t handle a change in their life, a change in their expectations. And this is always misguided and hurtful. Because love doesn’t control. Love embraces the other as they are today, gloriously alive, gloriously changing, gloriously different.

All this is true at large scale in our religions.

Part of the point of religion is to conserve old truths and traditions. So religion hates change.

Your church and my church share a history here. We were part of a denomination of contemporary Protestant churches called Vineyard/USA. Vineyard itself was born of a kind of wacky renewal movement where 1950s era evangelical Christians met 60s and 70s counterculture, spiritually awakened Jesus freak hippies. And yet over time, the movement got more cautious, more conservative. And so 10-15 years ago, as our churches and others were looking to continue to change and grow, to let go of some of the dysfunctions of the purity movement and to welcome and embrace our LGBTQ siblings and selves, we were threatened and shunned, asked to leave and cast out.

A group of churches whose first question used to be:

• what is the Spirit of God doing today?

was threatened by change and instead asked:

• what restrictions and rules is the Bible placing upon us?

• And how do we get rid of the dissenters who read it differently and see the Spirit of God doing a new thing?

This is backwards of course. The scholar Luke Timothy Johnson writes that the text of scripture doesn’t indicate how God should act. How God acts shows us how we should read the text of scripture.

I’m not picking on the Vineyard here, by the way, this is the trend in global religion. The world is changing at rates we’ve never seen. Globalization, technology, climate change, awakenings to what’s done harm in the past – the pace of change and the sense of threat we’re experiencing in our lifetimes is dizzying. It is not normal for our species. And the majority of global religion – Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish – is resisting this change, is moving toward its more fundamentalist impulses, is lurching rightward, toward nationalism, toward separatism, and toward control of bodies.

Friends, this is not the way of the Spirit. It is not the liberating good news of Jesus. Control of bodies will hurt the people we’re trying to control. It will hurt the souls of the people trying to do the controlling. And it will not work. It rarely does. Control of bodies will not free us, it will not save us.

Let’s look at what this Jerusalem council does – what it does well and not so much – as we look for a better way.

Acts 15:6-18 (Common English Bible)

6 The apostles and the elders gathered to consider this matter.

7 After much debate, Peter stood and addressed them, “Fellow believers, you know that, early on, God chose me from among you as the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and come to believe.

8 God, who knows people’s deepest thoughts and desires, confirmed this by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us.

9 He made no distinction between us and them, but purified their deepest thoughts and desires through faith.

10 Why then are you now challenging God by placing a burden on the shoulders of these disciples that neither we nor our ancestors could bear?

11 On the contrary, we believe that we and they are saved in the same way, by the grace of the Lord Jesus.”

12 The entire assembly fell quiet as they listened to Barnabas and Paul describe all the signs and wonders God did among the Gentiles through their activity.

13 When Barnabas and Paul also fell silent, James responded, “Fellow believers, listen to me.

14 Simon reported how, in his kindness, God came to the Gentiles in the first place, to raise up from them a people of God.

15 The prophets’ words agree with this…(and they go on to quote the Bible some)

They’d been in a debate between two cities, two attitudes, two sets of politics around control of bodies. Manage the change or not? Control these Gentile bodies or not? Enforce the old rules or let them go? Paul and Barnabas took sides. They all took sides against each other.

Peter stands up and shifts the conversation. He asks what the Spirit is doing. He asks what it would mean to take sides with the movement of the Spirit of God.

The Spirit of God is doing new things among them and is doing some old things but in new people. Paul and Barnabas tell them that these humans who are so foreign to them are welcoming their faith. They may be different, “other,” but spiritually, they are now sisters and brothers. How can we not welcome them?

And so the conversation changes from the control of bodies to the body of Christ.

The body of Christ is the New Testament’s big metaphor for Christian community, for all people who welcome the teachings of Jesus, who find Jesus to be a true and helpful guide to knowing God and living well.

It’s a radical image, that to follow Jesus is to be part of his body, to be intimately connected to our ancestor Jesus, to the living Spirit of Jesus. And to be intimately connected to millions of people you don’t choose and maybe you don’t even like.

Love the God that you see in Jesus, and there you are, like it or not, in the Body of Christ, where none of us get to police the barriers or enforce the boundaries or control the bodies of this extended family.

The Body of Christ doesn’t ask what you have to do to belong, because God has said we belong already. That’s not up for discussion.

And the body of Christ doesn’t ask how to control the other participants. Because we’re not in charge, it’s not our place. The Spirit of Jesus takes the lead. We can take distance from other parts of the body that seem like they’re trying to get rid of us or do us harm. And we can avoid the parts of the body that seem to stink like they’re trying to be the armpits and the buttholes of the body.

But we don’t get to control them, just as they don’t get to control us.

Instead, the body of Christ asks what does it mean to welcome people into the body? And what does it mean to be welcomed?

I see this in my church, where our mission is to welcome everyone without exception, to discover the love of God, the gift of community, and the joy of living. Everyone’s story matters, everyone has something to receive when they participate in the community, and everyone has something to give. And it’s such a holy, delightful surprise who I get to meet and be connected to in that community.

I got a beautiful picture of this outside the church too, back in the school where I was a principal, when I was invited into a grief circle in the school basement.

Two years into my tenure, those rising 8th graders were in 10th grade now, and some of them had been trouble. One day we heard that the most notorious among them, often absent from school, defiant and checked out when he was there, rumored to be behind a number of problems, we learned that his mom died.

And knowing how this tragedy would ripple out in this kid’s life and among his friends, one of our school social workers, a friend of mine named Mike, gathered this kids’ friends in his grade for a circle to talk it out, and he invited me to join them.

So we sat in the school basement, Mike, me, and seven or eight of this kid’s friends, most of them barely passing school, and among our school’s most problematic, worst behaving students as well. These were the bodies we wanted to control.

But in this circle, they were invited to belong, and to tell the truth about themselves. And the truth was they were hurting.

They were worried about their friend, and their friend’s mom dying reminded them of a lot of traumas they’d faced too. Pretty much all of them had had an important person in their life die or abandon them or get taken away from them. And in this circle of safety, of welcome, of belonging, they told those stories. This circle wasn’t called the Body of Christ, but anytime we can tell the truth about ourselves and our trauma in a circle of trust and safety, of grace and love, that’s a sacred space.

My friend Mike encouraged them to feel the hurt, not to try to numb it out that night with weed, and he encouraged them: you’re valuable, you matter, you’re loved, and this can get better.

I don’t know that I had anything all that valuable to say, I was just so honored to be there. But I remember hoping that my presence communicated that these boys belonged to our school, that they were wanted and welcome.

Belonging to the body of Christ tells us we are welcome as we are. We matter to God, and we ought to matter to one another. We don’t get to control anyone else, and no one gets to control us. We commit to a circle of love and truth where the Spirit of God does its work on us over time. Where we’re loved and moved and persuaded to a higher call for our lives.

• How do you hear this today, friends?
• Have you been told you don’t belong in the body of Christ?
• That because of your views, your politics, your sexuality, that you need to be the subject of judgment or control, rather than welcome and love?

What does it mean to know that the Spirit of God won’t have this in the body of Christ? That it’s no one’s right to police the borders of God’s family or control your membership or control your body? No one’s. You matter, friend. You too are a beloved child of God, adopted and welcome forever.

And for all those of us who have control issues, who have a hard time letting go of changes or tensions or people or conflicts that threaten us? What does it mean to surrender to the fact that we probably can’t control those changes or people anyway? And we’re probably not meant to try? Instead, we can trust we are part of a bigger story. We are part of a bigger body.

We’re connected to ancestors and descendants in the body that are part of this story. We’re connected to a wise and loving God that can handle some things that we can’t. The help of God and friends is there to call upon. It’s not all on our shoulders. We’re just one person, one part of this big body of Christ. There’s help. There’s more. There’s time.

Friends, I want to read the end of this passage as a kind of coda, to see how they do and don’t let go of control of Bodies, and what it says about how we might live into the welcome and the encouragement of the Body of Christ.

Acts 15:19-35 (Common English Bible)

19 “Therefore, I conclude that we shouldn’t create problems for Gentiles who turn to God.

20 Instead, we should write a letter, telling them to avoid the pollution associated with idols, sexual immorality, eating meat from strangled animals, and consuming blood.

21 After all, Moses has been proclaimed in every city for a long time, and is read aloud every Sabbath in every synagogue.”

22 The apostles and the elders, along with the entire church, agreed to send some delegates chosen from among themselves to Antioch, together with Paul and Barnabas. They selected Judas Barsabbas and Silas, who were leaders among the brothers and sisters.

23 They were to carry this letter:

(and the letter goes over this compromise they made – we’ll skip that bit…)

30 When Barnabas, Paul, and the delegates were sent on their way, they went down to Antioch. They gathered the believers and delivered the letter.

31 The people read it, delighted with its encouraging message.

32 Judas and Silas were prophets, and they said many things that encouraged and strengthened the brothers and sisters.

33 Judas and Silas stayed there awhile, then were sent back with a blessing of peace from the brothers and sisters to those who first sent them.

35 Paul and Barnabas stayed in Antioch, where, together with many others, they taught and proclaimed the good news of the Lord’s word.

So here’s what doesn’t work. Can you hear how they’re not ready to let go of the control of bodies? They’re like, fine, you don’t need to get circumcised. Leave your genitals alone. And maybe we’ll flex on some other rules.

But hey, all that disgusting non-kosher meat – don’t touch that stuff. And all your dirty sex thoughts and dirty sex lives, keep away from that too. Keep it clean. That’s the compromise, OK.

It’s a weird landing spot. One, are these really the two most important ethical issues for new converts? Clean up your sex lives and eat kosher?

Two, this compromise doesn’t hold for even a generation. Within 15 or 20 years, Paul is forcibly arguing to let go of the kosher meat, meat involved in idol worship rules bit. He’s like: it really doesn’t matter.

The sex stuff continues to matter, for millennia. And it’s not all bad. Our sexuality and our sex lives run deep in us, and living with love, goodness, and holiness in our sexuality is actually super-important in a life of freedom and joy and love. But even in this, control doesn’t usually get the job done. Telling people – avoid this website, don’t have sex with this person or at this time doesn’t usually change anything. And it doesn’t magically make our sexuality and sex lives a place of freedom, health, love, and joy. That’s a deeper work.

So compromise rules, just toning down our efforts at control don’t get the job done.

Because we suck at controlling things. Our efforts to control things mostly stress us out. They don’t do very much. And our efforts to control other people tell them they aren’t welcome and loved as they are, that we won’t love them until they change, and that hurts them and it hurts us.

So the letter isn’t perfect. But here’s what is. They send a delegation from one side of this debate to the other. They say:

let’s get to know one another.

And they offer one another blessings of peace.

Members of these embattled religious opponents say let’s try being friends. Blue state, red state opponents say – let’s take a pause on trying to convince and control each other because that’s not working. Let’s try to understand one another.

I just read a book by Monica Guzman, a liberal journalist from a blue city in a blue state, who wrote I Never Thought of it that Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.

She’s got some hard words we need to hear if we’ve got a shot as a nation, or even a species. She’s not a both-sideser. She’s not saying to agree with all the trash out there in our politics or our culture wars. But she’s like we have go to put more effort, more love, into trying to know and understand one another, before we just try to judge and control one another. We’ve got to wish each other blessing and peace, not talk like we wish each other dead.

Friends, I wonder where this lands for you.

Perhaps you have some people whose bodies you’ve been trying to control.

• Family members, employees, strangers, political or religious enemies?
• What would it mean to let them go?
• To entrust them to the Spirit and care of God?
• To entrust them to themselves?
• To acknowledge that they too have a right to be alive and share this earth with you, maybe even share a portion in the body of Christ?

You don’t need to like them or be friends. But you don’t get to control them or change them unilaterally.

What would it mean to let them be? To let them go?

What would it mean to resist their ideas or their laws or their politics where you need to, but to welcome their humanity?

To welcome that they too are part of the body?

That they too are under God’s care, and within reach of God’s Spirit? Not easy these days. Hey, faith, hope, and love have never been easy.

But they’re good, and they’re true, and they’re all we’ve got.

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We live in unprecedented times…at least it feels like that…

• Wars
• Famines
• Storms
• Division
• Depression
• Hatred
• Suffering
• Injustice
• Loneliness
• Anxiety

A decaying environment . . . on many fronts.

And the truth is — if history has anything to say about this — is that all of those things are not unprecedented. Empires have been built, wars have been waged, people have exercised power that has tortured and destroyed before.

Perhaps it feels unprecedented because we do have more than ever. The technological advancements and access to knowledge and resources that would suggest we’d be well served by not “rinsing and repeating” the worst of history. Suggesting we should be healthier, more relationally connected, wiser…

And yet we live in an amplified reality, with voices and opinions and overwhelming amounts of information in surround sound. And the depth of hatred, the breadth of despair is so visceral — compounded by the unhinged and scary clip by which we continue to tear apart our human fabric –this all does indeed feel unprecedented.

And in the wake of such speed and unrelenting bombardment of everything it is certainly easy to feel like “giving up,” or avoidance, or hiding behind the guise of “civility”, or escaping into whatever it is that’s easy for us to escape into … are the best ways to live. And it might very well be the ways by which we survive — but not how we flourish. Because what we start to lose — is not only our soul — but our sights of one another.

We gather here this morning because we seek to embody a faith. A living, life-giving, honest, courageous faith — a faith that courses through our blood carrying with it the voices of our ancestors who remind us that within our cruel history is also the remarkable and magnificent precedence of kindness, solidarity and love. Unending influence that is also seeded in our landscape today that keeps our strength from atrophying. And we gather here today in part — because we know that we need each other. We need each other to cultivate hope, to empower one another — to remember that we are designed for love — to give and receive of it — with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength.

And boy, do we need that reminder more than ever!

Today I want to talk about how Jesus calls us to not give up — to “walk the extra mile” and to bend toward community as we do.

Prayer

God sometimes our souls can feel scraped raw from the injustices that are moving throughout our country. Our souls can feel tired, fed up. Could you help us this morning? Could you help us to center down? Could you refresh our hearts, reinvigorate our minds and bodies — and strengthen our souls for the work of our days. And for the work you call us to — which is love.

STORY — Getting Towed

A couple of months ago at the end of my highschoolers April school vacation — I decided to take them on a quick trip to Philly. My other daughter is in college near there, and while she was not on break, we thought we could basically follow her around campus until she had a moment to have coffee with us or something.

Because roaming a college campus was our only agenda for the couple of days we were there — I made reservations for dinner in Philly for the last night so that we could have a designated intentional time together. And it was the best plan. We found a parking spot right next to the restaurant, it was lightly raining but we sat outside in this warm, cozy enclosure. We took our time, didn’t rush — and it was just a good time where I was conscious of the “specialness”, the “extraordinariness” of the moment.

We left brimming with all the things — satiated with food and laughter and I felt so grateful.

And then we rounded the corner to where I had parked and the car wasn’t there.

My heart sank — knowing this was not a great scenario.
I entertained the argument ensuing between two of the kids — one suggesting that perhaps we were just looking on the wrong street — – and the other insisting we had indeed obviously been towed.

Indeed our car had been towed.

Turns out Friday night at 8 p.m. is a great time to visit a tow lot in South Philly and learn a little bit about what Jesus might invite us into when he says that we should “walk the extra mile.” And I’ll circle back to this story in just a minute — but let’s take a quick look at where this phrase originated and the context.

SCRIPTURE

This phrase originates in the teaching of Jesus found in the Gospel of Matthew:

Matthew 5:41

“If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”

It’s situated in Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount — where Jesus presents a radical and counter-cultural vision of what it means to live as a follower of God. It challenges societal norms, religious practices, and personal attitudes , calling for a transformation of heart, mind, and action that reflects the values of God’s kin-dom rather than a super power empire.

Where this verse lands is where Jesus is flipping the Old Testament principles of reciprocal justice measure for measure —

“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

Under Roman military law – Roman soldiers in the streets – could ask a civilian to carry their equipment — their “pack.” And as a civilian you were required to submit to this request.

Often donkeys would carry packs – so this request is dehumanizing – it’s humiliating to Jewish civilians.

But under military law – a soldier could only ask a civilian to carry the pack “one mile”… to force the civilian to go further carried with it severe penalties for the soldier.

So for Jesus to say,

“when you hit the one mile mark – KEEP GOING”

is not a move to aid and abet the enemy… It is a strategic, wise move.

Can you imagine as the civilian starts to walk the extra mile – the soldier having to say

“aw, please – can I have my pack back?”

It’s a subversive move for the oppressed to turn the tables on the oppressor – and assert their human dignity into a situation and recover the initiative.

The rules in this time were Caesar’s (and they did not change immediately) – but HOW ONE RESPONDS TO THE RULES could be in real time and sustained those who had no choice, or freedom.

For us, this “go the extra mile”, is an invitation of how to live NOW. To live as we think human beings should live — in defiance of all that is bad around us.

Speaking of bad —

Back to being towed in Philly.

As I stood there on the sidewalk in the rain not really knowing what to do, I called the phone number on the street sign for the Philly Parking Authority. In the midst of listening to the long, long automated message there was an option that said, “if you’d appreciate a call back from a person enter your phone #.”

I frantically did that — while simultaneously learning that the Philly Parking Authority would open on the next business day at 9 a.m. Which it was currently Friday at 8 p.m… meaning I had a chance of getting the car on Monday. I was scheduled to preach that Sunday — and every other preaching pastor was on vacation. So I felt ….… relaxed.

In that moment — my phone rang… and it was a woman from the Philadelphia Parking Authority who proceeded to give me the address of the tow lot, confirm that my car was there and told me how much $$ it would be to get my car out.

A 15 minute Uber ride later….

The four of us arrived at the tow lot. A super special place.

I can’t quite articulate how much dread flooded my body as I walked up the steps to this long narrow trailer — entering to find 50+ people squished in. Someone quickly filled me in on what the protocol was — you get in the first line (indistinguishable from any other line) — to pay your fine. And then you get in the next line to show your license, insurance and registration. Of course for 90% of the people the insurance and registration is IN their vehicle. Which means you need to go back outside and stand in line to access your vehicle beyond the barbed wire gate — and then come back to the trailer line and stand in line again to actually show your documentation.

Some people had been there for six hours, seven hours, eight hours.

It was hot. People are breathing on you.

I mean this is a perfect setup for people to lose their absolute minds…

But people weren’t!

People were talking to each other, not looking down or at their phones — they were offering a seat to the mom who has been holding the wriggly two-year old — not worried about their spot in line. People were offering to translate for a couple of people who did not have any documentation and for whom English was not their first language — offering suggestions or ideas to help in some regard. My son was playing with little kids on the floor, and the staff was also helpful and willing and leaning ‘in’, listening …

People were simply kind. Gentle even. Patient.

Not just civil to one another.

But actively kind.

Which felt like … ‘care.’ Care of one another at a baseline.

Solidarity.

I’ve watched my husband Scott recently care for his mom who’s been sick — with this same attention — kind and gentle. Helping her eat, adjusting her oxygen tubes, raising a straw to her mouth,

“do you need anything mom?”

“are you doing ok?”

Palliative care. Palliative questions.

Palliative simply means — kindness and gentleness.

It is to offer comfort, dignity, and support — TO INCREASE the QUALITY of LIFE even as they face something bad, even as they die.

Friend of Reservoir, Gareth Higgins says that

“few of us feel like we’re dying — but all of us are…”

This is just a plain fact.

But it also speaks to the state of our souls — and the soul of our nation….slowly dying. (Or rapidly!)

It’s got me longing for what a palliative nation could be — that tow truck trailer one micro example, an extraordinary example — and Scott’s care for his mom a very specific special example… but couldn’t it illuminate the ordinary.

And for sure — a more

“palliative world demands huge systemic and structural change. But in others, it only demands the tiniest of personal shifts.” (Courtney Martin)

And it might be what it means to “go the extra mile” for us today.

Throughout Jesus’ life he embodies a palliative way of being.

His attention to those left to die on the outskirts of the dominant culture. His invitations to gather at a table, to share a meal, to kneel, to turn, to see the face of, to physically heal — but to also bend people back to community — to restore people by way of social and spiritual reintegration. We see this with his interactions with people afflicted with leprosy, the woman with the issue of blood, the man possessed by demons living in the tombs, Zacchaeus the tax collector , the paralytic, the disciples themselves — a bunch of outcasts and oddballs who again and again gathered at a table in community sharing purpose and meals.

Bending people back to community. Not just for the individual’s wellness — but for the community’s flourishing — and it’s more than just niceness or ‘welcome.’ Cole Arthur Riley, says that she has a friend who calls this mutuality, the truth that says

“we don’t just welcome you or accept you; we need you. We are insufficient without you.”

One part’s absence renders the whole impoverished in some way, even if the whole didn’t previously apprehend it. In mutuality, belonging is both a gift received and a gift given. There is comfort in being welcomed, but there is dignity in knowing that your arrival just shifted a community toward deeper wholeness… toward a better quality of life. This is the work of going the extra mile.

Luke 7:11-17 New International Version

In the gospel of Luke we see Jesus raise a son back to life and return to his widowed mother. In scripture it reads,

“As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her.

13 When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”

14 Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!”

15 The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

16 They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help his people.”

17 This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.

I didn’t remember this story when I was reading through Luke this week.

I remembered the story right before this — the one of the centurion and the centurion’s servant being healed, and I remembered the one of Jairus’ daughter and Lazarus — all raised from the dead.

Here we have “a widow and her son” — unnamed.

Jesus — making his way through a small town – to John the Baptist.

We don’t know the story of these two.

There’s no obvious status. No power. No specific friendship or relationship with Jesus — just strangers along the way.

But we do know the underlying fundamental story of life and death. Of grief and sorrow. Of suffering. Of life being ruptured by pain.

The story of being human.

Story Part #3

In the tow trailer — when someone would receive the approval to go get their car… we would all rejoice. And to me , the celebration wasn’t only “Wahoo — you are out of here– cheers!” it was “wahoo look at us — we behaved magnificently” … We were human to each other — even to the guy with the incredibly offensive t-shirt.

We defied the tug of all that is bad around us. .. and we defied the tug to behave badly. Because if ever there was a place to behave badly — I don’t know a tow lot trailer might be the place.

And isn’t that a victory?

I mean isn’t that a daily victory. It’s the extra mile we are invited to walk each and every day.

The tug of cynicism and pessimism and judgment and giving up — is strong.

Simple gentleness and kindness is defiance. Nnot just a way to bypass the injustices of the day — but a way to face them and create a new way — and that feels like a miracle when it’s experienced.

The “extra mile” that Jesus walked here isn’t in performing the miracle — it isn’t the raising of the dead… although I’d totally get that if you thought that.. You’d have a point.

The “extra mile” is his posture of the heart… right? The part where it says

“his heart went out to her.”

The noticing, the attention, the validation of what it means to be a widow in that context, and then the action ….

“his heart went out to her.”

This is the news that spread of Jesus. His embodiment of care and love.

It’s here that the crowd can say,

“God has come to help his people.”

He’s come to help. And

“Oh, don’t we need help!”

The help we need as Jesus shows us here — is to remember that the “meaning of life is about trying to learn how to love and be loved” — and to stand in the face of all that tries to decimate that truth.

I know in that tow lot trailer that some folks could have been experiencing the hardest days of their lives (and not the being towed part) — and part of going the “extra mile” is to tune our hearts toward that possibility, to not shut them down —

So that we can act like

“we know that everyone we meet is undergoing life as well as experiencing it. That it is likely on any given day that we will encounter people who don’t think they’ll make it to the end of that day, or who have reason to not want to wake up tomorrow.” (Gareth Higgins)

To go the ‘extra mile’ is to honor humanity and elevate dignity — even when you don’t know the entire story.

Today we stand in a national — a global landscape where it looks like it would take miracle upon miracle upon miracle upon miracle to restore the past. To bring all that is desecrated, decayed, dead to life.

And that is right it would take a miracle.

And I don’t even know if that is the miracle we want or need.

Maybe we need to look forward — dream forward. If we hope to shape the world — for future generations — perhaps we might think of what we seed into this world. How we forge a way forward with growing abundant communities, living in a way that engages our full humanity. With simple kindness and honesty and courage and solidarity seeded into each long mile that we walk…. Seeds that fruit and when crushed — ferment – – and seed again.

Dave Murray says that

“most of us want to be a force –and I’m all for that! — we need vigor and action — but Jesus also calls us to be a taste.”

A taste of the kin-dom we want to create and grow here and now on Earth.

So can we go the extra mile?

Could we offer simple, kind, palliative care to ourselves — and to others?

Believing that prioritizing love over anything else is not only a human way forward — but it is also a sacred and divine way forward where Jesus comes alongside — calling us back to life — calling us to “get up.” Calling us to something better than we usually settle for — something we can only create together.

TAKEAWAYS

Here are a couple of practical tips from Gareth Higgins — founder of the Wild Goose festival. He’s a beautiful, brilliant writer, — subscribe to his Substack if you want, The Porch. He recently offered some helpful thoughts that might get us going that extra mile together:

• Tell the people you know that you love them, and that they matter.
  • Bend them back to the voices of the community of saints, that usher out the truth saying “you are a beloved child of God, and no one can take that from you, no matter what.”
• Reflect on your impact on others (unconscious and conscious)
  • Where it has hurt them — ask for forgiveness
  • Where it has been life-giving, do more of the same.
• Ask for what you need before the need overcomes your ability to ask.
• Don’t hoard anything but friendship, so that you can share it without becoming lonely.
• Tend carefully what you “own”, and share it widely. “Own” perhaps literally — but also resources, time, capacity, access to power — share it.
• Don’t let resentment overwhelm your boundaries, and forgive quickly, or at least don’t take revenge.
• In encountering strangers, act palliatively. For we are all, always, in rooms with dying people. We should treat them – and ourselves – with appropriate honor.

SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

As we end this morning, I want to give you a minute to consider this phrase, “going the extra mile” . . . what does it stir in you?

• Maybe it’s a posture of heart?
• Maybe it’s something tangible?
• Maybe it’s a person that comes to mind?

Maybe it’s the nation. All of the above — and more? Take a moment and consider what “going the extra mile” surfaces for you?

The post Going The Extra Mile first appeared on Reservoir Church.

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A few weeks ago our executive pastor Trecia and I had a meeting with someone who was helping us with some church business. It was a pretty good meeting, but the most interesting part happened at the end. I asked him:

if you were us, do you think what you’ve been sharing with us is good news or bad news?

And he said

I think it’s good news,

and he told me why. And he said,

and you know in life, the way things go can be really unpredictable, but God always helps.

And he said:

can I tell you a funny story?

And I said:

please, do.

And he said:

right before our meeting, I was in my car texting someone.

See, yesterday, someone tried to scam my business and take a lot of money from us. And I don’t know his name or where he lives, but I had a cell phone number he had texted from, so I decided to text him back. So I texted him, and I wrote: God’s going to judge you for what you’re doing. So you should change your ways and ask God for mercy now, while you still can.

And as I was listening, I thought a lot of things at once. I thought: I don’t know if I’ve ever known someone who texts back to strangers trying to steal his money. And I also wonder what it’s like to write a text like that: God’s going to judge you. Or what it’s like to get a text like that either.

But the thing was – the guy wrote back. He wrote something like: I actually feel horrible about what I’m doing. How do I turn my life around? Or something like that. And so my business acquaintance tells me that they’ve been texting back and forth a bit, and he’s shared a story about Jesus, and how merciful he is to people who ask for God’s help in making things new in their life.

And honestly, my first thought was like: wow, this guy’s intense.

But my second thought was like: I like this guy’s vibe.

I have no idea if what he’s doing is smart. Like texting back and forth with someone who’d tried to scam him instead of just blocking his number. No idea. And I’m not giving you advice to do stuff like this either.

But I was like: I like that when confronted with a human being behaving badly, this guy did what he needed to protect himself.

• But he also didn’t get overtaken by worry or anger, he sort of wondered: what does love look like?
• Like what’s my part to squeeze the best out of this situation?

To see if a junky situation can turn God’s way, can turn into a great story, can turn for the good. And he’s giving it a shot.

I think that’s cool, this weird thing this guy is doing and the question I find underneath it, which I think is like the very best question we can keep asking in our lives, and especially in bad times, or just weird times. What does love look like?**

I’m giving sermons here and there this summer from the fifth book of the Bible’s New Testaments, the memoirs of the early church called the Acts of the Apostles. And here’s one of these weird times, bad times, where someone wonders what does love look like? And a cool story ensues.

Acts 8:1-5, 26-40 (Common English Bible)

At that time, the church in Jerusalem began to be subjected to vicious harassment. Everyone except the apostles was scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria.

2 Some pious men buried Stephen and deeply grieved over him.

3 Saul began to wreak havoc against the church. Entering one house after another, he would drag off both men and women and throw them into prison.

4 Those who had been scattered moved on, preaching the good news along the way.

5 Philip went down to a city in Samaria and began to preach Christ to them.

The phrases that stick out to me here are “vicious harassment” and “good news.” Vicious harassment and good news.

Acts just told the first story of a martyr, someone killed for his faith. It’s my namesake, Stephen. A big meanie of a control freak named Saul and his associates are beating people up, throwing them into prison, and in one case at least, killing them. Vicious harassment.

No one I know and love has been killed for doing good, but I’ve seen vicious harassment first hand. I’ve had people turn on me and harass me when I thought I was doing the right thing, but it made them uncomfortable.

I’ve been a school teacher and school principal too, so I’ve seen kids get bullied many times. I’ve seen some sad person who’s just losing at life try to feel powerful again by saying mean things about someone else, trying to make them feel horrible, so they won’t feel so bad themselves.

It’s horrible, when we’re harassed. It’s not too great really when bad things of any kind happen to us.

And we ask a lot of questions when bad things happen.

• We might ask questions like: why me? Why did this have to happen?
• And questions like: why is this so hard? And: when will it get better?
• And sometimes we might ask questions like: “How will I protect myself?”

My friend who had the scammer going after his company’s business was asking that question. Or we might ask a similar question: “Who’s looking out for me?”

I think pretty much everyone who gets bullied asks that question.

• Who’s going to stick up for me?
• Or stick up with me?
• Who’s looking out for me?

And I want to say:

those are all good questions. They’re all questions we need to ask.

And the main character in Acts probably asked those questions too. The main character we are going to meet is named Philip. Philip was good friends with Stephen, the man who was killed. They worked together. And Philip was alive, but he was also one of those people being harassed in Jerusalem. People from his own town, his own faith, his own community, hated what he stood for, and they were trying to make his life miserable.

And I’m sure he might have asked questions like:

• why me?
• And why is this so hard?
• And can I do anything to protect myself?
• And who’s going to stick up for me?

But as Acts tells the story of Philip, he seems to think maybe God is asking a different set of questions. Maybe God is asking:

what good can we squeeze out of these hard times? What can we do now?

And another question that’s related to that one is that maybe God is asking:

what does love look like here?

See, this is one of the big lessons of the book of Acts. That people are going to do their thing, they’re going to do good things and bad things and wise things and plain stupid foolish things. But no matter what we do, the Spirit of God will not stop.

God doesn’t wait.

Bad is bad. After all, they talk about people dying and about prison here. Prison in Acts, by the way, is always bad. Prison in Acts is a technology of control and violence. A sermon for another day.

But God doesn’t wait. God won’t stop working bad for good.

And Phillip has learned this, so he starts asking those same questions God asks:

What am I here for now? And: what does love look like?

And a really great story ensues. Let’s read a little more from Acts.

I think I’m going to read the story in little bits and pieces and keep talking about it, OK? Here we go.

26 An angel from the Lord spoke to Philip, “At noon, take the road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert road.)

27 So he did.

What does love look like?

Love has geography.

Someone tells Philip he should go to Gaza. Take the desert road from Jerusalem to Gaza.

And Philip thinks this someone is a messenger from God. Because that’s what the word angel means – a messenger.

Why that particular road? Why go out into the desert? Most of us don’t choose desert roads.

Philip probably has no idea why. But he trusts his gut, he feels that this is God’s idea, so he goes. Because love narrows our options.

There’s no such thing as loving in general. We only love particular people, particular places, particular things. You can’t say: I love dogs, but then when a particular dog comes along, you kick it or tease it or whatever. No matter what you think about dogs in your head, if you treat a particular dog that way, you don’t love that dog.

Love takes commitment. Love has geography. Commit to no one and nothing and nowhere, and you won’t love.

So Philip says,

I’ll go to that desert road, and see what love looks like there.

Maybe the Spirit of God wanted love to flow from Jerusalem to Gaza. Right now hate and soldiers and missiles and violence are flowing from Jerusalem to Gaza, and maybe God hates that, because there is nothing creative or redemptive or loving about that. And so maybe we need to ask what love looks like on this road today?

For Jesus, we do know that he said his good news was meant to travel way beyond Jerusalem. At the start of Acts, he said to his friends:

bring my good news to Judea and Samaria and to all the ends of the earth.

But it wasn’t until this chapter in Acts, and Philip going to Samaria first and then on to Gaza that this started happening. And Philip only went to those places because he and his friends were getting beat up and put in prison and killed in Jerusalem.

And again, that was a bad thing. But the Spirit of God doesn’t wait. God wonders.

What good can we squeeze out of bad? What does love look like now?

And so Philip heads to the desert road.

Let’s see what happens there.

Meanwhile, an Ethiopian man was on his way home from Jerusalem, where he had come to worship. He was a eunuch and an official responsible for the entire treasury of Candace. (Candace is the title given to the Ethiopian queen.)

28 He was reading the prophet Isaiah while sitting in his carriage.

29 The Spirit told Philip, “Approach this carriage and stay with it.”

What does love look like?

Love pays attention. And love shows up.

When Philip had this sense that he needed to go talk to the man getting a ride in a carriage, there were a hundred reasons to not do that.

This man was a stranger, and lots of the time, we’re taught not to talk to strangers, and a lot of the time, that’s right.

Philip could probably tell that this man was very rich and very important. He wouldn’t want to bother him. And he might be afraid that if he tried to talk to this man, he’d just get ignored or rejected. The carriage probably wouldn’t even stop if he ran over there, and he’d look silly.

This man looked different from Philip too. They were from different countries. Maybe they wouldn’t understand each other. Maybe it would be awkward.

But the Spirit of God thought it would be a great idea for these two people to talk. A great story was going to happen here, if Philip would just pay attention and show up. And it’s good for us, and good for the world that he did.

Love pays attention. And love shows up.

Let’s keep going.

30 Running up to the carriage, Philip heard the man reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you really understand what you are reading?”

31 The man replied, “Without someone to guide me, how could I?” Then he invited Philip to climb up and sit with him.

What does love look like?

Love shows up. And love asks questions.

Do you understand what you are reading?

Philip sees a very important man from very far away, and he just happens to be reading one of Jesus’ favorite parts of the Bible. So he asks:

do you understand what you are reading?

A lot of people wouldn’t ask that question. It could sound nosy. It could even sound rude if it came off the wrong way. And maybe it’s not a perfect question, but Philip followed Jesus, who had to be the most curious and attentive person who ever lived. He was always asking people questions. Because questions help people think, and questions show people they are important. And questions invite people to talk. So Philip asks a question.

I grew up in a family that didn’t ask so many questions. But I guess like Philip, I learned from Jesus and from people who were good friends to me, that love asks questions. And that once you get in the habit, it’s not hard to ask questions like:

• what are you reading?
• Or what was that like for you?
• Or would you like to tell me what happened?

The other day I was having lunch with someone I care about very much, and he had just told me something he was embarrassed about and how he had said sorry for what he had done. And the old me would have thought: oh, he’s embarrassed, I’ll just change the subject, just say: that’s OK, and move on. But instead, I asked:

do you mind telling me more about what happened?

And then he did, a lot more. And I could tell that it helped him to tell the story to someone. And it gave me the chance to tell him I understood and that I knew God understood and that God loved him very much still and wasn’t angry with him and that God would want to help him not end up in a situation like that again and talk about what he was doing to get some help. And I thought: oh, I’m glad I asked that question.

The Ethiopian man was glad to be asked this question as well about what he was reading. This is what happened next.

32 This was the passage of scripture he was reading:

Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent so he didn’t open his mouth.

33 In his humiliation justice was taken away from him. Who can tell the story of his descendants because his life was taken from the earth?

34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, about whom does the prophet say this? Is he talking about himself or someone else?”

35 Starting with that passage, Philip proclaimed the good news about Jesus to him.

What does love look like?

Love listens.

This might be the most important part of the sermon. Love listens.

Philip listens carefully as the eunuch, this very important man, reads the Bible and asks his questions about it. He listens so well that he notices that this man is like the person in the story. He’s very important but other people made choices about his life that mean he can never get married and he can never have children, and there was nothing he can say or do about that.

And Philip listened so well that he realized both the person in the Bible story and the person he’s talking to are like Jesus in this way, and that Philip can tell this man more about Jesus and more about how much God sees and understands and loves him.

All because love listens. Because God’s been listening to all of us forever. And Phillip listens now.

I didn’t come into the world as a very good listener. I have this difference in my brain called ADHD that I only learned about as a grown up. And this means different things to different people who have it. But one of the things it means to me is that I can be super focused sometimes, but I can also be impulsive. I can do things really fast without thinking. And one of those things I can do when I am super focused and impulsive is I can interrupt people when they are talking with the thing I want to say.

And when I do that, I can be kind of embarrassed because I know that interrupting is not good listening. So I have learned to stop and just say sorry quickly when I do that and try not to feel over-bad about myself. But I’ve also learned a few things about being a good listener.

Like it helps to just close your mouth and let the other person take their time after asking a question.

And it helps to pay attention and use your imagination and your feelings when the other person is talking, so that you’ll have compassion for them, and you’ll want to ask them to tell you more, and want to say things like:

that sounds really interesting, or that sounds really hard.

And I’ve learned, as I’ve said, that this is mostly what God is doing. Because God pays really close attention to all of us, and God listens really well. God cares about everything because God is everywhere, and God is love.

Sometimes when I’m in a hard time, just remembering that God is listening to me and God really cares about everything I care about turns around the hard time for me and makes it OK. And sometimes I remember that God is curious, not judgemental and that God is creative, not stuck. And God is hopeful, and God probably has good ideas about what to do next. And that all helps a lot too. It helps me get curious about the best ideas for what’s next, no matter how hard things are.

Listening is really important, so love listens.

Let’s finish our story.

36 As they went down the road, they came to some water.

The eunuch said, “Look! Water! What would keep me from being baptized?”

38 He ordered that the carriage halt. Both Philip and the eunuch went down to the water, where Philip baptized him.

39 When they came up out of the water, the Lord’s Spirit suddenly took Philip away. The eunuch never saw him again but went on his way rejoicing.

40 Philip found himself in Azotus. He traveled through that area, preaching the good news in all the cities until he reached Caesarea.

What does love look like?

Love gives what it has.

Once in a while, love needs to give really big, like hero big, sacrifice big, epically big.

But usually not. Usually when we show up and pay attention and ask questions and listen, usually then we can just be ready to be a little bit useful, even if sometimes being useful can be a little unusual.

The Ethiopian official has been thinking about God for so many years, and learning about Jesus puts everything together, so he is ready to be baptized, to do the thing you do to say: I’m my parents’ child but I’m also God’s adopted kid, and I want to follow Jesus in this life. This man is ready. He even sees the water, all he needs is for Philip to help him out.

Love goes for it in being useful.

And then sometimes, life moves on, and you need to move on to. Because life is full of change. We can’t go to the same school forever. We can’t have the same job forever. Sometimes we can’t even have the same friends forever. People change, life is always changing.

My kids are all growing up so, so fast, and they’re ready to start moving away from home and setting up their own lives that I’ll be part of, sometimes a big part of, but not in the same way. And right now I’m getting used to that. My wife Grace and I, we’re getting used to these changes, and sometimes we’re really happy about them, and sometimes really worried, and sometimes really sad, but it’s still happening. And we’re learning like Philip that you don’t stay in the carriage forever. So love lets go too. And love moves forward for hope.

Because in the end love lets go sometimes. Love doesn’t control. Just like God doesn’t control. But love always hopes, love always trusts, and love, my friends, never fails. God is love, and we can keep becoming love too.

Can we pray?

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Matthew 18:1-5

Greatest In the Kingdom

18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

2 Then he called a little child over to sit among the disciples,

3 and said, “I assure you that if you don’t turn your lives around and become like this little child, you will definitely not enter the kingdom of heaven.

4 Those who humble themselves like this little child will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

5 Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

Would you pray with me?

Holy and Loving God, You’re the best. Thank You for everything you do for us. Creating us, taking care of us, loving us. Thank You that when we feel alone or something is hard, You remind us that we are your beloved and that we can do anything with Your love. Help us to be better people. Even as we gather together like this as a church community, help us to love one another better and to learn from one another. Thank You for this Reservoir Church community. Give us the ears to hear now, Your message of love, in and through it all we pray. Amen.

Everything we say about God is only a representation of who/what God is. Our words, our thoughts, our images, even our greatest theological thesis statements are only a representation of God, who is, even more vast and more unimaginable than what we say about God. And also when we say anything about God, we are trying to get at something right? We are trying to describe an aspect of God that is true, or at least true to one, and even more important than true, an aspect of God that is beautiful, compelling, alluring and attractive. One that draws us near to behold or be held in awe. If it doesn’t do that, then what’s even the point?

I love this book, When God was a Little Girl, because it’s a little girl’s search for what God is like, in her language, in her tactiles, in her world, what’s God like? Her imagination is filled with singing, giggling, tickling, and crayons, glue, glitter. I’d love for us, especially the grown ups right now, to enter into the imagination of this imagery. Because in our Scripture text today, Jesus tells the disciples that

That is actually what we are called to be like. We are called to be like a little child.

Did you guys know that, kiddos? Us grownups are supposed to be more like you kiddos, Jesus said! Why do you think he said that?

Okay, let’s get the situation right first. Anytime we read some verses from the Bible, we’re entering in mid-conversation. What was the context in which Jesus was saying this? Well Matthew starts this section with,

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

I love cross referencing these stories with the other Gospels, Luke and Mark. It’s always good to get everyone’s perspective (everyone available) on how the conversation actually went.

Well Luke says in Luke 9 verse 46

“And an argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest.”

Oh! There was an argument going on. Grown adults sitting around arguing,

“I’m the best”, “No I’m the best!” “No you’re not!” “Let’s ask Jesus!”

And in Mark, I love Mark. He just tells the story as is. Most scholars even suspect that Mark’s account was the earliest one written down and Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source to write their own account. Mark 9:33-37 says,

“And they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?”

But they were silent; for on the way they had discussed with one another who was the greatest.

And he sat down and called the 12; and he said to them,

“If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.”

he took a child and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them,

“whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but One who sent me”.

I find this funny. Jesus was like,

so what were y’all talking about earlier?

And they’re like….

“Um… nothing.”

They were probably walking together toward Capernaum, and Jesus already heard. They didn’t even have to answer him. Jesus is like,

“Sigh, here, come, gather around, all 12 of you. Sit!”

Sometimes we need reminders of what is the most important thing. We often forget.

This text of course reminded me of my own kids that are three and five years old right now. And I sure do learn a lot from them. And also I’m not going to stand up here, as a feminist, and say

oh having kids is one of the best ways you can learn about God.

Some parents have kids and never learn this (although they are faced with it every day) and plenty of grown ups who don’t have kids of their own are awesome aunties and uncles to friends and neighboring kids and really see them as the kids they are.

I’ll say for myself, sometimes it’s hard being a parent, always at every moment being faced with the brilliance of kids’ nature that is to be so present.

Like me, I have ideas. Ideals and agendas and things I want to get done. I often live in the future and in planning. I need to get out of the house by 9:15, to pick up the cake from the store (one that’s impressive, but cheap, and kind of healthy? Is that even possible?), and then get the kids to the bathroom break so they don’t pee in their pants, which I didn’t pack extra pants, so that would ruin the whole party and so even if they don’t want to pee, they better pee because I don’t have the energy to go upstairs and pack another pair of pants and underwear, oh dear, I have to do laundry, they are out of underwear.

Welcome to Mom Brain.

And while all this to do, and self doubt, and self preservation, and optimization is going on in my mind, my kids, they are saying,

“Umma look! Look at me umma! I can hop on one foot!”

They are in their bodies, right now. They are having fun. They are proud. They want to be seen and loved and that is the most important thing.

And right then I have two choices in how I can respond.

Not look and say,

“okay, let’s go, put on your shoes I said!”

Or

Look and make eye contact, laugh at their awesome hop, do a little one foot hop yourself and say,

“Look me too! Let’s see if we can put on our shoes one foot at a time!”

They actually give parenting tips like this.

When you’re trying to get out the door. Don’t tell them what to do. Connect with them where they are and do it with them.

And invitation to connect. Kids are always giving you an invitation to connect with them in a real present way.

To see God like a little child, through a little child’s eyes, and to have faith and become like a little child. What does that mean for you? How can we grown ups, who were little kids at one point but haven’t been one in a long time, how can we re-remember and embrace the faith and likeness of a little child?

I want to end with this practice because there are many things that we can learn from kids. And us grown ups are sometimes so busy doing that we don’t stop to ponder and wonder and play. And so I want us to take some time right now to do a spiritual practice together of imagining, not just any child, but our own childhood and each of our own inner child.

Because how many of you have been a child before or are a child now? Raise your hand. I thought so. Everyone. We all know deep in our bones what was our most favorite thing about being a child. We might’ve forgotten or haven’t thought about it in a while but let’s give ourselves some time and space to meditate on our childhood beings for a moment and see if God will show us what the childlike way is.

So I’m going to ask you to close your eyes if you’d like, or if not look up or down, find something to focus on, with a soft gaze. If you don’t want to do this, don’t, you can zone me out, have a few moments of silence, or whatever you feel comfortable with. Take a few deep breaths with me now, to be in our bodies. To relax a bit. Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out.

Silence

Think of yourself when you were a child.

Maybe an index of some memories are going through. Just pick one, maybe one that feels light and safe to enter right now, and zoom it out and enter it.

If a memory doesn’t come, just imagine yourself as a child somewhere, maybe in a park, maybe on a bench, near a lake or water.

See your kid self.

• What do you notice?
• What’s the environment that the kid you are in? What color is it? What does the air feel like?
• What is the kid you doing?
• What is the kid you feeling?
• What is the child you thinking about?
• What is the kid you delighting in?
• What gifts is the kid you surrounded with?
• What is the gift or the invitation the kid is offering to you now?

Now imagine blessing this kid with all the love and gratitude you have.

Thank the kid for just who they are.

Thank yourself for holding this kid in your mind in this moment and bless yourself for all that you noticed and felt in this moment.

Feel free to close by putting a hand on your heart to signify gratitude and love for the kid and you.

Amen.

The post When God Was a Little Girl first appeared on Reservoir Church.

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Reservoir’s Juneteenth service honored Black American freedom struggles and victories, and our past, present, and future victories and longings for freedom for bodies and spirits. Thanks to our small planning committee who volunteered to shape this time. Below are the in person and online sermons from our guest preacher, Rev. Darrell Hamilton, Executive Pastor at First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain.

In Person Service – The Invisible Man

In this fifth chapter of Mark, Jesus has entered the region of the Gerasenes outside of Judaea, and is approached by an unnamed man, the text reads,

who has been forced to live his life among the tombs.

I say forced because this man does not live among the tombs solely because he has a spiritual issue. But this man lives his life among the tombs because of a more sinister and prevalent set of issues rendering him invisible to the rest of the world.

In Ralph Ellison’s book, The Invisible Man, it is an unnamed, self-professed “invisible man” who is trapped living his life in a sewer beneath the streets of Harlem. This man says he has been made invisible not because of anything he can control about himself, but because when people approach him, they do not see him –

“only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination [do they see], indeed, everything and anything except me.”

Mark, like Ellison, is telling the story of an invisible man. An unnamed man. A man trapped in an abyss. An invisible man whom the world only sees his surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – presuming him to be the victim of his own spiritual deprivation rather than the byproduct of systemic failures.

During my second year of graduate school, I took my first international trip to Cairo, Egypt. I have many fond memories of that trip like seeing the pyramids. Sailing the Nile. Taking a day trip to Alexandria. Being woken up at 5 a.m. for morning prayers. But one of the most striking memories was seeing off the highway a cemetery where many of the homeless lived. I learned that this was not an uncommon reality in this part of the world for people to build homes for themselves in a cemetery. But for many on the trip, seeing people live in a cemetery was a jarring and shocking experience.

However, if I could talk back to my graduate school self, I would remind him that seeing people live among the tombs is not unfamiliar to me. That whether I am driving to work, walking into a store, riding on the T, there are people all around me living in proverbial cemeteries – forced to live their lives among the tombs.

The 3.1 million people in Massachusetts who are poor or low income. The 365,900 people in Massachusetts who are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage. The 300,000 children in Massachusetts who do not have health insurance. The 62% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck while costs for food, rent, and basic necessities are increasing, and three individuals have wealth equal to half the United States’ population. I would remind my graduate school self that people are living their lives among the tombs every day.

And on this Father’s Day/Juneteenth Sunday, I must name the countless number of black men and boys who are also living among the tombs because of various forms of “lethal violence” that include murder, police brutality, unemployment, as well as child sexual and physical abuse that is inflicted on our flesh.

Black men, a study reports after the murder of George Floyd, that states because of racism, and associated poverty and injustice, life expectancy at birth of black men is 71.9 years, far below white women (81.2), black women (78.5), and white men (76.4) . . . mainly because of black men’s higher risk of dying from several types of cancer, stroke, HIV, and homicide.

[That] Despite overall declining numbers of homicide in the U.S., homicide remains the number one cause of death for black males 10 to 24.

Per ACLU data on mass incarceration, one in three black boys are still expected to go to prison in their lifetime.

And from a young age, black men and boys are said to be like the man from Mark 5, suffering from behavioral and spiritual challenges that brand them for life “as living terrors” or “superpredators” who must be sedated, medicated, or incarcerated in order to be meaningful contributors to the classroom or to society.

This gives a whole new meaning when we say the names George Floyd, Philando Castile, Jonathan Edwards, father’s whose black children must now grow up without. Black boys like Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown who were denied the blessing of living long enough to become.

Yet, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or nation of origin, the truth is that the longer anyone is forced – systemically, spiritually, psychologically, you name it, to live among the tombs, the more it will begin to throw dirt not only on your body but also on your spirit.

Yet, Jesus makes a way for those living their lives among the tombs to be restored into the right community. Jesus makes a way for those living among the tombs by proclaiming freedom and liberation for both our bodies and our spirits.

And this is where we find ourselves this morning. With Jesus encountering an unnamed man living among the tombs. Jesus casts out the man’s unclean spirits, and after tells him to go home to his own people, and to tell them about all the good the Lord has done for him and the mercy that was shown to him.

There are three things we learn from Jesus that I want to invite us to consider as we worship together on this JuneteenthSunday about how Jesus brings this man freedom and I will get out the way.

First that Jesus sees the man

My daughter, who is two years old now, her favorite movie came out when she was only two months old. Since she was two months old this movie has stayed on repeat at home. She has the toys. She has the bed set. And she loves singing the songs.

The movie is called Encanto, and one of the songs from the movie she loves the most is the same song that topped all the music charts called “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” And church, this is powerful as well as catchy song because it names for us the need to face up to the Brunos we do not see because we refuse to talk about them.

The estranged cousin or sibling or auntie who never chooses to attend the family functions (Bruno). The gay niece or nephew who moves away so they can be free to be themselves by themselves (Bruno). The “problem child” – whose teachers say they cannot educate, whose doctors try to medicate, and who police then try to incarcerate (Bruno).

The parent who raised you but was emotionally unavailable to you (Bruno). The person who was virtually non-existent in your life, and despite your best efforts all you seem to know about them are the things you pieced together from the pieces of information you would hear said about them (Bruno).

I’m talking about Bruno because until we can talk about Bruno, we will continue to fail to see Bruno. And this is what Jesus teaches us in this text, because by seeing Bruno, by seeing the invisible man, he then can see that there are other factors about him that make him the way he is.

That there are, as the Apostle Paul says, some principalities and powers, forces of spiritual wickedness in both heavenly and earthly places, that make him the way he is. There are some policies and legislation that make him the way he is. There is some unaddressed grief that makes him the way he is.

He is not the way he is because he is bad. He is not the way he is because he does not care. But Bruno may have actually lived through some things, experienced some things, seen some things. And these things may have been imprinted on Bruno in such a way that the version of them we meet may not have been the version of them they’ve always been.

We have to talk about Bruno, because lest we talk about Bruno then we cannot see Bruno.

The second thing is Jesus hears the man.

There are two elements in this we need to unpack.

First, the text says that when the man saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him as an act of worship. Then he shouted at the top of his voice,

“What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!”

And Reservoir Church, I want us to chew on this question of what does it mean about a person’s experience that when they come and approach Jesus, they are fearful they will be tortured? What does it say about a Church that professes to follow Jesus – that when someone comes to worship, they leave feeling protective against being tormented? You have made a ministry out of answering that question.

But while you chew on that, I want us to also think why when Jesus asks this man his name he would say

“My name is Legion, for we are many.”

What I want to suggest is happening in this text is this man has already been tortured and tormented. The text says in verse four,

“4for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains.”

Often means repeatedly.

Thus, Jesus is encountering a man who has been shaped by a torturous cycle of repeated incarceration that has created the conditions for him to be possessed with a legion of unclean spirits.

1. That the more an individual is incarcerated,
2. The more time they spend in an environment meant to create unclean spirits. And the more they remain in an environment meant to create unclean spirits,
3. The more susceptible they become to being possessed by unclean spirits, and the more they become possessed by unclean spirits,
4. the more likely they end up being incarcerated repeatedly. And…

Therefore, this man was tortured by a carceral system, an education system, a patriarchal system, that was not meant to rehabilitate nor set people free. But was built to keep people shackled in a never-ending cycle that brutalizes, demonizes, and ultimately traumatizes.

But you might look at the text and ask,

“preacher, didn’t the man break his chains, tear his shackles into pieces, and was no longer able to be subdued?”

Yes! But even though the man had broken his chains, torn his shackles into pieces, and was no longer able to be subdued, the man was still wandering the wilderness and living among the tombs.

Meaning, even though his body was no longer chained/incarcerated his mind was still chained/incarcerated. And because his mind was still incarcerated, instead of going home and to his people, the Bible says,

“5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.”

Howling because he was trying to be heard. Cutting himself with stones because he was trying to be heard.

And there are folks in church today who, day and night, have been crying out to be heard. You have been crying out from your wilderness. You have been crying out from your pain. You may even know what it is like to turn pain in on yourselves because you have been crying out and made to be invisible.

But I want to encourage you this morning because Jesus hears your cries. Jesus sees where you are. You are not by yourself. You are not uncared about! And it is not your destiny to remain living your life among the tombs.

I know Jesus hears your cries because Jesus heard this man’s cry. And Jesus desires for you to be well, healed, and restored.

Therefore, after Jesus hears the man, Jesus restores the man.

Jesus restores the man by casting out the man’s unclean spirits. Jesus restores the man and puts some clean clothes on his body. Jesus restores the man and sets him in his right mind. Jesus restores the man not only by setting him free, but also by instructing him to go home to his people, and to tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.

In Greek, where it is translated “tell them” the word is apangeilon which means “report” or “share the message.” Therefore, Jesus instructs the man to go home to his own people and tell them (report, share the message to them) how much the Lord has done.

The root word of apangeilon is angellos which is where we get our English word angel (a messenger). So, after restoring the man, Jesus gets in the boat to leave and the man begs Jesus to come with him, but Jesus says,

“no you cannot come with me. Because I didn’t restore you so you could come be like one of my disciples. But I restored you so you could be my angel by sharing the good news so other people can be free.”

And this is the good news today, that Jesus calls the man who had at one time been possessed by unclean spirits to be an angel of the Lord and to go home and to his people to tell them about all that Jesus has done for him.

Tell them about my amazing grace. Tell them all about my goodness and mercy.

Tell them

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,

to set free those who are oppressed,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Go home and to your own people because you are no longer an invisible man. But you are an angel of the Lord! A child of God. Healed! Redeemed! And set free! 36 So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Say a prayer!

Online Service – God in the Ghetto

Antithesis: The gospel is told from the point of view of ghettoized people

As the earliest written gospel, Mark 1:9-15 is the first introduction to Jesus in our Bible. On its face, this may seem like a simple introduction. There is no annunciation of Jesus’ birth. There are no wise men coming from the east or shepherds working in the fields. There is no mention of Jesus as the word (logos) of God made flesh. Who is declared by John the baptizer as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But in a single sentence, Mark says,

“in those days, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”

Black liberation theologian, James Cone, as written that in those days Nazareth was an “agrarian ghetto.” In the book, “God in the Ghetto,” William Augustus Jones describes how the word ghetto was first applied in the sixteenth century to the section of town where the Jewish colony was located. And since the term ghetto connotes a place of

“racial, social, and economic oppression.”

Therefore, Mark saying

“in those days Jesus came from Nazareth”

connotes that Jesus comes from this type of place in Galilee. A place of low repute. A neighborhood of questionable value and worth. Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Coming from this place, he is baptized by John in the Jordan. And as he is coming up out of the water, Mark says, Jesus saw the heavens torn apart, the Spirit descending like a dove, and

“a voice came from heaven, You are my Son, the Beloved, and with you I am well pleased.”

In Greek, the phrase “well pleased” comes from a word meaning worthy. In a legal sense, it means that something has met all the standard procedures and has been given a judicial stamp of approval.

Therefore, before Jesus had ever healed any sickness; before Jesus had ever cleansed any unclean spirits; before Jesus had ever walked on water or fed 5,000 men (not including the women and children) with five loaves of bread and two fish. All Jesus has done was come out from Nazareth, baptized by John in the Jordan, and already had God’s stamp of approval on his life!

In his autobiography, Malcolm X told the story of when he was in the seventh grade his English teacher, a white man, asked Malcolm what he wanted to be when he grew up. Malcolm said that he wanted to be a lawyer. But his teacher told him that he had to be realistic about being a n-word and that the only future for black boys was to get a job in manual labor.

And Malcolm said that this “crushed him” on the inside because even though Malcolm had a good reputation among his teachers and peers, that a black boy, because he is black, could never be good enough, never be smart enough, never be worthy enough for a profession where he had to use his mind. He would never be expected to excel intellectually, and he would never be given the opportunity to do something in life that would unlock his full potential and possibilities.

And there continue to be Malcolms and Maxines who are crushed on the inside because they are told they can only aspire to be what the world said they could be. Malcolms and Maxines who are not provided with the right encouragement and resources. Malcolms and Maxines who may not have come from the greatest circumstances. Who may not have come from a literal ghetto, but nonetheless came from an environment of teachers, professors, parents, neighbors, pastors, and where they are crushed by the voices telling them they are not worthy.

But I want us to imagine with me the implications of a passage like this. The implications for all the people who have heard all their lives that they are not good enough because of where they come from. That they are not smart enough. Not worthy enough. Do not have God’s stamp of approval because the Bible says when Jesus came out of the water a voice came from heaven,

“YOU are my Son, beloved, in who I am well pleased!”

And Church, this is good news on this Sunday morning because it was not a voice coming from the world that validated Jesus. But the voice from heaven that validated Jesus. A voice from heaven saying it does not matter where you come from. It does not matter where you may be going. It does not matter if everything in your life is the way you would like it to be. But there is a voice from heaven saying you are enough!

The money in your bank account does not make you enough! The degrees on your wall do not make you enough! You, by yourself, are enough.

It does not matter what folks say about you, you are enough! It does not matter what mistakes you may have made in your life, you are enough.

Therefore, I believe there are two important details about Jesus that we must understand to fully grasp the man and his ministry.

First, that Jesus is the word (logos) of God made flesh. That Jesus came through 40 and two generations and that He would save His people. That Jesus is the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. That he died on a Roman cross, was buried in a borrowed tomb, and on the third day rose with all power in his hands.

Annnnnd this same Jesus was a man from the ghetto of Nazareth. Mary and Joseph’s baby. A man who was heaven sent and heaven approved.

Proposition: Jesus’ life proclaims the story of God by the way he lives his life and speaks a message of hope.

That his 30 years of being raised in the ghetto is what gave him the courage and conviction for His journey in the wilderness after his baptism. That gave him the knowledge and strength to overcome any and all temptation by the devil.

And after Jesus returned to Galilee, he was able to confidently preach the good news of God.

That God lives among those whom Howard Thurman called the disinherited, whose backs are pressed against the wall of oppression.

That God is revealed among those Franz Fanon called the Wretched of the Earth.

That God is whom womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas says are

“marked black by oppression.”

And God is among those who Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor of the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, says have their existence within the rubble.

And it was with His ghetto, disinherited, wretched, black, and Palestinian life that Jesus told the story of God and unapologetically, gave a message of hope and liberation to deliver His people.

Thus, on this Juneteenth Sunday how might we respond to this message of hope?

First, we must listen to the voice coming from the ghetto.

In his theological treatise on rap and hip hop, Michael Eric Dyson talks about hip hop as the artform of ghettoized people. Like the genres of the spirituals, blues, gospel, jazz, rock n roll, and yes, even country music, hip hop has its origins in the psalms and hymns of enslaved and disenfranchised people poetically and rhythmically communicating the pleasures and pains of living life in the underground.

In an interview describing his contribution to hip hop, the artist Nas says,

“Really, I saw, like a hole in the rap game, so, if I wanted to put my little two cents in the game, then it would be from a different perspective. I thought that I would represent for my neighborhood and tell their story, be their voice, in a way that nobody has done it. Tell the real story.”

Jay- Z, in the song Renegade with Eminem, says, what I believe, is the essence of what hip hop is, saying:

Say that I’m foolish I only talk about jewels/

Do you fools listen to music or do you just skim through it?/

See I’m influenced by the ghetto you ruined/

That same dude you gave nothing, I made something doing/

What I do through and through and/

I give you the news, with a twist it’s just his ghetto point-of-view/

The renegade, you been afraid/

I penetrate pop culture, bring ’em a lot closer to the block

Therefore, as Dyson again states hip hop is not merely “pavement poetry” but is also prophetic. Prophetic in its proclamation of truth to power. Political in its analysis. Artful in its imagery. Conscience of the realities plaguing its community. Subversive in the ways it comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.

Hip hop has its imperfections that aids and abets in homophobia. Transphobia. Violence. Hedonism. Misogyny. Patriarchy. Capitalism. But the same can be said, and is said, about our Bible. Our Christian tradition. That Christianity today traffics in the abuse and violence of marginalized and oppressed people.

And yet, Jesus, founding member of the hip hop group N.W.A (Nazarenes With Attitude), tells the real story of the people and places from whence he came.

That the gospel is the poetic, prophetic, political, artful, conscience, and subversive message to “bring us closer to the block.” Closer to the margins. Closer to the truth! Closer to the devastation that is left behind when tradition is placed above the commandments of God. Closer by putting his two cents in the game for those who have neglected the weightier matters of justice, mercy, and faith! Closer by revealing God’s plan for the world. Not being bringing us to heaven but by bringing heaven down to the earth

(“Do you [sic] listen to music or do you just skim through it?”)

Therefore, we respond to the message of hope when we remember to listen to the voices coming from the ghetto because the ghetto is where God is often speaking. The ghetto is where God is serving. And the voices coming from the ghetto have the power to save and bring us new life.

But to listen, we must repent to the voice coming from the ghetto.

In Greek, repent means to turn; to turn from or return to. Thus, on this Juneteenth Sunday, how are we invited to consider turning to the voices from the ghetto? How might we need to turn from the things making us deaf to hear the voices that are revealing deep and prevailing truths about our world?

For four hundred years, black people have articulated through our music and art the deep seeded realities that we are faced with. For centuries people have danced to our music, clapped to our art, sung the lyrics of our songs, but never turned to listen!

And now, people are talking about Project 2025 that is described as

“a real threat to democracy.”

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley said about Project 2025 that it is

“a thousand-page bucket list of extremist policies that would uproot every government agency and disrupt the lives of every person who calls America home.”

Key policy proposals include the elimination of the Department of Education that would cut millions of students off from civil rights protections and ending essential title one funding for K through 12 schools. The weaponization and expansion of the Department of Justice. A federal ban on abortion care. As Congresswoman Pressley succinctly summarizes, “If enacted, Project 2025 would destroy the federal government as we know it.”

But are people turning to listen? Because in the ghetto is where these policies are first practiced and perfected before they expand to the rest of the nation. And in these places is where they will have the harshest impact.

Therefore, we must repent to the voices whose ears are to the street. And are sounding the alarm that can hopefully save our nation!

Which is why, finally, we must believe in the voice coming from the ghetto.

We must believe in the voice coming from the ghetto of a black, Palestinian man on whose body the Spirit descended like a dove, and a voice came from heaven

“You are my Son, Beloved, in who I am well pleased.”

A man born from a woman from the ghetto. A man who lived within ghetto community.

A (black) man who did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many! Who shed tears for the city. Who shed his blood because of our sin. Who died and was buried. But after three days has risen so we might rise and live with Him forever!

We must believe in the gospel so the good news of God would be proclaimed throughout the world from Boston to Benin, Atlanta to Angola, Southside Chicago to South Africa, Cambridge to Quincy to Kenya, Jamaica Plain, MA to Jamaica in the West Indies – so that all people will respond to the message of hope that they are beloved, children of God and a part of the gospel story of God.

We must believe in the gospel as good news from the ghetto because

“God’s story is the [ghetto’s] story, and the [ghetto’s] story is God’s story. And that is the Christian story.”

And that, beloved, is hip hop!

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Amen

(Say a prayer!)

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Grace and I are in this weird moment where we’re finishing up our 22-year old run having a nuclear family at home.

Last weekend was our youngest kid John’s high school graduation. And it was a great weekend. We’re so proud of all three of our kids, and this weekend was a great time to be really proud of our youngest. John’s become an extraordinary human while in high school, and he’s off to great things. What a weekend to celebrate with him! It was a good one.

But it was kind of an emotional weekend too, in what’s been an emotional season, as we sort out the big adjustments going on in our family life. I find myself with complicated feelings about the years ahead – excited about my kids’ chances to try new things, excited for all the freedom I’ll have and that Grace and I will have as a couple. But I find myself kind of introspective and even a little bluesy sometimes too – worried for kids’ futures, sad to not be with them as often, and also just feeling like I need to take a breath and sort out what has happened these past 22 years.

Because they’ve been 22 amazing, awesome years I’m so grateful for. And they’ve also been 22 freaking hard, exhausting years too. We’ve rarely known if we’re doing the right thing or doing enough or too much. And sometimes we’ve looked back and been like what felt like the right thing probably wasn’t. Definitely wasn’t. Our kids tell us this sometimes too. Money was tight, every year. Time and resources of all kinds usually felt tight. It was hard. Harder than I think it needed to be.

A few years ago, the conservative columnist David Brooks wrote a whole article about this that got some buzz. He called it, “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.” He pointed out that most of the world has lived in extended kinship networks of family and friends, where kids weren’t just raised by one or two beleaguered parents but by the community the family was embedded in. And people who didn’t have kids or whose kids were adults mostly didn’t live alone either, but also as part of communities. Communities of care and connection and accountability.

But America, since the 1950s, has been running this experiment, where society has kind of centered the nuclear family, like the model for adulthood was to have a spouse and 2.something kids and a dog and have all of your most important relational and economic life happening within that small family unit. All along, though, lots of us were living differently – today, only ⅓ of Americans live in nuclear family households. Only a third of us. Yet if we don’t, we might wonder or people might act like we’re missing out on something. And for the third of us that are doing this, it’s not always working out so well.

So let’s talk about the failure of the nuclear family, and the communities we all need like bigger families, chosen families, church communities.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I’ve been rereading the Bible’s stories from the first generation of the history of the church. It’s the book called the Acts of the Apostles. And I’ve been reading it alongside a brilliant contemporary theologian named Willie James Jennings, who’s been helping me see new things in the book of Acts.

So I’m going to read to you another story from Acts, this one a provocative and troubling one, and we’ll see how it can help us think about the failure of the nuclear family and what can happen in community life.

Acts 4:32-11 (Common English Bible)

32 The community of believers was one in heart and mind. None of them would say, “This is mine!” about any of their possessions, but held everything in common.

33 The apostles continued to bear powerful witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and an abundance of grace was at work among them all.

34 There were no needy persons among them. Those who owned properties or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds from the sales,

35 and place them in the care and under the authority of the apostles. Then it was distributed to anyone who was in need.

36 Joseph, whom the apostles nicknamed Barnabas (that is, “one who encourages”), was a Levite from Cyprus.

37 He owned a field, sold it, brought the money, and placed it in the care and under the authority of the apostles.

So part one of this story is the idealized picture of church going right. Kind of extreme, like a big commune.. Maybe more intense than most of us would be down for, but I do love the phrase

“an abundance of grace was at work among them all”

and the phrase

“no needy people.”

I feel like we could use abundance of grace and no needy people still.

And it ends with this picture of Joseph, who gets the nickname, the Encouraging One – as a picture of part of how community can work so well. People get a lot out because they’re putting a lot in as well. In this case, giving the full profits of a business sale to the community.

Then the second half of today’s story, which gets creepy in a bunch of ways.

5 However, a man named Ananias, along with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property.

2 With his wife’s knowledge, he withheld some of the proceeds from the sale. He brought the rest and placed it in the care and under the authority of the apostles.

3 Peter asked, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has influenced you to lie to the Holy Spirit by withholding some of the proceeds from the sale of your land?

4 Wasn’t that property yours to keep? After you sold it, wasn’t the money yours to do with whatever you wanted? What made you think of such a thing? You haven’t lied to other people but to God!”

5 When Ananias heard these words, he dropped dead. Everyone who heard this conversation was terrified.

6 Some young men stood up, wrapped up his body, carried him out, and buried him.

7 About three hours later, his wife entered, but she didn’t know what had happened to her husband.

8 Peter asked her, “Tell me, did you and your husband receive this price for the field?”

She responded, “Yes, that’s the amount.”

9 He replied, “How could you scheme with each other to challenge the Lord’s Spirit? Look! The feet of those who buried your husband are at the door. They will carry you out too.”

10 At that very moment, she dropped dead at his feet. When the young men entered and found her dead, they carried her out and buried her with her husband.

11 Trepidation and dread seized the whole church and all who heard what had happened.

So this story is awful. It’s kind of shocking, and offensive, and funny all at once. I mean a man gets caught in his deceit and drops dead in the church. What kind of pastor when his spouse shows up three hours later, not knowing what’s happened, is like:

ahem, I have a question for you. What exactly did you sell your home for last week?

Sorry, it’s so horrible, it’s funny to me.

And some commentators are like: that’s the point. Author of Acts had a nice sense of gallows humor. It was meant to be kind of outrageous.

Maybe, but it’s a weird passage. What is the point? Scholars mostly avoid the passage, but when they don’t, they do not agree.

• What did Ananias and Sapphira do wrong?
• Was it the lying? And if so, was it lying to the leaders? Or was it lying to God?
• Or was it the withholding? The holding back a bunch of their funds, while claiming to give them all to the community?

Scholars will point out that there are similar stories in ancient literature. There’s a Greek story told by Herodotus about a guy who lies about money he kept dishonestly and is then deprived by the gods of descendants as a punishment.

And in the Bible, there’s a more ancient story from the book of Joshua about a time of religious reform, where the community is collecting all the plunder that they were supposed to destroy, and this one guy Achan, or Ay-chan, hides a bunch of silver and gold in his tent, withholding it from the collection, and when they find him out, they take him and his kids and all his animals too, and they stone them to death.

It’s a set up to a horrible dad joke. The guys’ name was Achan, and it’s like, who’s aching now?

Some people read this story about Peter and Ananais and Sapphira in light of this Achan story from Joshua, and they approve of the connections. They’re like, look Peter did this miracle of catching people sinning and punishing them. And there are people who have read this story as a justification for church discipline or capital punishment.

I think that’s horrible, by the way. Even if this story is connected to the old one from Joshua, it’s different in that no one lays a hand on Ananias or Sapphira. Whatever the reason for their death, no person does it. Jesus commanded his followers not to hate, and to regulate their anger, let alone never to kill. The way of Jesus is a resurrection community, a community of the celebration of life. The followers of Jesus are not to participate in death-dealing, period.

Other people connect this story to the Achan one in Joshua by saying it’s a story of divine judgment, and maybe.

It kind of seems that way at first. In the Achan story, the writer makes it seem like God is happy and chills out after they stone that guy and all his people and animals. But I think the whole Jewish and Christian prophetic tradition, right through Jesus, has corrected that interpretation. We see the excess now, and the mistakes in people’s thinking about God. I mean one, that guy’s kids, his animals, what did they do wrong? Like who stones some guy’s dog or cow to death, because that guy stole some money from God? No matter what you think about God and violence, that is excessive. Leave the cow alone.

And I think the arc of scripture, the arc of the Jesus movement, and even the arc of history teach us to not ascribe violence of any kind to God. When I was in Palestine and Israel, I had the honor of meeting Palestinian Archbishop Abuna Chacour, a beautiful Christian leader and bold peacemaker. He says: the first thing we know about God is that God does not kill.

Jesus was a healer, and it was his enemies that conspired to put him to death. People who follow Jesus ought to be bearing crosses now, not building them.

So I think there are two bad readings of this passage.

Bad reading one is any reading that justifies violence. That tries to scare people by telling them that God or some person is going to strike them down if they don’t stop whatever. That kind of fear is not worthy of God, or the way or the people of Jesus. Perfect love casts out fear, after all, the scriptures tell us. Perfect love casts out fear. So we shouldn’t try to use fear or threats to try to change people.

And bad reading number two, I think, is to use this story, to try to pressure people to give more money to the church. It’s true that churches and most other good things in life only thrive when we put a lot into them. Reservoir is an engine of generosity and good and innovation for the church in the world, but that only works when we all – the people of the community – put resources in together to make that happen. We need Barnabases who will give generously, give big from what they have.

All true and good, and many of us love giving to this church, but using this passage or any other threats or manipulation to get people to give more money to the church is toxic. Give abundantly, friends. Give to where your heart is. Give to where you see God. Give to where you see good you want to be part of. But don’t get scared or pressured into giving.

That’s not the way. There’s even a little hint after this passage, where it says people were kind of impressed by this early church. But they were scared of it too. Because when a community’s leaders abuse power, or when a community spends its energy or its voice stoking fear and exerting control, it’s becoming a cult. It’s lost its health, it’s lost its way.

Violence and coercion, bad readings. So what is a good reading of this passage?

Well, Willie James Jennings helped me see something I hadn’t seen before. Which is that it’s really intentional in this story that a couple is doing this.

Couples aren’t mentioned much in Acts, maybe just two times. Families aren’t the center of the story either. They come up a few times, but the early church wasn’t really a “focus on the family” kind of place. People from all types of family and status were getting involved – single, partnered, young, old, rich, poor, slave, free, and together they were forging new forms of family life together.

But this couple is interesting. They’re kind of walling themselves off from the community, like God’s big dreams for them are this private story they are working out all by themselves. And they’re just going to pay lip service to other people’s dreams. They also break this whole abundance of grace culture by being inauthentic. They’re going to play along in this community, maybe use the community for their status, looking like they were so generous. But their hearts and their dreams and their finances are really going to be solely tied up in what’s happening inside the walls of their little home.

Willie James Jennings says they have it backwards. He writes that communities of Jesus say to couples and families: you belong to us. We do not belong to you.

I find that provocative. And maybe that’s what this passage is about, maybe not. It’s a hard passage. I don’t know. But let’s go with this surprising reading a bit, just for today, and connect it with these thoughts a number of us are having with our failing American experiment in obsession with the nuclear family.

• What communities are we embedded in? Can we lean on, depend upon?
• And what communities are we making happen? Are we growing, for us and for others?

When I look back on my family’s 22-year experiment with the nuclear family, I think it’s gone better when this was our story.

The years where our family has most helped create community, those were good years. When our kids were babies and for years after that, we had people in our home every week – little kids, teens, grownups – every week, we hosted community groups in our homes.

Where else in our world do people who aren’t related regularly eat together, play together, share together, learning one another’s hopes and dreams and joys and heartaches, learning the names and likes of other people’s kids, talking about the big questions in life about God and love, meaning and morals? I guess there are other places this happens, but not a lot. And church groups at their best – we crush this.

When we pulled back from this, because we were too busy or other things seemed more important, no one struck us dead, but we lost out.

We lost out because we were meant to make community.

Mostly, though, I think, our kids got this. It was enough a part of our family that they got it.

At John’s graduation, a school leader I admire told the graduates that his advice is to be useful. When they don’t know what to do – don’t know how to find their path, where to live, what job or relationship is right, one way to find the path is to wherever you are, be useful. And sometimes the places you find yourself being useful kind of become the path.

I think that’s a good word. And I think our kids have taken that to heart. You hear it in the way they talk, in the aspirations they have, in the way they show up in the world. I’m so proud of them.

The world does not exist for our sake, not entirely at least. We exist for it too. Our lives and our resources are not just meant for ourselves, they are meant to be invested in things and people and communities outside of ourselves.

We aren’t meant to be hoarders but givers.

We also aren’t meant to be alone but together, no needy people among us, practicing abundance of grace.

The nuclear family ideal is killing us here. Like the only people we’re supposed to be in truly interdependent relationship with is our nuclear kin. For those of us in nuclear families, it’s not enough. And for those of us not in nuclear families at least right now, ourselves are not enough either.

We need each other.

The drift of American life doesn’t get us here. It’s hard to sustain deeply connected community. For our family, honestly, this has been a pretty mixed bag these past 22 years. But I think, oh, our best moments haven’t been the cut off ones. I think of the neighbors and the family friends that were at John’s graduation party, and I think – I only wish we’d spent more time together. Because I need things from them and them from me that we don’t have alone. And my kids need things from them, and they need things from my kids too.

Friends, even in church, this is complicated. As church people, or people trying to be in the Way of Jesus, we too are sometimes more connected to our NetFlix and our Instagrams and our privacy and our nuclear families than we are to others. And we can kind of go back and forth, putting into the common good or not.

And I know community in church can give a lot and sometimes it can disappoint too. My friend T.C. Moore just published a whole book about the limits of nuclear family and the kind of communities and relationships we can make in community. It’s called Forged. And even there, he tells stories of some big successes but of some fails too. So I get that. Even as Acts amidst, church isn’t always the ideal. But it’s one of the best places to keep trying. Really one of the best.

So I wonder if this summer might be a great time for some of us, nuclear family or not, to imagine again what connection and contribution to a bigger community might look like?

• Who can you eat with this summer, this fall?
• Whose kids that aren’t your own can you get to know?
• How can you include a couple more people in your private world? How can you let yourself be a little more included in others’?
• To what community are you going to give yourself in a big way, not withholding?

Our church is going to provide some opportunities for these things in the months to come, but don’t wait for it. Get started.

Brian McLaren has this book out on the doom we feel is facing us – climate change, politics, all kinds of stuff. It’s bad.

And he writes:

Love may or may not provide a way through to a solution to our predicament, but it will provide a way forward in our predicament, one step into the unknown at a time. Even if we lose hope for a good outcome, we need not lose hope of being good people.

We don’t know what the future holds – for any of us, let alone for our country, for our species.

And we don’t know if community will have the answers, or if love will be enough of an answer.

But we know that love will be the way forward. We know that we need each other. And here we are, we’re around. Let’s lean in.

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Good morning everyone, I’m Ivy a Pastor here — I use she/her pronouns. It’s a joy to be with you on this beautiful June morning. I’m so thankful for your presence here this morning with the Spirit of God. At Reservoir we welcome everyone without exception to discover the love of God, the gift of community and the joy of living. I sure hope you experience some of that this morning.

Today’s service is celebrating Pride. It will vary a bit from our traditional service format. It will consist of prayer, spiritual practice, story, and song. Members of the Reservoir community who are also part of LGBTQ2IA+ community have curated the service this morning with vulnerability and care — and they will be leading this service and I’ll let them introduce themselves as they join us.

At Reservoir we see the teaching of Jesus as anchored in love — love for God, love for our neighbor, and love for ourselves. We hold and practice this love — as a liberative, inclusive love that affirms the dignity, the value, and the worth of all God’s children…everyone without exception – who bear the image of God.

We are glad you’re here today and we hope you will lean in with an attentive and open heart.

I’ll invite Emmett to join us now.

I’m Emmett and I want to offer some context behind pride as we begin this service. Pride marches commemorate the seven days of the Stonewall riots, an uprising during a police raid on June 29th, 1969 in Greenwich Village. The riots were led by queer and trans people of color like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. At Pride each June, we celebrate how far we have come and we protest for how much farther we have to go.

Our ancestors remind us of the victories won — with their storytelling and coming out, with their lobbying and work from the inside, with bricks and sugar shakers thrown through windows of oppression. We start this service honoring and remembering their legacy that is ours to carry on and will have slides before and after service honoring some meaningful ancestors.

God sees themself reflected when they look at people celebrating and protesting at Pride, God sees the fullness of themself in the margins of society and says

“this is good”

at people being wholly and beautifully themselves and among community. We may not have the capacity to fully understand God’s depth of love and capacity for inclusion but we can awe and wonder at it.

I want to share briefly about some words and acronyms we will use during this pride service. You will hear different variations of the acronym “LGBTQ” or “LGBTQ2IA+” during the service.

• LGBTQ2IA+ is an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer/questioning, two-spirit, intersex, and aesxual.
• The plus represents the many other identities not specifically named in this acronym.
• “Queer” is often used as an umbrella term to encompass many identities in the LGBTQ2IA+ community and will be used during this service.

Historically, queer has been used as an insult and a slur. This term has been reclaimed by many people in the community but some still find it offensive or harmful and we want to acknowledge the heavy history of the word.

I’d like to invite Bri up to share a prayer and call and response.

I’m Bri and my pronouns are she/her. I’d like to share an opening prayer by M Jade Kaiser.

God of infinite manifestations,

Free us of shame that confines and judgment that destroys. Bring healing to the wounds of being told we are too much or too big or too proud or too young or too old or too queer. Ground us in the truth that sets us free: We are the work of a Divine hand – the holy lives in our flesh. Wherever we struggle to believe, meet us there. In Christ we pray.

Amen.

by M Jade Kaiser

We, of many backgrounds and identities, personalities, and ideas,

gather collectively in shared pursuit of the Sacred.

Together, we make up the body of Christ.

Wherever one of us is in pain,

our whole body aches.

Whenever one of us is cut off,

the whole body is wounded.

Whoever is kept away by discriminatory policies or practices or prejudices,

Our collective soul suffers the loss of their presence.

We need one another in order to be whole,

God make us the body of Christ as you envisioned.

May we become your presence enfleshed, in service to the world and one another.

I’d like to invite Lee up to share today’s scripture.

I’m Lee and this morning’s reading is from the book of Isaiah. We will read together from Chapter 58 verses 8 – 12. In this text God is communicating the abundance of love and blessings that are available to everyone without exception — and the promise that God is always, always, always with us. It is also a call for each of us to embody justice, mercy and compassion as we seek to create beloved community.

Isaiah 58:8-12 (Common English Bible)

8Then your light will break forth like the dawn,

and your healing will quickly appear;

then your righteousness will go before you,

and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;

you will cry for help, and God will say, “I’m here.”

If you remove the yoke from among you,

the finger-pointing, the wicked speech;

11 The Lord will guide you continually

and provide for you, even in parched places.

He will rescue your bones.

You will be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water that won’t run dry.

12 They will rebuild ancient ruins on your account;

the foundations of generations past you will restore.

You will be called Mender of Broken Walls,

Restorer of Livable Streets.

I’d like to invite Becki to share part of her story with us.

I’m Becki and my pronouns are she/her.

When I think of my life’s journey it has so many identities to it: Christian, parent, technology worker, friend, preacher, son, daughter, husband, wife, LGBT+ activist, bisexual, transwoman. So many identities. Some of these lives, these identities seem in conflict with the other. And I suppose they are. But they are all lives I have lived or live now. Sometimes I lived at peace with myself and the world and sometimes I lived in terrible conflict. There is one thing that has proved true through them all: When I have called out to the Lord, the Lord has responded. When I cry out, He replies,

“Here I am”

Around age 25 or so, I gave my life to the Lord and became what is known as, at least in Evangelical Circles, Born Again – a spiritual rebirth. I was baptized, started reading my bible, and found myself fully committed to my church, family, job, and friends. In the midst of the ebb and flow of life, I found that I had a real connection to them, a God I had suddenly found myself in relation with. I say

“found myself in relation with”

because before my Born Again experience, I hadn’t shown much interest in God. But I had been searching for peace. And that search was through any means I could. But my relationship with God truly did bring me peace. And without knowing it, my faith in God became the one thing that would sustain me as my life journey continued.

While life was happening outside: jobs, grad school, growing a family, backyard bbqs and fun summers camping, stuff was happening inside me too. When I was younger, I knew, deep inside me, that I was different. I thought that I might be gay but I was determined not to let that be my future. But the suppressed sense of who I am slowly ate away at me, making what seemed like a calm, cool, executive on the outside feel like a volcano ready to explode on the inside. I sought help from therapists, read books, talked endlessly with my then spouse, journaled my childhood and adulthood and slowly realized that I was not gay but I was transgender. While I was assigned male at birth, I am really a woman.

That realization explained a lot about my past and my present. And it was terrifying. How would I navigate this truth – did I have to navigate this truth at all? Couldn’t I just sweep it under the rug and kind of not think about it anymore? My brain was filled with anxiety and, as Isiah wrote, in

Isiah 58:9,

“call out, and the Lord will respond;”

you will cry out, and he will reply,

‘Here I am.’

Knowing that and actually doing that really sustained me.

I read about so many of us in the LGBTIQA+ community having felt that God now hated them, once they started living their truth. I and my friends experienced the hate of religion, and the attempt by some to convince us, our families and our friends that God no longer loved us now that we were living our truth.

But I didn’t believe that God now hated me, I honestly couldn’t. This couldn’t be the God I had read about in the bible. I was ok with churches rejecting me, but not our God. And that firm belief was not unlike what Isiah had written in

Isaiah 58:11

“The Lord…will feed you even in parched regions. He will give you renewed strength, and you will be like a well-watered garden.”

And so, my life journey continued. My transition to my correct gender was long and hard and I lost nearly everything. So I turned to the one thing that had sustained me, I called out to the Lord like my life and the lives of those I loved depended on it. I pressed into the God I knew. At times I did doubt. Maybe God really didn’t love me, and that my living as myself was actually judgment from God. But I refused to believe my own demons and those created by anti-LGBT rhetoric. I thought, what is the downside of my pressing into God? Of my being persistent with God with my cries? And in that I pressed into a good, loving God that is always with me, always watering me in times that are hard. He really did renew my strength and my life became like a well-watered garden.

I’m Mitch and my pronouns are he/him.

I’d like to share the trans prayer of divine understanding by M Jade Kaiser.

Creative Spirit,

Holy Momentum,

Ever Transitioning One,

Do you hold the prayers of trans people close,

like the embrace of someone who understands –

a source of comfort or hope?

We share this joy – you and us:

Taking on new forms

that life might thrive.

Shedding what no longer fits;

or never did.

Struggles, we share, too:

Religious beliefs that confine being and becoming.

Enduring acts of violence

born from fear and fueled by power.

Though even we endure too much, too long,

how burdensome is your lot…

Centuries pass and still,

so few who claim to love you

believe you are who you say you are –

calling you an excuse for bigotry,

when you are a river of Love.

Do all the theologies of hate,

and songs of Sunday apathy,

land on your ears like a deadname –

something given to you

that you never asked for

and just won’t go away?

Do you wince

each time a prayer ascends to “Him” –

because more than anything,

you know what that means to do

is distance you from the likes of “Her” or “Them?”

When you stretch out your arms

as the embrace of a gentle man,

or kick out your feet

as the dance of a woman,

or run wild in open fields

through every gender-less,

or gender-abundant,

or nonbinary kiddo

loving their flesh,

do you take delight in every fit,

finding a spot of home

in every body?

The glory of your Multiplicity cannot be hidden away.

We may be a long way from safety yet,

but your mercies are new every morning

and with each day dawns new possibilities

of Sacred Transition

into a world more fitting for everyone.

May your blessing be upon all your trans beloveds.

Take pleasure in us, your stunning incarnations.

And as we care for our each other,

may the god we practice be a comfort and a strength.

In your abundance and love,

Amen.

I’d like to invite the band and Ivy to share a song and some breath prayers.

We’re going to move into a time of reflection, breath, and prayer, paired with some music. The song that we’ll be singing, called Wishes, explores the concept of wishing things could be different, wishing we know how to handle the various challenges that we face, and also having the courage and space to explore the longing for things to be different.

While there are pieces of this song that everyone can relate to, as I listen to this song, as well as many of my friends in the Queer & Trans community, it becomes really powerful because many themes are so deeply connected to our experiences related to identity; challenging relationships with family, complicated relationships with our body/expression, and the general feeling of our identity being a burden or issue for those around us, and that we need to hold space for them.

As we were preparing for this service we were reflecting on experiencing Pride as a protest or as a celebration, and for me, that can shift depending on the year and everything happening around us. As we go through this practice I invite you to explore that balance, of holding space for things we may wish for and also celebrating who we are in God’s Love. So as we sing feel free to reflect and absorb and we’ll take some pauses for guided breath and prayer.

Verse 1

I wish I was a reader, and I wish I was

The kind of child that calls their mom

With stupid questions or anything at all

And I wish that I was different, or I wish I was

Better at being kind to the one body that I’ve got

After all, it keeps me breathin’ ’til the day it just cannot

• Breath Prayer 2x

Inhale: My wishes are too much to hold

Exhale: So we hold them together

Verse 2

I wish I didn’t linger on every thought

Reshapin’ every moment to the point of losin’ touch

Wish I was in my body ‘stead of hoverin’ above (Ooh-ooh, ooh)

And I wish that I was harder, and I wish I was

Less of a feeler so it wouldn’t hurt so much

But I offer all my pillows and I give my bed to lay

I’m a shoulder for a cry until the tears melt me away

Chorus

I wish I didn’t feel like a burden

All the time

I wish I wasn’t so scared of something

all my life

• Breath Prayer

Inhale: I am not a burden

Exhale: I am worthy of care

Verse 3

I wish that I was smarter, and I wish I could

Communicate a thought without being misunderstood

But it’s better keeping quiet, yeah, it’s easy staying put

And I wish I didn’t cater when I know I should

Stop beggin’ for forgiveness and start puttin’ down my foot

I’m just used to people-pleasin’, yeah, I’ve gotten way too good

I think I’ve become the person that I said I never would

Chorus

I wish I didn’t feel like a burden

All the time

I wish I wasn’t so scared of something

all my life

• Breath Prayer

Inhale: I will not be silenced by fear

Exhale: A trembling voice is still sacred (credit: @Blackliturgies | Cole Arthur Riley)

Chorus

I wish I didn’t feel like a burden

All the time

I wish I wasn’t so scared of something

all my life

I wish I didn’t feel like a burden

Oooh

I wish I wasn’t so scared of something

Ooh

Tag

I know these wishes aren’t all for nothing

I am loved

• Breath Prayer 3x

Inhale: I am

Exhale: God’s beloved wish

Now I’ll invite Emmett up to share a prayer and lead us in a spiritual practice.

Hello again, I’d like to share a prayer that has excerpts from the Prayer for Pride Flag Raising by the Rainbow Pastor and the Rainbow Christ Prayer by Patrick Cheng and Kittredge Cherry as well as my own prayers. This is both a prayer and a spiritual practice. I invite you to envision something of each color as we go through the colors and find meaning in them or if you happen to have those colors in the room, I invite you to grab that item or write in the chat why that color is meaningful for you. Pray with me.

Rainbow Christ, you embody all the colors of the world. Inspire us to remember the values expressed in the rainbow flag of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, two-spirit, intersex, and asexual community.

Red is for life, the root of spirit. Living Christ, you are our Root. Free us from shame, and grant us the grace of healthy pride so we can explore, question, and follow our own inner truths. With the red stripe in the rainbow, we give thanks that God created us just the way we are.

Orange is for healing, the mending needed desperately in individuals and our community as a whole. Let us heal one another through love, radical acceptance, and coming alongside each other in our hurts, losses, and burdens. Lord, may we lay those hurts and burdens at your feet and allow the wholeness of community and self to be reconciled. With the orange stripe in the rainbow, be a balm to our wounds and sorrows.

Yellow is for sunlight, the brilliant light of queer and trans joy. The smile on Your face shining down upon us. Interconnected Christ, you are our Wisdom, creating and sustaining the universe. With the yellow stripe in the rainbow, may we feel Your radiant light reflected in our innermost beings.

Green is for nature, the grounding of life. May we seek nature to commune with you and all of creation. May we see ourselves reflected in the beauty, purpose, and intention of every rock, raindrop, and leaf. With the green stripe in the rainbow, connect us with others and with all of your creation.

Blue is for serenity, the sense of tranquility and calm that comes with knowing you are exactly as God made you to be. God knew your true name when you were in the womb and They smile as you come into your own. Serenity is also inviting the most marginalized into an open and welcoming community. Liberator Christ, you are our Voice, speaking out against all forms of oppression. Free us from apathy, and grant us the grace of activism. With the blue stripe in the rainbow, let us find peace within our Body-Spirit and motivate us to call for justice.

Purple is for spirit, the union of one’s spirit with the Holy Spirit and the spirit of community. Lord, may we find connection with you and one another. May we offer love and compassion and encourage those around us to live their authentic lives. Fill our hearts with untamed compassion for all beings. With the purple stripe in the rainbow, may our spirit find rest and encouragement in our truths, one another, and the Holy Spirit.

These colors come together to make one rainbow, one symbol of Pride. Free us from rigid categories and grant us the grace of interwoven identities. With the rainbow, lead us to experience the whole spectrum of life.

Bless our pride in who we are, in all our diversity, as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, two-spirit, intersex, asexual, and questioning people, as an expression of your creative love. Bless our differences that we may draw strength from them.

Bless our celebration that it may show our joy in living and hope. Bless those for whom it takes great courage to be present, that they may not feel alone. Bless those for whom this is one in a long series of Pride celebrations, as they continue to teach us about courage and wisdom.

Bless our calls for equality as we seek justice for all your people. Bless those who support us and are also working for freedom and justice. Bless each of us here with your presence, and our presence, one with another. Amen.

I’d like to invite Mitch back to share a part of his story with us.

I am fascinated by mystical experiences. More than one shelf of my bookcase at home is devoted to stories about peoples’ direct encounters with God.

Folks one moment carrying on with a life, and then the next – radically changed.

“Light breaking forth like the dawn.”

Something so indescribable, so wonderful, so reality-shattering happened to them, was revealed to them, that in a blink they’re never the same.

I don’t know about you, but that’s never happened to me – at least, not yet. And I admit I’m a little jealous sometimes of the prophet Isaiah and the others.

But that’s not to say, when I take a moment to reflect, that I haven’t had epiphanies – sudden unveilings of Truth that radically changed me and the trajectory of my life. In the moment I can’t always see – or sometimes flat-out resist seeing – God’s place in them. But my experience might just be something divine, if I choose to look at how it all adds up. If I peer backward, it turns out that the Lord is my rearguard.

So, I’ll give you all just two of my biggies.

Picture me, age seventeen. I’m in my high school library; I pick up a book called Transgender Warriors and see myself reflected in it. Then picture me, 19. I’m in my first or second feminist studies class in college, learning about structural oppression for the first time. Both instances something lands with me, I feel electric, and I suddenly have a new knowing on a higher level. Some part of the curtain “pulled back” and a little of the Matrix of the real-real peeking through.

I can’t un-see what I’ve been shown. And now I’ll never stop being called to respond to it.

I’m still here, over a decade later, being called. And I can tell you that having been shown essential knowledge, living a changed life because of it, can at times be so exhilarating — like every step has been on this 13-year journey of inhabiting the livable streets of my male body & identity — and, at other times, so hard — like stumbling through the ancient ruins and broken walls of an inherited social system shot through with “isms” and phobias towards the so-called “other.” And crying out, at times, to God for help. Like, “What can I even do about anything beyond my own nose?”

I’ll bring it back to the beginning.

So, Epiphany #1: that I’m transgender — I was assigned female at birth, but know myself to be and live my life as a man. God truly is Mender and Restorer, in my experience! I was held back and He showed me how I could get free, be comfortable. On an individual level.

Epiphany #2: Oppression works structurally; individual cruelty, or even “well-intentioned” harm, is just a surface symptom of a deep sickness. We’re all intertwined. No one’s truly free and well until we’re all free and well.

I look back now at my two great revelations – how the first clarity about ME happened before the second about US. I can see God at work in this.

Dismantling structural oppression. It’s felt, at times, too big an ask to take part in, until I look at myself where I’m at – my gifts, my internal modes to repent — which means to turn — from.

So where do I start? Well, here’s something.

Someone once asked me: What are the spiritual gifts of trans-ness? Well – many. For me, in my own life, the clearest is a kind of vision. I was handed the system that we all are, and which is so ingrained as to be invisible and nearly unquestionable – in this case, the gender binary and its supposed permanency – and yet the nature of my very being causes me to look outside it. To question it, challenge it, see its rigid enforcement as human-made rather than God’s intention. My very life and thriving depends on this. I was lovingly crafted to imagine something other than “that’s just the way things are, live with it.” God sketched me into a template but then let me go free to keep writing a different future.

And that’s a start.

I’d like to invite Emily to lead us in a call and response prayer.

I’m Emily and my pronouns are she/her. I’d like to invite you into a time of prayer, called Prayers of the People by M Jade Kaiser. After each prayer, I will pause and then you are invited to respond “God, hear our prayers.” This will also be on a slide.

Let us pray.

In the midst of all that keeps our spirits frantic, overwhelmed, or troubled, we pause.

We pause to remember each other as those whose precious and precarious lives

are inherently bound together.

We pause to remember the basic gifts of water, of trees, of beauty, of the land we gather upon.

We pause to remember our neighbors – distant and near.

And so to the One who is Love, we bring the prayers of our communities. Where we share in joy or concern, let us respond together, “God, hear our prayers.”

We pray…

for all the queer, trans, and intersex children and youth across the globe. For the ones who are struggling with feelings of isolation and shame. For those who have no safe place or people to retreat to. For those who must be teachers to the adults in their lives. For those who are unsafe in their communities.

God, hear our prayers.

We pray for our elders whose labor we are indebted to. For the ones who never tasted the freedom they fought for. For the ones who were forced to the fringes of their own movements. For the allies who suffered beside us, casting their lot with us in true solidarity. For the ones forgotten and betrayed.

God, hear our prayers.

We pray for all those who hunger for justice and liberation today. For the ones who lay down their lives for their friends. For the ones who tell the truth. For the ones who take risks, who dream, who feed and pray, who fight for bread and roses, both. For the ones who are eager to learn and grow and offer their gifts to the work of enfleshing your dreams.

God, hear our prayers.

We pray for all who are suffering in the church and the world at the hands of white supremacy. For those imprisoned by the state. For those whose land has been taken. For the earth that groans beneath us. For those without food or housing. For those who have yet to repent.

God, hear our prayers.

We pray in gratitude for all that nourishes and sustains us. For the gifts of beauty and friendship, shared meals, and art, and love. For laughter. For pleasure. For the friends, lovers, and comrades who lift our spirits, always by our side when the days are heavy. For the freedom we have in Christ.

God, hear our prayers.

For your presence within and around us, in our highs and lows, our hope and our despair, God, we give you thanks. Hear our prayers and deepen our willingness to show up with and for one another, sharing in each other’s burdens and working for one another’s protection and care. Amen.

I’d like to invite Maddison to lead us in communion.

Source: enfleshed.com/liturgy/lgbtq-related/

I’m Maddison and my pronouns are she/her.

We will now move to a time of communion.

Where we give thanks for the presence and love of God. God’s presence that is not at a distance – but intimately in our lives – as intimately as our own skin.

God gifted us with bodies and through them we come to know God:

Through touch.

Through taste.

Through struggle.

Through rest.

In God’s love for us and for all creatures and creations, God took on skin like ours – entangling, forever – the (H)oly with our flesh. God showed us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that we love through our bodies, we seek justice for bodies, we live out our faith in these bodies – not despite them.

Jesus took care and rest of his own body – fed people, healed people, ate with people.

He met the physical and spiritual needs of bodies.

And when his own body was threatened by political and religious execution, he turned to the Table. He sought, first, in his hour of need, to share a meal with his friends.

On the night of his arrest, he gathered around a table with his companions.

He took bread, blessed it, broke it (as his own body would break), gave it to his disciples and said,

“This is my body which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.”

He did the same with the cup after the supper, saying,

“This cup that is poured out as a sign of the new covenant.”

A new way forward with love and infinite possibilities.

The body of God was crucified.

And the body of God was resurrected.

Not only in spirit, but in flesh.

God has shown us that our bodies are good, holy, precious, and full of possibility.

At Reservoir we practice an open table. All are open to come and receive the goodness and love of Jesus. I invite you to get some food and something to drink and receive with us.

I’ll pray for us,

Prayer: Spirit of God, Come, bless this bread and this cup, that we might encounter your presence as we touch, and we taste, and we feel. As we come to the table, may we become one body. And may we be relentless pursuers of your Kin-dom, until every body has its needs met, every body is recognized as beloved, and every body is treated with dignity and care. Amen.

Benediction:

Holy One, You call each of us beloved.

Each of us cherished.

Each of us desired.

Each of us good.

Each of us sacred.

As you leave today, may you know that you are treasured and surrounded by the Spirit of love and authenticity.

Many thanks to this incredible resource: enfleshed.com/liturgy/lgbtq-related/

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Last Monday we hosted the Board meeting for the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. And even though important things sometimes happen at Board meetings, Board meetings can be very boring events. It’s practically the same word – board and boring.

But our Monday meeting wasn’t boring at all. One of the people co-leading with me asked me the day of:

where can we buy good cake around here?

And I wondered: why do we need cake? But I suggested a place. And that night she and our third co-leader showed up with cake from a better place than I’d suggested. High quality cake.

And it turned out the cake was for someone’s wedding anniversary, a 20th wedding anniversary. It’s fun to celebrate anniversaries. Our church had our 25th anniversary last year. This winter Grace and I are going to celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary. When we had our 20th anniversary, we took a big trip together far away without our kids for the first time since we’d had them. And while we love our kids, that was fun too.

But the 20th anniversary we were celebrating on Monday was a special one. One of our Board members, Marcia, was celebrating her 20th anniversary of marriage to her wife Susan. And this anniversary also lines up with the 20th anniversary of same sex weddings being legal in Massachusetts.

This is not a coincidence, because Marcia and her wife were the very first couple of two men, or in their case two women, to get married that day right here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, right after the law was changed. So we weren’t just celebrating Marcia’s anniversary, we were celebrating history too. Which was special.

Marcia said thank you and gave a little speech before we ate cake, saying how much it meant to her that we wanted to celebrate with her. And then one of our leaders, a younger queer person who was only a kid when Marcia got married gave a speech too, and said how important what Marcia and her generation did for marriage equality, and how Marcia’s generation has paved the way for her generation to live safer, freer lives with the people they love. And she was tearing up, and Marcia was tearing up, and a lot of us were tearing up, because we were thinking of our queer kids or our queer friends or siblings, or our queer selves, and what it means to us when we can be loved just as we are and have the same rights and freedoms as anyone else.

But then there was one more speech. One of our founders spoke up and said tonight we’re also celebrating the 20th anniversary of our organization surviving. Because when this law was getting changed, there were people on our Board back then that were for this change, and that were against this change. And it was such a big argument, and such a hard argument, that we didn’t know if we’d be able to stay together as GBIO. But we did because we decided to keep loving each other, and to stay in relationship, even when we disagreed about some really important things. And those relationships kept us together, and they changed us too. Not everyone changed their minds, but many people have. And there are people who didn’t understand or agree with Marcia’s marriage before who celebrate it today.

And there we were – about 20 people – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Black, White, Asian – as young as 23 and as old as 77. Celebrating Marcia’s anniversary, and celebrating LGBTQ rights, and celebrating our friendships and our desire to keep getting to know each other across our differences, keep learning together amidst our differences, and keep acting for a better world together, powered by all the stories and all the gifts we bring to the table with our differences.

What a gift, to learn to not only tolerate or compromise but to understand and love and live and grow together across our differences.

This is what the theologian Willie James Jennings calls the revolution of the intimate. The revolution of the intimate is what Jennings says a Christian holiday called Pentecost is all about. And while Pentecost was on the Christian calendar last week, and our kids thought about Pentecost last week in kids’ church, we’re just getting to it today.

I’m excited to talk about Pentecost, and how it’s the revolution of the intimate, and some of what that might mean to you and me. Let’s read the story. It’s from the book of Acts, which stands for the Acts of the Apostles. It’s the story of what Jesus’ friends did after Jesus died and rose again, and it’s the story of what they discovered God doing among them. This part is from near the beginning, in the second chapter.

Acts 2:1-21 (Common English Bible)

2 When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place.

2 Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting.

3 They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them.

4 They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak.

5 There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.

6 When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages.

7 They were surprised and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them?

8 How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language?

9 Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,

10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism),

11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages!”

12 They were all surprised and bewildered. Some asked each other, “What does this mean?”

13 Others jeered at them, saying, “They’re full of new wine!”

14 Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his voice and declared, “Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem! Know this! Listen carefully to my words!

15 These people aren’t drunk, as you suspect; after all, it’s only nine o’clock in the morning!

16 Rather, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

17 In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Your young will see visions.
Your elders will dream dreams.
18 Even upon my servants, men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
19 I will cause wonders to occur in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood and fire and a cloud of smoke.
20 The sun will be changed into darkness,
and the moon will be changed into blood,
before the great and spectacular day of the Lord comes.
21 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. (Joel 2:28-32)

I mentioned that last week our kids talked about this story in kids’ church, so I’ve invited two of our 4th and 5th grade kids to tell us what struck them most about this story this year.

Pentecost was a holiday already before this story. Pentecost was a Greek name for the holiday. Today, Jews call this day for its Hebrew name, Shavuot. It was a spring harvest festival. And it’s also the day Jews remember the gift of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. So it’s the birthday of words, spoken words and written words of God, through the lips and pens of people. The anniversary of the beginning of the Bible.

Pentecost is another beginning. This time it’s the beginning of a more intimate experience of God. Not just words you read or hear, but a communicative presence of God with us and among us that we can feel.

It’s like wind. It’s like fire.

A lot of the time we read the Bible from the perspective of the main characters, of the heroes.

So we read the Pentecost story and we think of the wild experience of Jesus’ friends suddenly speaking languages they’ve never learned. We hear the image of something like wind and something like fire, and we think – these not very educated working class fishers and tax collectors from the countryside are so bold and articulate and powerful.

And for some of us, this is very attractive.

This story has become a big deal in the parts of Christianity that are called Pentecostal, or sometimes Charismatic. Our church has some background here too.

And in these parts of the Christian church, we like to be able to experience God super-close, super personally, super intimate. And that can be beautiful and special. This has actually been important to my faith.

But sometimes too we can be kind of hooked on what I call the big dopamine hits of an experience of God. We don’t just want to pray, we want to pray in a language we’ve never learned before because that feels extra special. People call that speaking in tongues. It’s something the Bible only mentions a handful of times, and it doesn’t always seem to mean the same thing there, but this has become a big deal to some Christians, because it seems so powerful, so intimate.

Same with other kinds of powerful experiences of God doing something for you, or God doing something through you. And if all this is genuine and authentic and helpful and encouraging to other people, and you can stay humble and open about it all, that’s cool.

But I want to read this passage and this moment of Pentecost from another angle today, a different experience of what the revolution of the intimate looks like, and that’s the experience the people in this story who aren’t named have. The crowd of diaspora exiles who’d traveled back to their ancestral home of Jerusalem for the festival. See when we read the Bible, we’re not always the main characters, so it can help to read the stories from other people’s perspective.

And for these residents of Mesopotamia and Asia and Egypt and Libya and Rome, the Spirit of God is like wind. And like fire. And mostly, it’s like someone speaking to you the good news of God in your heart language, in your mother tongue.

The crowd we’re told are people who live far away. They are bicultural people, who speak more than one language, have had to learn more than one culture and way of being in the world.

Many of you know these experiences – of living in America and having people wonder where you are from, or being surprised that you speak English so well when you always have, or of being underestimated because your English is considered accented. But then you travel to where your ancestors are from and you’re told you don’t belong there either, that you’re a foreigner there as well.

In my wife’s Cantonese Chinese roots, they call you jook sing – a hollow bamboo reed, like you might look Chinese on the outside but on the inside, it’s not all there anymore. You’ve lost part of your culture. Or some say it’s like you’re not connected on either end, not belonging in either culture.

This is the pain of bicultural people, of diaspora people. The doors and hearts that are closed to the fullness of who you are.

It’s the pain of colonized people – then with Jews under the Romans and in modern history. Willie James Jennings puts it this way. I’m gonna quote him at length here.

He says,

“Imagine people in many places, in many conquered sites, in many tongues all being told that their languages are secondary, tertiary, and inferior to the supreme languages of the enlightened peoples. Make way for Latin, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, and English. These are the languages God speaks. These are the scholarly languages of the transcending intellect and the holy mind. Imagine centuries of submission and internalized hatred of mother tongues and in the quiet spaces of many villages, many homes, women, men, and children practicing these new enlightened languages not by choice but by force. Imagine peoples largely from this new Western world learning native languages not out of love, but as utility for domination. Imagine mastering native languages in order to master people, making oneself their master and making them slaves. Now Imagine Christianity deeply implicated in all this, in many cases riding high on the winds of this linguistic imperialism, a different sounding wind. Christianity was ripe for this tragic collaboration with colonialism because it had learned before the colonial moment egan to separate a language from a people. It had learned to value, cherish, and even love the language of Jewish people found in Scripture – but hate Jewish people.”

Into this horrible habit we have of cultural and linguistic erasure sweeps Pentecost where the bicultural, diaspora, jook sing crowd hear people unlike them speak the good news of God to them in their mother tongue.

It’s linguistic reinstatement, it’s cultural validation, it’s a decolonizing of the good news message of Jesus. It’s a revolution of the intimate.

Jennings one more time:

“God speaks people, fluently.”

Let me say that again:

“God speaks people, fluently. And God, with all the urgency that is with the Holy Spirit, wants the disciples of his only begotten Son to speak people fluently too.”

This is the revolution of the intimate, this profound knowingness of God for all of who I am, just as I am. I’m part of the story, as my immigrant self, as by Black self, as my descendant of barely literate Scots-New Yorkers self, as my queer self, as whoever I am, just as I am. God knows and speaks to me and loves me as me.

And God calls us all to know and speak to one another in this same curious, knowing, generous, respectful, loving spirit as well.

This is why that Board meeting of ours held power. It wasn’t just celebrating an anniversary or eating cake, it was the invitation of the Spirit to know and be known fully and deeply just as we are. We may not have heard all of the good news of Jesus or the mighty works of God in our mother tongue, but we had a revolution of the intimate nevertheless, as we were translated and known to one another.

And that encouraged us to imagine the stories we dream that will be told some day about our justice work.

These things are connected by the way. The revolution of the intimate – the safety and knowingness of our whole selves, and the awareness that God knows us, that God speaks us. This helps us flourish.

As the passage says,

Your young will see visions.

Your elders will dream dreams.

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

The revolution of the intimate empowers visions and dreams. And the revolution of the intimate saves us.

We’re near the end of AAPI Awareness month right now, and this month one of the books I’ve read by Asian-American authors was the autobiography of Grace Lee Boggs. Grace Lee Boggs is someone my wife Grace has been encouraging me to learn about and talk about for years, because she’s this important Asian-American activist whose story so profoundly embodies parts of this revolution of the intimate.

Grace Lee Boggs grew up in New York City, in the early 1900s, a child of the first waves of Chinese immigrants to American cities over 100 years ago. Her family kind of split apart over time, and she became the one intellectual. She earned a PhD in philosophy way back in 1940, and was interested in radical politics and the transformation of American life to empower the poor and working class.

But her big pivot when she learned about the March on Washington – not the famous one from the 1960s with MLK and John Lewis and all but the one before that, way back in 1941, organized by Philip Randolph, that got the American military desegregated.

When Grace Lee Boggs learned about the success of that march, she thought: Black Americans have the culture, the religion, the institutions, and the strength to make justice possible in this country. And as an adult child of Chinese immigrants and a PhD in philosophy, she decided to embed herself in the Black freedom struggle. First, she supported and partnered with a Trinidadian radical activist named C. L. R. James. Then later, while living in Detroit, she married a Black union leader named Jimmy Boggs, and together, Grace and Jimmy were instrumental leaders in the Northern Black freedom movement and the beginnings of the Black Power movement as well.

Grace Lee Boggs lived an incredible life, an incredible story of the revolution of the intimate – two people of two cultures – African-American and Chinese-American, both oppressed and marginalized in this land, largely living apart, amidst mutual misunderstanding and stereotype and mistrust, joined in mutual knowing, mutual respect, and mutual action for the common good.

These kinds of revolutions of the intimate truly help save us.

Friends, I wonder about all the ways our world is looking for the revolution of the intimate.

I think about children who are cold to their parents, or even who are estranged from their parents, who need prodigal mothers and prodigal fathers to keep seeing them, keep looking out for them, keep moving toward them, keep loving them.

I think of apologies that could be made, gifts that could be given, love and encouragement that could be articulated.

I think of communities of great difference – our schools, our city, even our church – where humble, generous knowing and sharing of stories helps us see visions and dream dreams together.

I think of the anxious places in our hearts that need an encouraging word from God that in the details of who and where we are, we are seen and accompanied, so that our healing, saving journey can keep moving forward.

And I yearn, let’s go. Let’s not give up on the possibility of seeing and knowing one another, and growing the revolution of the intimate among us as well.

And in all these places, I yearn: come Holy Spirit, speak your good news and mighty works to us again.

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We are coming to the end of our “Wisdom” series – with one more week to come. Where we’ve been dipping into some of the wisdom literature – Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Psalms — to mine these books for wisdom – to line the pathways of our real lives. In hopes of helping our lives “work.”

When we started this series — I didn’t realize we’d be finishing up right around the end of the academic year. It’s when the energy in this Cambridge/greater Boston area shifts -relaxes- a little bit. With finals, and dissertations being submitted, with graduations — and celebrations — marking of another year complete.

More drops of wisdom in the wisdom bucket.

I was talking with my college student, Elle — who is home for a bit — and I was like,

“Can you believe you’re officially a Junior?”

And she was like

“shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh — don’t say that too loud –it might be real…”

And between the shushing — was the tenor of things I’ve felt before – that I feel now – the expectation of being wise/er. The realization that with advancement (whether study, or years in a job, or age ) — there should be a parallel “up and to the right” trajectory of wisdom.

And we give plenty of accompanying questions that set up that tenor over a span of a life — like:

• “What are you going to do with your life?”

• “What are you doing with your life?”

• “What have you done with your life?”

I like to imagine how Wisdom herself would respond to those questions? Likely very directly.
“My life?” — well, I plan on living it. Or I’m currently living it, or I have lived it.

And to offer those answers not smugly, but with clarity, with a deep immovable knowing.

Wisdom as we’ve been talking about these last few weeks is to live our very life as it comes to us, and as we come to it…. with the spirit of God alongside.

Wisdom is a nurturer, a cultivator of all life. Wisdom isn’t choosy or selective — it asks us to partner with her in ALL THAT IS this “wild and precious life” — and to take on courage as we do. Because “wild” doesn’t mean linear and predictable and “precious” doesn’t mean we get to choose what is “precious.” A life that “works” is to believe that we can and we will live ALL of this life (as many as the days we have), — with all of who we are and with all of who God is — and it will matter to all who we encounter. This is wisdom.

I want to offer a story from the Bible today that I revisit again and again in my own life — especially when I feel void of wisdom. It’s a story where courage and wisdom kind of go hand in hand (so you’ll hear me mention both sometimes interchangeably throughout the sermon) — because it is almost always courageous to embody wisdom.

This story is found in Exodus and it is of these two women.

Two midwives.

Whose names are Shiphrah and Puah.

They break open a whole host of helpful ways to think about wisdom – anchored to their utter belief and embodiment of the way they live their lives WITH God.

Prayer

Thank you God for this new morning – – for your love that embraces us just as we are. Thank you for gathering us here — promising us that you have something in store for us — whether we recognize it, can name it — or not… could you help us to feel your presence. .. your comfort today, your rest, your joy, your peace — could you nestle it deep in our hearts, in our bones — and remind us that no one can take away such love. In the strength, the courage, the resistance, the creativity and the wisdom you give, Amen.

Story

A couple of weeks ago a few of us from the staff went over to Wilson’s Farm and picked our own tulips. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and the rows and rows of these flowers blooming in every possible color was stunning. So much beauty, so much budding life.

And oddly – kind of right in the middle of all these rows was a square area roped off that said “bird nesting here”. As a couple of us drew closer to inspect — there she was this small bird, called a killdeer standing over three speckled eggs.

In the past I apprenticed on a farm for a few years and I knew this bird immediately. Killdeer love to lay their eggs in fields, Actually they aren’t picky at all they lay their eggs in patches of gravel wherever they can find it – sides of tennis courts, corners of driveways, parking lots (they prefer the ground) – and it often coincides with where there is a lot of human activity.

I don’t know about you — but this seems pretty unwise, not wise – without wisdom.

There’s so much potential for danger. So much potential life at stake.

Seemingly a consistent source of fear and threat.

And yet I stood there watching this bird – — standing so still — with three of us looming over her nest, her eggs, casting huge shadows.

And she was so Calm. Steadfast. Unflappable.

So convinced she seemed of her role to be with her eggs, to stay… to stay so close.

I said out loud:

“Good job momma.”

It was kind of moving to me — this immovable tiny bird.

Midwives

We often enter the story of Shiphrah and Puah through a more well known story — the story of Moses. Many of you probably have heard the epic story of Moses – this Hebrew baby that was drawn from the water and raised in Pharaoh’s courts and becomes not a prince, but a liberator of his people. These people, the Israelites, who have been enslaved and considered less than human by the Egyptians – it’s the story of the great exodus from Egypt into the promised land.

This story of Moses is the one we know… But we don’t as often visit the story of Shiphrah and Puah – the story that sets the stage for baby Moses to grow up and live, and a story that in some ways determines the fate of an entire people.

So let’s read the story together:

Exodus 1

8 Now a new king came to power in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph.

9 He said to his people, “The Israelite people are now larger in number and stronger than we are.

10 Come on, let’s be smart and deal with them. Otherwise, they will only grow in number. And if war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land.”

11 As a result, the Egyptians put foremen of forced work gangs over the Israelites to harass them with hard work. They had to build storage cities named
Pithom (Pye-thahm) and Rameses for Pharaoh.

12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they grew and spread, so much so that the Egyptians started to look at the Israelites with disgust and dread.

13 So the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites.

14 They made their lives miserable with hard labor, making mortar and bricks, doing field work, and by forcing them to do all kinds of other cruel work.

15 The king of Egypt spoke to two Hebrew midwives named Shiphrah and Puah:

16 “When you are helping the Hebrew women give birth and you see the baby being born, if it’s a boy, kill him. But if it’s a girl, you can let her live.”

17 Now the two midwives feared God so they didn’t obey the Egyptian king’s order. Instead, they let the baby boys live.

18 So the king of Egypt called the two midwives and said to them, “Why are you doing this? Why are you letting the baby boys live?”

19 The two midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because Hebrew women aren’t like Egyptian women. They’re much stronger and give birth before any midwives can get to them.”

20 So God treated the midwives well, and the people kept on multiplying and became very strong.

21 And because the midwives FEARED GOD, God gave them households of their own.

A little context to where we pick up here – The Israelites had moved to Egypt during a time of famine and starvation. Joseph – had been sold into slavery in Egypt as a result of his jealous brother’s action – had helped the Israelites land here. Joseph’s time in Egypt was blessed by God – and he worked his way into high standing in Egypt – and the Israelites fared well. And for a while the Israelites and Egyptians coexisted without (that much) trouble.

Soon though, a new King came into Egypt – and it says “He did not know Joseph”. This means he didn’t know Joseph’s people or his God – and therefore he looked out at the Israelites with fear and suspicion and saw them as a threat, as the “other.”

He attempts to limit the growth of the Hebrews – who only seem to grow in number, by dehumanizing them in systemic ways – by slavery, and forced labor and oppression. These attempts however don’t seem to make a difference.

So Pharoah enacts a fear campaign,

“What if we were attacked by our enemies and these growing number of Israelites – join sides with our enemies?”

“We would be crushed!”

And this fear messaging – starts to shift the opinion of his people – and there’s more of a widespread buy in – to oppress and segregate.

Pharaoh’s xenophobia pushes him to take drastic measures to ensure these “outsiders” do not one day take over the land – and his latest attempt as we see here – is calling forth these two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah. Under government sanctions Shiphrah and Puah are enlisted to participate in the extermination of Hebrew baby boys. To bring death to the world around them.

Now the text reads that these women were Hebrew midwives… and yet there’s a lot of conversation among scholars that suggests that these women were in fact Egyptian – but attended the birth of Hebrew women. So they were midwives TO Hebrew women.

I’m inclined to agree with this take – it makes sense to me that Pharaoh would want his own “people” to carry out this decree…

This means Shiphrah and Puah likely attended both Hebrew and Egyptian births. And midwives were often thought to be women who couldn’t have children themselves, so they were often pushed to the edges of society. Shiphrah and Puah, are thought to possibly be Nubian midwives, from now Northern Sudan — meaning that their relationships, throughout their vocational lives – spanned cultural and geographical lines.

A midwife’s primary role is to usher in life, regardless of status, race or any other defining division… To stay close, to assist, guide and protect life.

So Pharoah’s quite strategic with his newest attempt to limit the growth of the Hebrews. He knows that these midwives are the touchpoint to life or death.. And he decrees, “choose death.”

I can imagine Shiphrah and Puah wondered what wisdom would say here —- Because the options seem so stark — EITHER we are courageous and 1) we refuse to follow Pharoah’s orders and we likely die and likely our friends and families also die.

OR

We aren’t courageous and 2) we follow Pharoah’s orders – and we promote the sovereignty of our state – and by the work of our own hands, bring death to the next generation of Hebrew males.

Thankfully wisdom’s favorite spot seems to be in these perceived “either/or” scenarios… it seems to be the very spot that wisdom cries out! Right in the middle of this gritty life — with threats all around wisdom surfaces in their path — in an unimagined way.

The text here says that Shiphrah and Puah

“fear God.”

They revere and love and trust God. Their belief in God – seems to be a way of harnessing wisdom and courage… and it seems as though it isn’t only found in this one high-stakes moment with Pharaoh – but it’s been built and developed over their WHOLE lives…

Fearing God – helps them imagine beyond the binary – to reframe wisdom beyond having to have a “right” choice – a “yes or no” to Pharoah – it’s instead about saying “yes” to LIFE with God. *And here opens the field of new possibility — right? — the birthing ground of wisdom*

These midwives – are courageous! They are divinely defiant! And they are wise. They’re heroically brave in their refusal to kill baby boys, they’re clever in their explanation to Pharaoh of why baby boys keep being born,

“these Hebrew women are so strong and vigorous that they birth their babies before we can arrive!”

… the wisdom in that response – isn’t just an excuse to buy them time – it’s a subversive move to uphold the strength and dignity of the Hebrew people to Pharoah.

As I mentioned, Shiphrah and Puah were likely midwives who attended their own people’s births- -but also the births of their “perceived enemies.”

These midwives were involved deeply… deeply at the center of women and their community and family stories. To just go in and assist at a birth – is not the way of the midwife. A midwife is one who sits and STAYS steadfast with people in pain and confronts spirits that are full of despair and want to give up.

Day after day – birth after birth they came along-side the “other” – these Hebrew women, who they should hate … and they take their hands and rub their backs… And they say again and again … there’s a way here… “God is here”…. This breaks open a deep belief that courage and wisdom well up from inside of us…. That it’s not only found in taking on a piece of armor for a moment of courage or a moment of wisdom at a crossroads. Their God is one who sits alongside of them too – is in their reality – A God who doesn’t just go to the margins to serve someone else – but ONE who LIVES at the margins.”

These midwives do this, they live at the margins…. And in their vocation, take on a calling, an oath to “in all ways attend to all of life”… And the courage they dip into – is God’s, because they believe that God is truly with them. And they greet pain – the pain of childbirth and the pain of injustice and the pain of not being seen… with these virtues of God. A living God.

I can wonder if those questions —

“So what are you planning to do with your life? Or what are you doing with your life?”

grate on us sometimes because we wrestle with deeper ones already — does what I do matter? Does it touch real life? Has it brought forth anything new or wise into the world?

These midwives seem to encourage us that “yes” – wherever we are – whatever we do, whoever we talk to – matters. That if we do it with kindness and generosity and equity, backed by a God that is real… It all matters.

These 1,000’s of moments where they offer their laboring and birthing mother’s – cool washcloths to their foreheads… where they gently turn babies inside of wombs – where they listen closely for heartbeats … where they root for life! With their encouraging words, “yes push”, “you are almost there”… “life is coming”…

These times of being so intimately close to life – and so close to God – rewire our pathways to see the movement of GOD AND the movement of all of our LIFE as one… beyond political/authoritative decrees OR external circumstances or opinions or power – that try to inject fear.

For Shiphrah and Puah – these moments compile and develop a courageous heart – and whether Egyptian or Hebrew – male or female …the passion for justice and care for all of humanity – becomes a non-negotiable with a real, good, and living God close to us, who stands with us in the threats, the war zones of this wild life.

Omid Safi (a Duke University professor of Islamic studies) said recently that this closeness (to God), is what allows us to see that the

“love we recognize in other people — people who love their babies and their community — is the same love that we love our babies and our community with… AND when we recognize this same love in one another, we will not stand for having something happen to other people’s babies and community that we wouldn’t want to have happen to ours. That is simply what we call justice — and this work of justice is BIRTHED out of a heart wrapped in wisdom, courage and love. (Onbeing reference).

The courage and wisdom to say “justice and love” must go hand and hand.

This is the powerful picture of wisdom that Shiphrah and Puah give us today, one that they still invite us to!

Story killdeer

It turns out when killdeer feel as though their nest is truly threatened they put on what’s called a “broken wing act.” If a human gets too close to their nest, a killdeer will splay its wing out awkwardly and appear hurt, dragging themselves across the ground — moving away from their nests. It’s a subversive / distraction tactic that often lures humans away from stepping on their nests. Humans of course thinking they could help a tiny bird follow the killdeer — until they are a safe margin away from the nest — and then magically the killdeer flies away.

Their dedication to nurturing life is full of wisdom after all.

Perhaps it’s bird instincts, primal — perhaps it’s this specific species genetic make-up — it’s been in their design, in their DNA — for centuries.

So is true for us my friends. The wisdom of Shiphrah and Puah and the spirit of God lives in our bodies — in our DNA — too.

I’m slowly beginning to realize that the question at hand isn’t either

“Am I with wisdom?”

OR

“Am I without wisdom?”

Because likely on any given day – I am both Wise and really not wise. The question is,

“can I harness the wisdom of a God that is always with me?”

That’s a helpful reframe for me because life is hard…

And otherwise – I think the threat of disparaging thoughts can take over – Am I only destined to be a prisoner to the pharaohs of my day? Will I ever witness something other than pain and heartache?

But the words of Paul in Ephesians, fill out my truncated thoughts – with the power and realness of Jesus…

He reminds me that,

I am not a prisoner of anyone else – but of JESUS who wraps me in humility and gentleness and patience – who gives me the wisdom to continue to lean toward people with love – with an eagerness of heart that seeks to maintain the unity of the Spirit – this powerful Jesus who makes a way – for the bonding posture of peace. … This is the power of Jesus.

Jesus makes way for wisdom that is ever- present, running through our veins, on the tips of our tongues, in the palms of our hands as we touch life around us – and in our feet as we roam this earth.

We are all called to be wise and courageous. And to believe that our everyday posture of heralding life – in spaces where only death looks apparent – will produce change – somewhere down .. the line…

The outcome that Shiphrah and Puah witness after making their courageous move to not kill these Hebrew baby boys – could have felt disappointing to them…. Because Pharoah just keeps marching on with his plans to wipe out these babies – demanding that all his people throw them into the Nile River.

BUT they did briefly prevent a genocide of children! AND what Shiphrah and Puah wouldn’t have seen at the time – is that their story – their WHOLE story of being women who courageously live at the margins, and who so wisely stood against power and oppression – would and IS continued to be told. That their names will be kept alive – and whispered among the Hebrew women – that their names will be yelled out in the pains of labor, as sign-posts of resistance and hope, (when their land is vacant of it) – and that their courage to say “we fear God”, would give Pharaoh’s daughter, and Moses’ sister and Moses’ mother the courage to protect & hide and find and nurse him to life.

These names of Shiphrah and Puah – are recorded! We get to see them written down in the text that we read today! This shows us that a lifetime of wisdom, empowered with the Divine – is worth 3,000 years of remembrance and legacy – and still worth talking about today….While Pharaoh’s fearful acts of dominating power and authority – leaves him nameless and less than 300 years of fame…

Perhaps our role is akin to the role of a midwife – to cherish other life as our own – to regard it as “precious” – to stand right where we are in our jobs and roles and play and live – and reclaim these paths, these places as fields and gardens of abundant wisdom.

Revised from 2017 sermon

The post The Wisdom of Shiphrah and Puah first appeared on Reservoir Church.

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Hi Everyone. My name is Lydia Shiu, my pronouns are she/they, I’m one of the pastors here. I’ll be sharing a few words with you today. Let me pray for us to get started.

Holy and Loving God, I thank you that you have given us this day. We come into this place of worship from all different backgrounds and experiences. God, you have gathered us here to teach us and show us that you love each and every one of us uniquely and abundantly, no matter who we are, what we’ve done, what we’ve left undone. Help us to experience your presence with us even now, help us to see and feel your love, maybe through a word or a thought that hits us in a fresh new way. Bring new mercies to us this morning we pray, in Jesus name. Amen.

It’s been a while since I’ve been up here. Last few months I’ve been leading a Bible Study with our youth group. We did deep dives into some Bible texts about Sodom and Gomorrah, and what they call the “clobber texts,” texts that have been used to hurt and suppress the LGBTQIA+ community, and texts about how nothing can separate us from the love of God.

We discussed how the Bible has been translated and interpreted in many ways and how we are to engage and understand the Bible. It’s a big task, the Bible is a big book, but it was actually fun and interesting to learn and discuss these things together. I shared my testimony at some point, about the shame of graduating from college one semester late and how much that isolated me from my community, how I felt like a failure and alone. And how Jesus defending the sinful woman in front of the Pharisees resonated with me and felt like God was comforting me through it. Our young people listened at times with wide eyes, other times with boredom, not too different from here when you hear us preach, and they asked good questions like,

“why do you think the Bible included all that bad stuff?”

and

“do you think there are more blades of grass or grains of sand in the world?”

when we talked about God’s love being like the grains of sand.

I come to you today carrying our precious young people in our hearts. A new generation of post-iPhones, post-covid, tender, brilliant, courageous teens. I’m so proud of our church for being a church that not only welcomes, but fully affirms queer and non-binary kids. And I bring to us today a text that we read last week, on our last week of eight weeks together, that culminated to not just wrestling with the tough parts of the Bible, but getting to the core of the message of the Bible and what we’re doing here at church at all–that God loves us and is with us.

I know we have been in the preaching series called Lives That Work, learning from the wisdom literatures, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and I bring to us today from the wisdom literature, the heavyweight champion, Psalms. Psalm 139, a fan favorite. We read this in the youth group together and the message carries to our young people, to y’all our old people and everyone in between. Because the Psalms express the expanse of the human condition in a candid conversations with God, from the “depths of need to heights of celebration,” it has become time and time again, one of the truest models and pictures of our own faith journeys. Yes, it’s got wisdom.

What’s the difference between smarts and wisdom? What is wisdom and why is it so important? Well, many of us know how to be smart. We read. We learn. And most of the world is really good at teaching us what to do to make more money, be more efficient, how to be more productive, or climb the ladder of success, through university education or university of YouTube. But wisdom, wisdom is not so clear. The wise answer could often start with, “well that depends….” and follow up with a question. Even Proverbs, as pastor Steve has touched upon in other weeks, has lines that are not meant to be blanket statements but for us to consider with grains of salt applications. You can’t just take a line and apply it to all situations, like

“houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the LORD.”

I mean… who are these parents they are talking about, get me one of those parents please. And I have nothing to say on the latter part of the phrase.

Wisdom is not something you just learn. It’s something you live with and work out and try and feel through. Wisdom are things my mom said to me growing up, a thousand times like, rinse your mouth with water after you eat like this, “gargle gargle” and I’d be like “mom! You told me a hundred times!” And my English-as-a-second-distant-language would reply, “I know I know, I tell you a hundred times!” And these days I be like “gargle gargle” after meals cause crowns are expensive.

Alright, that was all intro. Let’s get to the text to see what wisdom this text has for us.

Psalm 139:1-18

1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

3 You search out my path and my lying down

and are acquainted with all my ways.

4 Even before a word is on my tongue,

O Lord, you know it completely.

5 You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

7 Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

9 If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

10 even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and night wraps itself around me,”[a]

12 even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

that I know very well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In your book were written

all the days that were formed for me,

when none of them as yet existed.[b]

17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;

I come to the end[c]—I am still with you.

Walter Brueggemann in his book the Message of the Psalms would probably categorize this Psalm 139 as a Psalm of Disorientation. You see, Brueggeman categorizes the Psalms into 3 categories, Psalms of Orientation, Psalms of Disorientation, and Psalms of Reorientation. For example, I shared this last time I preached but that was like a million years ago, so here it is again, Psalm 1 says things like,

“Blessed is the human who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked…they are like a tree planted by streams of water

(I’m re-translating from “man” to “human” and “he” to “they”)

which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do propers.”

That’s how we all start. The basics. Do this and you’ll get this. A simple equation for how life works.

But then, you live a little and you see like in Psalm 73,

“I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong.”

When we don’t see the world as we were taught, it confuses us. We were taught to be good kids. Do well in school. Get a college degree. Marry well and your life should work out just fine. The simple equation for how life should work. Maybe you even followed many of the Proverbs to the tee. But then a tragedy befalls and we’re like, but I did everything right.

• Why did this happen to me? I didn’t smoke, how could I get cancer?
• I was so devoted to him, how could he cheat on me?
• I did everything for my parents, how could they give all their inheritance away?

I did everything right and I did not prosper.

And we scream at God,

how could you? You said if I just stay close to your water, my leaf will not wither, but look at this mess, withering!

Like a child, but you promised! Disorientation.

The thing about wisdom literature I hate is that they never explain the disconnect. They don’t give an explanation for why the wicked prospers. The Bible does not have an answer to why humans suffer. Why do bad things happen to good people? Nobody knows.

What is the Christian answer to our suffering and our disorientation? Our failures and our deep down in the pits?

Bruggeman says this:

“The use of these “Psalms of darkness” may be judged by the world to be the acts of unfaith and failure, but the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith, albeit a transformed faith. It is an act of bold faith on the one hand, because it insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way. On the other hand it is bold because it insists that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God. There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or inappropriate. Everything properly belongs in this conversation of the heart. To withhold parts of life from that conversation is in fact to withhold part of life from the sovereignty of God. Thus these psalms make the important connection: everything must be brought to speech, and everything brought to speech must be addressed to God, who is the final reference for all of life.”

It’s included. It belongs. Your suffering. The darkness. The disorientation. The edges. The end. The limits. At the depths. It’s all included. And it’s all God’s. There’s nothing that can separate us from the love of God.

In the King James version (which is not a personal favorite as far as translations go but some parts of it are translated quite accurately), verse 12 says:

“12 Yea, the darkness hideth not from Thee, but the night shineth as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee.”

Which is slightly different from what we read earlier that said:

12 even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

As if dark shouldn’t be dark and dark is bad and bright is good and actually darkness should be more like light. But King James says, the darkness does not hide and the night SHINES. And that light and dark are both alike to thee. I like you okay, King James!

I’ve been learning about the false dichotomy of dark and light that’s so ingrained in us, through Black Liturgies, an Instagram account that has really some beautiful prayers. In a Podcast by the Faith and Justice Network, the author of Black Liturgies Cole Arthur Riley talked about this thing she does. She said that once a month she goes without artificial light. So no phone, computer, lamp. Just the sun and the night. She does use candles a bit but she embraces that time before the sun comes up or as the sun goes down how the darkness changes and sits with how the darkness makes you feel. What an interesting practice right?

In fact, I think what wisdom teaches us is that actually there in the darkness, we can find that God is there in the depths.

Richard Rohr calls this

“the way down is the way up”

in his book called “Falling Upward.” You want to experience God? A spiritual height of growth and awakening? The way down is the way up.

He talks about this in the context of how in the first half of our lives we’re obsessed with upward mobility, growing up, achieving, accomplishing, doing it right. He says,

“First-half-of-life religion is almost always about various types of purity codes or “thou shalt nots” to keep us up, clear, clean, and together, like good Boy and Girl Scouts…”

But that second half of life, it’s really about letting go. He says,

“Like skaters, we move forward by actually moving from side to side. I found this phenomenon to be core and central to my research on male initiation, and now we are finding it mirrored rather clearly in the whole universe, especially in physics and biology, which reveal one huge pattern of entropy: constant loss and renewal, death and transformation, the changing of forms and forces. Some even see it in terms of “chaos theory”: the exceptions are the rule and then they create new rules. Scary isn’t it?”

He calls it like a secret to life, that if we are not aware of this reality, this wisdom, the same thing that Jesus was saying,

“last shall be first,”

and one of my favorite verse, 2 Corinthians 12:10 says,

“it is when I am weak, that I am strong,”

if we don’t understand this parable, life will not work. Life will be even harder than the hard suffering itself.

If we are unable to embrace this depth, darkness, disorientation, we will never find the reorientation gift that’s offered there. Another wisdom literature, the Ecclesiastes, tells us that there’s a season for everything.

“a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot.”

You want lives that work? Go and learn what this means, as Jesus would say after he drops a doozy of a parable. It’s counterintuitive. It’s hella confusing. It’s extremely inconvenient frankly. But if you don’t invite the hard work and just keep saying, my life is fine, my life is fine, obsessed with optimizing our lives rather than losing it, (Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.), it will breakdown in the middle of the road at the most inconvenient time.

What is the way-down invitation that God is showing you in your life right now?

How can you release and open up that part of your life and say to God,

“Search me Lord, and know my heart?”

How can you bring your darkness to light, or to put it in another way, invite God and invite others to be with and see you in the darkness?

Every time I pick up my kids midday, I go from bright sunlight outside to the dark classroom where they are napping. And when I first step in, at first it’s pitch black. I have to stop and not take another step cause I can’t see anything. I listen. There’s soft music playing, teachers cutting up some things for the next craft item. But the longer I stay there, my eyes adjust and I can see honestly everything. My daughter’s sleeping face. The kid that’s awake and staring at me.

When you invite folks into your darkness, you’re giving them a gift. A gift to see the tenderness, the grace. It’s up to them if they are scared or uncomfortable, need to turn on any light in the room to make themselves feel better. But the good ones, good ones will just come and sit with you. And you’ll get to learn who the good ones are.

I want to close with a poem that one of the youth group kids wrote. In the Bible study last week, we were quietly reflecting on the words for a full five minutes together in silence, and one of the students, Liv shared how verse 7-12 resonated with her. And as she shared, it included another one of my favorite verses there,

“if I make my bed in the depth, you are there.”

which was a verse that gave me such comfort during a time in my life where I was crying in bed a lot. And like a obnoxious cheezy pastor I started crying kind of uncontrollably and the kids are like, Uhhhhh, and so I had to explain myself and just started preaching at the teens like,

“look, if you don’t get anything out of the bible studies I did with y’all just know one thing, when you’re going through dark stuff, I hope you don’t but maybe you already have, but if you do, know God is there with you, okay? I hope when and if you ever feel alone, that you will be open to God’s voice saying, it’s okay, I love you!”

as I was blubbering about. That night Liv texted me this poem she wrote inspired by Psalm 139. She told me I could share with you all.

“Where are you, God?”

Drowning in tears,

Surrounded by fears,

Trapped in my mind,

Alone, confined.

At the edge of the sea,

Yet still, you see me,

In a world stripped bare,

You’re always there,

I’m lost in the night,

God you are the light,

In every breeze,

In the rustling leaves,

You whisper you care,

Because God,

You are there,

You are there,

You are there.

This girl knows what’s up. She’s falling upward.

If life is not working out for you right now, I hope you know that even that, the not working out part, is God’s, it’s included, there, right there in the midst of your greatest downfall, God is there, meeting you, lifting you up. May we know deeply that my friend. Let me pray for us.

Emmanuel God with us, one who revealed the meaning of what it means for you to be with us through the life of Jesus, we thank you for the presence of your spirit with us and within.

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So May is Mental Health Awareness month. I hadn’t realized that until a friend reached out and asked if we’d want to connect with the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, who wanted to collaborate with faith communities on an awareness weekend.

I was so glad for this because our mental well-being matters to us, of course. And it matters to God and it matters to this faith community too.

Last year we had this huge capital campaign for our 25th anniversary. You all were extraordinarily generous. You pledged over $1.4 million dollars in extra one-time giving to sustain the future of this church, the majority of which has already been given. Another big thank you to us all for that.

Our biggest goal was to pay off all our old church debts from when we came into this property 20 years ago, and to discern some new ways our church could be a gift to us all and to our neighbors and our whole city, through some new ministry that would express our vision for God’s work of growing what we call beloved community. That’s a society of belonging, of love, of opportunity, wellness, and justice. An expression of Jesus’ vision for the commonwealth of God.

And as you all pledged toward this campaign, we asked you what you’d like to see our church do more of, and quite a few of you mentioned mental health and wellness. So many that we have a working group right now exploring what our church can do to promote spiritual and mental wellness more broadly –for people that call Reservoir their church but also for our friends and neighbors and others in our city. We’re working on this again because your spiritual and mental well-being, and that of all your friends and neighbors matters to us and it matters to God.

So I’m glad to be in this mental health awareness partnership today. We actually have two representatives here from the Massachusetts Behavioral Health Line. They’ll be in the dome with a whole bunch of helpful information about mental health and about a ton of mental health and recovery resources for us and for our communities. So stop by and say hi to them, ask questions, pick up resources if you like.

And today, since we’re studying the old wisdom literature from the Hebrew scriptures, I want to introduce you or re-introduce you to the book of Job, where we meet a person who has experienced considerable trauma. And I want to ask,

What if Job had had a therapist? Or what if Job had even had a few decent friends?

Friends who weren’t therapists or experts on mental health, but maybe just knew the basics.

Job is a weird book. We’re pretty sure this is not history. It’s probably an old legend or fable that was expanded and written down by an intellectual living in Jerusalem like 2,500 years ago.

The beginning has God making bets with some sort of Satan-type character, and the ending is basically like the very worst happy ending that anyone ever tried to slap onto a tragic story. So the very beginning and very ending, which were probably tacked on last, are kind of awful. But everything else in between is fascinating. We meet this man named Job, who is wrestling with an extraordinary amount of suffering and trauma.

Here’s a taste of it, from the beginning.

Job 1:13-22 (Common English Bible)

13 One day Job’s sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house.

14 A messenger came to Job and said: “The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys were grazing nearby

15 when the Sabeans took them and killed the young men with swords. I alone escaped to tell you.”

16 While this messenger was speaking, another arrived and said: “A raging fire fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and devoured the young men. I alone escaped to tell you.”

17 While this messenger was speaking, another arrived and said: “Chaldeans set up three companies, raided the camels and took them, killing the young men with swords. I alone escaped to tell you.”

18 While this messenger was speaking, another arrived and said: “Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,

19 when a strong wind came from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It fell upon the young people, and they died. I alone escaped to tell you.”

20 Job arose, tore his clothes, shaved his head, fell to the ground, and worshipped.

21 He said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb; naked I will return there. The Lord has given; the Lord has taken; bless the Lord’s name.”

22 In all this, Job didn’t sin or blame God.

So if we want to keep a distance from this story, we could laugh at it. There’s something almost comical about the speed and totality with which this man’s world comes crumbling down, from two different raiding armies, and fires. and even a strong wind that knocks a whole house down and crushes Job’s kids during their party – geesh. Somewhere out there there’s a preacher saying:

it was the wine that started it.

Evil.

But let’s not keep a distance. Job has a big loving family and a thriving, prosperous agricultural business, and he loses it all. This is followed soon after by some severe health problems that add chronic physical pain to this heartbreak.

Maybe you’ve known people who have seemed to face tragedy after tragedy, like stuff just piles up on them? Like when your friend says, it seems like this is the year when all my people are dying. I met a Palestinian man this winter who’d had over 100 extended family members killed in this year’s conflict. Over 100. Those that remain alive have been dispossessed, dislocated as well.

Or maybe, in smaller ways, you’re been this person. You’ve been the one to face a series of catastrophes that have been more than you can bear. Whether or not they’re as dramatic as Job’s, with the loss of all his children and all his property and nearly all his health.

It doesn’t do us any good to try to rank order one another’s struggles or trauma. Suffering is suffering. And we need a lot of help when we suffer – whether that is caused by adverse circumstances, as with Job, or whether that is caused more by something within, as for those of us who have chronic physical or mental health difficulties that weren’t necessarily caused by any set of external events.

We need companions when this happens. We need compassionate, non-judgemental support. And we need help to make it through.

At first Job finds that from his faith. It’s a real surprise that line:

Job tore his clothes, shaved his head, fell to the ground, and worshiped.

I mean the first three things they are all signs of grief in his culture. They are things mourners might do. But the worshiping, that’s interesting.

Faith can be an incredible protective factor for our mental health and wellness. When I was looking for a therapist a number of years ago, I told the people I first spoke to on the phone that I did not need a Christian therapist. I didn’t need someone who shared my faith. But I did need someone who would be curious about my faith, and who would respect it, since it’s very important to me. And for years now, off and on, I’ve met with a therapist just like that – who doesn’t share my faith but is glad to explore how my faith colors the work we do and how my faith is a source of resilience for me, as I explore more and more just how much God knows and loves me in all things.

I’m not actually a big fan of how Job expresses this. The line:

The Lord has given, the Lord has taken. Bless the Lord’s name.

Far be it from me to judge Job’s faith or theology – what works for you works for you, but this is like high up on the things religion can teach you to say to someone in grief that can be extraordinarily unhelpful.

Things like:

God will never give you more trouble than you can handle.

That’s horrible. One, it’s a misinterpretation of a Bible verse that says God won’t tempt you toward sin or evil or badness. But trouble?

• One: most trouble doesn’t come from God. It’s not God’s fault that bad things happen.
• And two: when we feel like we’re going through more than we actually can handle, we don’t need someone to tell us otherwise.

This is kind of like that. When someone faces death or any other loss, to say well, God gives good gifts, and then God takes them away, so deal with it. It’s all good. Again, perhaps for Job, believing God is in control gives him comfort. But I don’t agree with him. I don’t think most of our losses are God taking things or people from us. God’s not a taker. And the form of my Christian theology at least is that God is not always in control. Horrible things can happen that God did not make or plan for. But God is always love, and God is always with us in our losses, and God is always contending for the good.

So not to nitpick here, but I wish Job’s worship could have looked more like knowing that horrible things happen sometimes, and they are not God’s fault, but God’s going to be with us through them all. I actually think the book of Job moves in this direction.

I’m allowed to talk this way, by the way. Job says a lot of things. The Bible says a lot of things too. To respect the Bible’s insight and authority does not mean needing to agree with every line. The Bible contains a lot of styles of writing, and it says a lot of different things, some of which can be in tension with each other. So to respect the Bible as a witness to what God is like and what faith looks like is to engage it seriously, not to just nod and submit to every line. Don’t assent to every single thing in the Bible, but don’t throw it out either – wrestle with it. Make sense of the whole together. We’re doing that here.

Alright, though, Job has God to lean on, and there wasn’t such a thing as a therapist back then, but at first at least, Job has three really good friends who show up for him really well. Let’s listen.

Job 2:11-13 (Common English Bible)

11 When Job’s three friends heard about all this disaster that had happened to him, they came, each one from his home—Eliphaz from Teman, Bildad from Shuah, and Zophar from Naamah. They agreed to come so they could console and comfort him.

12 When they looked up from a distance and didn’t recognize him, they wept loudly. Each one tore his garment and scattered dust above his head toward the sky.

13 They sat with Job on the ground seven days and seven nights, not speaking a word to him, for they saw that he was in excruciating pain.

This week I was talking to a thanatologist. I didn’t know what that was until last week. A thanatologist is someone who studies, and educates around, and treats death, loss, and grief. We have one on our staff team at Reservoir. Aubrie Hills, our relatively new pre-school kids’ pastor, is also trained as a social worker and thanatologist. And she’s picked up a few extra hours to help us plan for some of the new ministry work we hope to do next year and beyond, like doubling the impact of our Beloved Community Fund – connecting needs and resources – and also helping us launch these spiritual and mental wellness initiatives.

And I asked Aubrie, could you tell me what people who are grieving need most. And what she described was kind of like what these three friends do.

She was like:

when we are grieving, we need someone, or someones, to bear witness. To show up, to listen, and to validate what we are experiencing. That this loss happened, that it’s real, that it matters.

This goes for death, by the way, but also for other kinds of loss – loss of health, loss of relationship, loss of job, loss of innocence, loss of dreams. And Job’s friends Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar crush this. They stop whatever they are doing and they do what in Jewish culture is called sitting shiva. Accompanying the bereaved in the first seven days of their loss by being there.

They can’t fix anything. They have no right words to say. In fact, the text says they were silent. For a week.

But they were not silent with their bodies. They wept with Job. They tore their clothes and put dust on their heads too – maybe not our culture, most of us, but they did what Job was doing. They stopped what they were doing and they mourned with him.

Aubrie told me that people who are grieving also need others to just help out. Certainly with anything they are asked for, but actually without asking what someone else needs, just doing something. Not being like: let me know if you need anything.

(When Aubrie said this, I was like: oh, I’ve done that a bunch of times – told people, probably some of you, in low moments – let me know if you need anything. And Aubrie was like people grieving need someone to just do the thing they know how to do that helps. Like say I’m going to drop some food at your door Wednesday night, is that OK? I’d like to walk your dog in the mornings this week if that would help. Is that OK?)

I’m going to give Job’s buddies the benefit of the doubt and say they probably did this. They showed up after all, and let’s imagine they brought food with them or something.

But then the third thing that came to mind for Aubrie the thanatologist when we were talking is she was like:

then people who are grieving need others to keep doing this. To keep showing up, listening, bearing witness.

Not just for a few days, but in a month, in three months, in nine months. Because grief can take a while, and mostly other people move on faster than the one who’s born the loss.

And here’s where Job’s friends start screwing up. We’ll skip forward just a few chapters and get one more excerpt.

Job 8:1-7 (Common English Bible)

Bildad from Shuah responded:

2 How long will you mouth such things
such that your utterances become a strong wind?
3 Does God pervert justice,
or does the Almighty distort what is right?
4 If your children sinned against him,
then he delivered them into the power of their rebellion.
5 If you will search eagerly for God,
plead with the Almighty.
6 If you are pure and do the right thing,
then surely he will become active on your behalf
and reward your innocent dwelling.
7 Although your former state was ordinary,
your future will be extraordinary.

What has happened?

Job’s been wondering things like:

why did my kids die? Why am I suffering so much? Where is God in all this?

I was taught,

Job says,

that God blesses the good and curses the bad. But I’m good. I’ve been faithful. I’ve lived right. What the heck, God?

Whatever you think of all that, normal stuff for a religious person to wonder about in grief?

But it makes Job’s friends uncomfortable, so they start spouting the garbage they learned in Bible school.

Like

God probably punished your kids, Job, for something they did wrong.

(Maybe it was the wine.)

And how dare you question God? And if you’ll get yourself together, God will bless you again. Everything has a reason, they say.

Or:

maybe God needed another angel in heaven.

Or:

maybe you lost a child, but you can have another one. Horrible things people have said to someone in grief.

Job’s friends want him to move on because they are uncomfortable with the honest, raw mess of grief.

When someone we know is in grief, or when someone we know is struggling with anxiety or depression or any other form of mental health struggle, we may be uncomfortable with the degree of their difficulty. And we might not have answers to things they do or say. And that’s OK. Most of us aren’t therapists. We’re not being asked to fix anything. (And even our therapists don’t exactly fix things either, even if they have some specific skill sets for treatment.)

What grieving people need is others to bear witness and help a little, and to keep bearing witness. To show up, to care, to be there with whatever compassion or empathy we can find. That’s the job.

And that’s where Job’s friends can’t pull it off.

Sometimes we need a therapist or a psychiatrist or other mental health professionals because our mental health struggle is complex enough that someone with some special training and skills can help us in ways other people can’t. And sometimes we need a therapist or we need the behavioral health hotline or Samaritans hotline or the national 988 suicide and crisis hotline because we feel we’re too much for our friends, or they’re having a hard time still showing up.

And in this case, it’s not only a therapist that can keep bearing witness. Sometimes it can be a pastor, a family member, again a kind person on the other end of a hotline, or a different friend.

I mean Job’s friends turn truly terrible. When all this ends, I don’t know if they’re ever getting invited to the barbeque again. But just because a friend lets us down in one way, doesn’t mean they aren’t a friend worth keeping in other ways.

It takes a village to raise a child, they say. But it takes a village to love a human too. So we all need our villages. Our people, our communities. And when there’s a gap in that community, sometimes a professional resource like a therapist, or like a support group, or like a helpline, can fill the gap. Some of those kinds of resources will be out in the dome for us.

This has become more of a sermon about grief than mental health per se. And we’re nearing the end here. But I just want to acknowledge that there are a lot of reasons that we or those we love may end up needing the support of mental health professionals. Or that we might need to apply mental wellness strategies in our lives that mental health professionals have taught us.

Job didn’t have the benefit of a therapist or the wisdom of any mental health professionals. That field didn’t exist back then. But it does now. And I’m speaking to you as a pastor who’s worked with a therapist most of the past seven years and pays a lot of attention to the writing and wisdom of mental health professionals, including those that integrate their work with Christian spirituality.

So let me close with a few words of gratitude to this field, with a few other things I’ve learned about spiritual and mental wellness from our mental health professionals.

I’ve learned that suffering happens. We will grieve loss in these lives of ours. Many of us at one time or another have struggled or will struggle with trauma. Some of us face long-term, significant mental health challenges, and many of us have faced or will face them for a season.

These are not signs that we are broken or that we’ve done anything wrong. These are not signs that God isn’t loving us, or that God isn’t good, or that God isn’t here. And all this goes for when our kids or our other spouse or our other loved ones face these troubles.

I learned that as with Job, everyone needs a compassionate companion. Someone or someones who listen and bear witness. And when we can, we need to be those people for each other too.

I learned that the work happens not just in our minds but in our bodies. I mean geesh, when things get weird, Job’s friends sit there and argue with him. They could have just cooked together or gone out for a walk or something. Just as our so-called mental health can show up as challenges in the rest of our body, same the other way. Finding peace and well-being in our body can have an impact on our mental well-being too. Our spiritual well-being also, but that’s another talk.

I’ve learned that when you reckon with trauma and grief and mental health struggle, you get more comfortable with ambiguity. You learn that two things can be true at once. You can resent part of what someone has been to you, while appreciating other parts. You can have grief and gratitude at the same time. You can shed tears, and they’re sad tears or happy tears, because they’re both of those at once.

And I’ve learned that unlike in Job, happy endings aren’t guaranteed. But whatever help we can get and whatever work we can do on our mental health and wellness is worth it. Sometimes this means we’ll be able to stay alive, and that’s such a good thing. Sometimes it means we can keep moving forward, knowing we’re not alone, and hanging in there. And that’s a good thing too. And sometimes it means that we find miracles of recovery, miracles of turn-around in our lives.

With the help of God and friends, these are more common than we think too. And that’s pretty great. And it’s worth hanging on for, worth fighting for, worth getting the help. We’re all worth it. And we’re all in this together.

The post If Job Had a Therapist (Or Even a Few Good Friends) first appeared on Reservoir Church.

The post If Job Had a Therapist (Or Even a Few Good Friends) appeared first on Reservoir Church.

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When I was a public school teacher, I had this fascinating principal Bak Fun Wong. And one of the interesting things about him is he often led through proverbs. Like during a long one on one conversation or in a key moment in a staff meeting, he’d almost never weigh in with a solution or a proposal to whatever we were trying to figure out. Instead, he’d drop these proverbs – these one line sayings into a discussion and invite you to work with them and see where they’d take you.

For instance, in working on some really big change we didn’t know how to pull off, he might say:

To do the impossible, you have to see the invisible.

And to be honest, I’d be kind of annoyed. Like eyesight of the invisible is a power we do not have. Maybe I’d think, you know, Bak Fun, that is not what I would consider a solution, or a plan. Or maybe I’d think, Bak Fun, I’ve heard you say that 14 times this year already and it’s not landing any differently this time. Or maybe I’d think, this is crying out for parody.

One of my co-teachers and I used to joke about creating a collection of twisted Bak Fun proverbs. So like this one – To do the impossible, you have to see the invisible. Became: yeah, but to do what’s actually possible, you have to pay freaking attention to what is visible. (I felt annoyed with Bak Fun sometimes – too abstract, too impractical.)

But Bak Fun kept with his ways. He was not asking for my feedback or approval. Which I am grateful for. Because, surprise, surprise, he was usually wiser than me. He was inviting us into deeper, more powerful truths about what makes life work. And he was doing something better for his team than giving us solutions. He was creating an environment where we could co-construct a way forward together. And his proverbs kind of shaped the container of that environment.

I became a convert, in a way.

Bak Fun had a lot of these proverbs. He was also a Chinese calligraphy artist, and he would paint these proverbs in black ink, with their English translations, frame them and give them to us as gifts. I have a couple on my wall in my office. And 15 years since we stopped working together, I still think of them all the time. Not because they’re always true in every circumstance. They’re not.

But they’re always deep. They’re always true in part. And if you can think of them as conversation starters and not just commands, they’re pretty powerful. As last words, meh, they may or may not always be right. But as first words, they’re pretty compelling.

This is the kind of thing we find in the Bible’s wisdom literature of Proverbs. Sometimes they seem helpful and deep, other times the opposite – annoying little cliches. They can seem disarmingly simple. Out of touch with our times.

Our Saturday community group at the church spends half our time every week in Bible study, and yesterday we took a chapter of Proverbs and we each had to find the one we like the most, the one that seems truest, as well as they one that we like the least, the one that seems just plain wrong.

And I tell you that at first, it was a lot easier to pick out the ones we have problems with. Kind of fun, but geesh, there seems like some terrible advice in there.

Next week we’ll look at a different type of wisdom literature. May is Mental Health awareness month. And the state of Massachusetts is including faith communities in that awareness initiative for the first time. I worked with a couple folks at the department of mental health to talk about this initiative and spread the word. And next week, I’ll preach a mental health related sermon from an Old Testament wisdom book called Job, which is all about suffering. The sermon is: What if Job had a therapist, or even a few good friends?

But this week, back in Proverbs. What I’ll do this week is share just a few of my favorite proverbs and share how and why they speak to me. I hope you like the Proverbs, but even more so, I hope there’s some helpful stuff in here about how we read this book or even any book of the Bible. And maybe even some helpful stuff about how we practice spiritual growth, spiritual formation at all, with or without the Bible driving that.

So here we go, four of my favorite Proverbs and why.

Here’s the first, maybe my most favorite.

Proverbs 26:11 (Common English Bible)

11 Like a dog that returns to its vomit,

so a fool repeats foolish mistakes.

This is a modern translation I like. The one I have memorized is a little more poetic. What often goes through my head is that one: As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool returns to his folly.

I like this because it’s gross and really specific, so it’s memorable.

I like it because it’s true. I mean, I grew up with dogs in the house – plural, almost always two or three at a time, and they are gross. And after no dogs in the house for like 30 years, I have one again, and yep, 30 years later, dogs are still gross. Just telling you. They’ll do stuff like this.

And it’s true about people. I mean who doesn’t have the ridiculously stupid things we do, and we know they mess up our lives, or someone else’s life, or create problems for a whole bunch of people. And we know it’s foolish, and we just keep on doing that. I mean maybe you don’t relate. There is allegedly a class of people that learns things the easy way. But I’m not one of them.

And judging by what I see out in the world and – let’s keep it real – some of the stuff you all share with me – and I think a lot of them are not people that learn things the easy way. We can come back to our core mistakes, like our greatest hits of folly, again and again.

And as I was sharing with the group yesterday, I actually really like the “fool” proverbs. There’s a whole class of them. There are actually lots of “categories” of proverbs, and this is one of them – the ones that knock fools, or contrast foolishness with wisdom. And I like them because they’re real.

I mean there are some people who seem really un-self aware or really un-self -regulated. Like they don’t direct their emotions and instincts into fruitful, positive sets of actions. And the Proverbs are like:

some people are like this a lot. Notice that. And maybe don’t hire people like this. Don’t work for people like this if you don’t have to. Don’t vote for people like this. Because fools are gonna fool. It’s going to keep happening.

And it’s not just other people. Like these fool proverbs invite me to get curious about the foolish parts of me.

• Like where do I keep repeating the same no-common sense moves in my life?
• Where am I stuck in the same negative grooves that aren’t doing me or anyone else any good?

And if I can see that, this gives me a way to read this proverb. Or really any proverb, or life advice or direction. Three ways actually.

One, there’s an invitation here to know the truth about yourself.

For next week’s sermon, I’m looking at a list that a guy named Chuck DeGroat developed. Chuck is a therapist and teacher. He actually founded a therapy center years ago that is connected with Pastor Lydia’s old church in the Bay Area, where she first worked as a pastor. And one of the things he does now is counsel pastors and other leaders whose lives have come off the rails. Really interesting person.

Anyway, he has this list of the five pillars of emotional health and the first two are self-awareness and self-regulation. Self-awareness and self-regulation. Knowing the truth about yourself, and being able to regulate, lead and direct yourself toward health.

See the proverbs are first invitations to pay attention to the truth about ourselves. We should read them in the order of me – you – they, not the other way around. In other words, follow the advice of Jesus in pulling the plank out of our own eye, before we look at the speck in someone else’s. Let the proverbs help us examine the truth of our own life. And maybe beyond that examine the truth together with people we’re in direct relationship with. And then maybe lastly, give whatever leftover energy we have to think about people we’ll never know – famous people, people in the news, stuff like that.

And as we read them to know the truth about ourselves, I think God would invite us to do self-awareness with compassion, not condemnation. Some of us in the group yesterday were noticing that we read Proverbs through this super-critical lens, because we’ve got a lot of critical voices in our head. And Proverbs can come off as kind of harsh sometimes.

But I as a dog owner again, and so a dog lover, when my dog is gross like this, I don’t hate him for it. If he literally pukes out his food, and then walks back to it and eats it up, I’m not like:

you disgusting creature, you are never welcome in my house again.

No, I just stop him. (I don’t even know if that’s totally necessary. I Googled: should you let a dog… and it auto-filled from there… eat its own vomit…. apparently lots of us have wondered…. and the internet was somewhat divided on this subject)

But when it comes to me metaphorically going back to my own vomit again, I think I’m invited to see myself as I see my dog, which is to be like:

huh, this is not ideal. This is worth doing something about. But dang, even so, I love myself so much. I’m worth the work. I’m a work of art, and it’s worth cleaning up the smudgy parts that take me down.

Is it weird to hear someone else talk that way? It’s weird for me to talk that way. Like I am so beautiful, so worthy, so beloved, that it’s worth trying to sort out the fool parts of me. I’m worth it. It’s weird because we don’t mostly think of ourselves this way, but God does. God does.

So if God or any tool of God’s like the Bible invites self-reflection, self-awareness, even self-critique, always filter it through a lens of growing self-compassion. Maybe I’m a slow learner. But I want to get there. I want to keep finding my way toward a life that works. In the Bible, this is called righteousness – good living, right relationships. I want to keep finding my way toward a life of love.

Second favorite proverb. (And I stuck this one in last minute, so it won’t be on your screen)

Proverbs 26:15 (Common English Bible)

15 Lazy people bury their hand into the bowl,

too tired to return it to their mouth.

So at first this is a crappy proverb. I was taking a walk with one of you this past week. We were talking about the stupid things we keep doing and about our struggle to start things and our even bigger struggles to finish things.

And for both of us, this struggle is real, it’s deep, and we’re pretty sure it’s genetic too. There’s a family pattern. And there’s a diagnosis for this too.

And they were asking me for advice, and I joked to them, well, despite the sermons we’re doing now, don’t go to Proverbs, because they just call us lazy people. There’s a whole class of “lazy people” Proverbs, and they are not flattering.

So it’s like:

thanks a lot, Bible. Call me a lazy person when I don’t finish things. Like you’re like the dum-dum who puts their spoon in the bowl of cereal, and never gets it back out to your mouth. Ha, ha, stupid you!

I don’t know about you, but that kind of shame does not inspire transformation in my life.

But let’s read it sideways.

What if this is an image more than a criticism? Like that not getting stuff done, or never getting stuff done on time, it’s like that person that doesn’t have the discipline to get their own breakfast into their mouth. As an image, it’s funny. It’s kind of illuminating. And it makes you wonder, like maybe something can be done here. Maybe there is hope.

And then what if you can edit the language to make it work for you. Like Proverbs says “lazy person” in some other language and culture from nearly three thousand years ago, but we can be like

– we’ve realized that is not a helpful thing to call anyone, including yourself.

So I can change it to something like

– people who struggle to get stuff done.

And what if when I read it this way

– people who struggle to get stuff done can be like that person with their spoon stuck in the bowl,

and what if I read it not from the fixed mindset that implies but from a growth mindset. Like

you’re never stuck exactly where you are. With help and intention and a little work, things can change.

And that can get me curious about what change is possible in my life today.

And then what if I read this not as a condemnation but as an invitation. And what if read it not as a statement but as a question? Like:

what would help you, Steve, not leave your spoon in the bowl today?

And then that makes me think of this exercise that is recommended for people like me with ADHD, this little mindfulness exercise called mindful eating. Where now and then, when I find myself eating by myself, instead of eating in a hurry, or eating while working or scrolling on my phone, I can eat while doing nothing else. Eat slowly, and eat mindfully. Pay attention to the tastes and smells and feels of each bite.

And one thing that will happen is well, I’ll eat. I won’t leave my food in the bowl. And I’ll learn something about being present, right here, in the only place in the world that is real – the present now. And that kind of presence, it turns out, helps with a lot of things, including helping with getting things done.

As my yoga teacher says,

there are two places in the world you can be – you can be now here – or nowhere.

That’s it. Nowhere or now here. And now here is almost always a better place to be.

See where a different way of reading Proverbs can take us. Away from right/wrong, either/or and towards curiosity, towards depth, towards wisdom. And away from compliance or obedience and toward discernment – toward finding God’s best path forward this moment, this day. This is the way, friends.

More briefly, my third favorite proverb. It’s a pair of two.

Proverbs 26: 4-5 (Common English Bible)

4 Don’t answer fools according to their folly,

or you will become like them yourself.

5 Answer fools according to their folly,

or they will deem themselves wise.

This is the place where Proverbs most tells on itself and illustrates what I was just talking about. Like out of one side of its mouth – it’s like,

don’t talk to fools.

And then a second later, it’s like

make sure you give those fools an answer.

Why? Well, because life is complicated. No one size fits all advice always applies.

Sometimes people say messed up things and it is better to just not engage. Don’t sink to their level. It takes two people to argue. When someone else invites you to the table, you do not need to show up. But then sometimes, you’ve got to say something. Maybe that person is open to correction. Maybe someone else is listening that needs to hear.

How do you know which Proverb applies to you in any given moment? Well, it depends, right? I think the idea here is – no one verse in the Bible can tell you. Figure it out. Trust your intuition. Or don’t, and ask someone you trust for a second opinion. Wisdom is about finding the best way forward, not about one-size-fits all truisms.

And last favorite proverb. This is actually a whole set of them.

Proverbs 10:17, 11:14, 12:15 (Common English Bible)

10:17 Those who heed instruction are on the way to life,

but those who ignore correction lose their way.

11:14 Without guidance, a people will fall,

but there is victory with many counselors.

12:15 Fools see their own way as right,

but the wise listen to advice.

Proverbs 17:1, 5-6, 18:24, 22:2 (Common English Bible)

17:1Better a dry crust with quiet

than a house full of feasting with quarrels.

5 Those who mock the poor insult their maker;

those who rejoice in disaster won’t go unpunished.

6 Grandchildren are the crown of the elderly,

and the glory of children is their parents.

18:24 There are persons for companionship,

but then there are friends who are more loyal than family.

22:2 The rich and the poor have this in common:

the Lord made them both.

All of these proverbs are a little different, but to me they boil down to this: find your people. You’re going to need them. And they’re going to need you.

When I was 19, and just getting to know Grace, she asked me once:

do you ever feel bad for all your people have done?

She was thinking of me as a descendant of Europeans, people who not that long ago were trying to colonize the whole dang world. And she was like:

how’d that go for you all? Do you ever feel bad about that?

And looking back, that question was one of the beginnings of my journey toward racial awareness and racial justice. And it was one of the beginnings of my journey away from individualism as a default – I am who I am, me, myself and I – and toward collectivism – like we need each other. We are all in this together.

But at the time, I had no idea what I said. But I know I thought: I have know idea what you’re talking about. I don’t have “a people.” Someone else did all that stuff. Nothing to do with me.

But the Proverbs are clear that people who think of themselves as an island – not needing others, not responsible to others, not part of a generational web of interconnected – people like that are – you guessed it – fools.

Proverbs says we have people and we need people. The good life if we are going to find it includes a lot of listening and learning. Anyone who just depends on their own inner light, or their own so-called genius, or says they don’t need advisors and mentors and stuff, they are self-deluded. They’re being a fool.

And Proverbs says we don’t only need people, we need to be a part of a wide web of people that aren’t just like us.

We’re living at a time in culture where it’s easy for our people to be people who are just like us, the people of our so-called “life stage” however we see that, or the people who look like us or spend like us or think like us, the people we vibe with.

But these Proverbs have so many other directions their language for the collective goes in. We need a word where rich and poor are in community together, seeing their mutual created worth and value. We need our family, but sometimes we need our chosen family too – people that are more loving and loyal than our own family. We need younger and older too. The best thing for grandparents is their grandchildren, and the glory of kids is their parents. Literally, but metaphorically too. We need people of different generations from us. We really need each other.

• Who are your people, friends?
• Who are you connected with?
• How is your circle of people getting wider, not narrower?

If this feels hard, church is good for this. Try out a community group, or volunteer somewhere and see who you meet. Or talk to one of us pastors about this. We’d love for Reservoir to be a place where you have people and where you’re part of the people someone else has too.

So that’s it – a few of my favorite Proverbs and a few ways to read them. And hopefully, you hear, with a few ways to receive spiritual input and wisdom in general

• Never just as me but always as part of a we. Not to use against someone else, but to try out on me first.
• Not with command and condemnation, but with curiosity and compassion.
• Not fixed mindset, but growth mindset.
• Not one size fits all, but wondering what moves me toward larger, freer, more loving today.

I think this is the way, friends. I think this is the way.

Let’s pray.

The post A Few of My Favorite Proverbs first appeared on Reservoir Church.

The post A Few of My Favorite Proverbs appeared first on Reservoir Church.

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This morning I want to talk about the concept of “staying found” and how it engages the theme of wisdom.

“Staying found” is a phrase that I learned from the Appalachian Mountain Club. It’s often a concept highlighted in compass and maps classes as well as search and rescue training. Staying found is a set of tactics and checks and balances that help keep you safe and aware for any adventure outside. Staying found acknowledges the reality that we will likely get lost at some point. That we will encounter the “unease” in our bodies when the well-trodden path no longer looks the same. When our intuition – the orientation to ourselves, to one another, to God – gets mixed up by the wilds of life.

I appreciate this lens because it makes “getting lost or being lost” feel less like an aberration or something bad — but actually a way to expand our way of doing life in a healthy and free way. Staying found suggests to me that we all have a compass available to us at all times, this being WISDOM. And that wisdom herself is everywhere. In endless markers and landmarks along our journey – but it takes a bit of practice – some risk, some mistakes, some joy, some delight, some creativity – to truly engage wisdom. To become wise ourselves.

We are new in this Wisdom series that will run until Memorial Day. We hope this series will open up the richness of wisdom found in the Hebrew bible, the Old Testament. Today we’ll look at the book of Proverbs – which is full of earthy and piercing and kind of funny lines of advice like:

• “If you don’t have oxen, at least your barn is clean.” (14:4)

• “Bad people trip over their own lying lips. Good people don’t have a lip problem.” (12:13)

• “It’s better to eat veggies in a house filled with love than to eat steak served by someone who hates your guts.” (15:17)

As odd as some of the proverbs might sound they are full of specific, immediate, and practical instructions.

“Full of teaching of wisdom concerning respect for the poor, the importance of generative work, the danger of careless speech, the risk of deep debt, the hazard of having the wrong kind of friends.” (Brueggemann)

And while some of the Proverbs are conveyed through specific forms of conduct — they point us to these big questions:

• What does it mean to be human and who are we to each other?
• How do we want to live and who will we be to each other?
• What makes life work? Especially when we might feel lost.

Prayer | Thanks for this space this morning to be together. I take it for granted sometimes. But it’s meaningful. Could you help bring that meaning to life. Could you move us — beyond words, and songs, and place — could you move us by your Spirit which is unexplainable — but oh so felt. — Amen.

STORY

I live close to the Blue Hills Reservation — like a 3-5 minute drive depending on where you want to go. The Blue Hills is a 7,000 acre state park with trails that stretch from Milton to Quincy to Dedham to Randolph.

I have spent A LOT of time in the Blue Hills over the last 19 years.

When my kids were little — I would drop them off at school or preschool — and then head to the Blue Hills for a quick hike. I generally would go to one specific area because there were a lot of intersecting trails — so on any given day I’d be offered some variety.

I knew the area pretty well and had gotten confident enough to not bring a map — having memorized most of the trail #s and markers.

One day a friend joined me. She is a serious hiker, bagging all the lists of all the hikes in the northeast — winter, spring summer fall – – all of it. So I knew we could cover the area I was used to moving in.

Timing wise I knew just about when to turn around to make that preschool pickup… from most points on these trails. This particular day we were hiking at a quicker clip and had picked up a different trail as we talked and caught up on life. And I thought it would be a simple “loop back” trail — but it wasn’t , or at least it wasn’t offering us that option in the time frame I needed.

I realized we weren’t going to make it if we didn’t find a way back — quickly. We stopped on the trail. My friend offered some WISE options like

“let’s just take a minute and consider our options”

or

“let’s figure out what direction we are heading in”

let’s think about what our last marker was and kind of pace that out…

This could have been a moment for me – where “Iron sharpens Iron”....

But I wasn’t really listening. I was starting to imagine all the possible scenarios that would come from being LOST — and the embarrassment I would feel as

• 1)the preschool flagged alarm when I didn’t show up, and as
• 2) DCR sent out rescue crews to look for us — on this tiny little trail, and
• 3) as the neighborhood Facebook groups blow up with chatter…

And I was like we just need to go! We just need to go straight up! OFF trail — just to the top so we can see where we are and hook up with one of the trails and have a better perspective.

And I just started going. Through bushes and over rocks and such.. Leaping and jumping like I was a regular mountaineer. And fairly quickly finding myself out of breath and unsure of how to continue about a ¼ of the way up. And only THEN wondering if I should have joined my friend in pausing — I also wondered if “wisdom” was a part of my actions at all?

This is a small story that exemplifies the many ways in my life I have at times felt overwhelmed, stressed, turned around. Where I’ve second guessed everything — in the everyday places and aspects of my life that I’m accustomed to. Where I have scrambled or sprinted out of fear or desperation or longing for some solid ground.

I don’t know about you — but in moments like these I find myself eager to anchor to something solid that offers a sense of grounding and identifiable mooring. And yet when that isn’t quick to appear — I can berate myself and say I’ll be better “prepared” for next time… with more knowledge, more information — a map that will clearly delineate a trusted and familiar path.

I want to be “smarter at life.”

So I’m not so taken out by life.

And this is a little bit of the mystery of human design – right? We have no lack of quest for information, knowledge, love. We all want to love, but as a rule we don’t know how to love well. And we all want more knowledge – but do we do so in a way that LIFE will really come from it?

What we all need perhaps is wisdom.

Proverbs 8 is a bit of an autobiography of wisdom – a self-announcement and speech by wisdom herself and it starts like this:

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

1 Doesn’t Wisdom cry out
and Understanding shout?

2 Atop the heights along the path,
at the crossroads she takes her stand.

3 By the gate before the city,
at the entrances she shouts:

4 “I cry out to you, people;
my voice goes out to all of humanity.”

“Wisdom” has a voice — and it is not a shy one! Wisdom summons all of humanity.
Wisdom is a greeter — at the entrance to unknowns she is there.
Wisdom is a sign-post at crossroads — a guide .
Wisdom is echo-ing across the peaks and the valleys of all of our lives. Searching for us — making sure we are “staying found.”

As we read more of this chapter — Wisdom’s identity continues to unfold and we pick up more in verse 22 and hear more what wisdom has to say for herself:

22 The Lord created me at the beginning of their way,

Before their deeds long in the past.

23 I was formed in ancient times,

at the beginning, before the earth was.

24 When there were no watery depths, I was brought forth,

when there were no springs flowing with water.

25 Before the mountains were settled,

before the hills, I was brought forth;

26 before God made the earth and the fields

or the first of the dry land.

27 I was there when God established the heavens,

when God marked out the horizon on the deep sea,

28 when God thickened the clouds above,

when God secured the fountains of the deep,

29 when God set a limit for the sea,

so the water couldn’t go beyond God’s command,

when God marked out the earth’s foundations.

30 I was beside God as a master of crafts.

I was having fun, smiling before God all the time,

31 frolicking with God’s inhabited earth

and delighting in the human race.

Wisdom was present ‘before’ everything; she is the base layer of all existence. Before earth, and land and water. Before landmarks and paths and mountains and fields.

And wisdom was present ‘when’ God creates everything. When God makes and establishes and marks and thickens and secures. When shape and form are birthed.

All the while WISDOM is joyfully dancing, smiling, frolicking – she is up close and personal with God and the works of creation. Wisdom is the very movement involved in the process, the active energy all around. All the time.

It’s really a wonder that we could miss wisdom at all. That we could feel ‘lost’ or disoriented with such a consistent voice and presence in the very architecture of our world. Shouting to us, crying out to us.

STORY

I did not pause to consider wisdom — as I was lost that day in the Blue Hills. I didn’t care about “staying found.” I cared about “not being lost – not being seen as a fool.” And yet some might say my actions and decisions were fairly “foolish” — thinking “all things were possible through Ivy Anthony” — incurring scrapes and slips and some serious scramble. I panicked and bolted. And when I got to the top I didn’t actually gain perspective that was helpful. It wasn’t any quicker to locate the trail we needed to be on.

As it turns out it’s fairly challenging to locate and garner wisdom. And I want to mention two reasons this might be so —

1) the first is because we can lose track of ourselves.

Howard Thurman

The theologian and mystic Howard Thurman in his 1980 Spelman commencement address says that we do miss wisdom. And for valid reasons.

He says,

“that there is so much traffic going on in our minds, so many different kinds of signals, so many vast impulses floating through our organism that go back thousands of generations, long before we were even a thought in the mind of creation, and we are buffeted by these…”

and we can get lost in these…

So in the midst of all of this we have to turn to wisdom. And Thurman says wisdom is to

“find out what our name is.

To ask,

“who are you?”

Thurman quickly answers,

“You — you are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom – your creative expression- is the only idiom of its kind in all of existence. And there is something in everyone of us that waits, listens for the sound of the genuine in ourselves and if we cannot hear it, we will never find whatever it is for which we are searching.”

The sound of the genuine is this place of wisdom within ourselves — where we are our truest selves, connected– anchored — and belonging to the love of God. That we are always found — even if we feel lost.

We live in a time when we are bombarded with words, images, and messages. We live in a time when things move quickly and we are expected to react and think quickly, too. We are rarely given the opportunity to sit and reflect, to let ourselves sink into questions and nuances that are often ignored. We are rewarded for being quick and left out if we are too slow.

“Wisdom, however, rarely sits on the surface of things.” (enfleshed.com)

This is why pursuing wisdom is a personal spiritual practice. If it didn’t require our intentional effort, wisdom would not have to “raise her voice” or come to the center of town to try to call out to us. She comes in pursuit of us, because we are often encouraged in different directions. And there is so much that makes it difficult to hear her, perceive her, to recognize her.

But Thurman says if we cannot hear the sound of the genuine in us,

“we will all of our life spend our days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls…”

Thurman says “stay found.” “Stay found” — there is a lot — a lot that competes — a lot that drowns out the sound of the genuine, the voice of wisdom.

“Don’t be deceived and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams, your ambitions, so that you don’t hear the sound of the genuine in you, because that is the only true guide that you will ever have, and if you don’t have that you don’t have a thing.”

We need to cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in ourselves. This is wisdom. This is to stay found.

1. The second reason wisdom evades us is because we are accustomed to wisdom in a particular form.

The markers of wisdom are often defined and found in very specific expressions. Often in the well-educated, those in power, the privileged.

But Wisdom cries out, not only to the privileged of the world but to “all that live.”

She makes herself accessible to everyone. She does not require particular training or access to institutions. She meets us in the middle of our lives, where we already are. (enfleshed.com)

Jesus did this too, right? Jesus challenged sexism, patriarchy, misogyny and discrimination in general over and over, and shows us that the margins are sources of deep, divine wisdom.

But still we struggle to value wisdom when it comes in alternative shapes. When it breaks from the same, same, same paths that for generations we have trod – we kind of are comfortable in those deep ruts. But those deep ruts block the view of those who might stand at the crossroads crying out to us with wisdom and yet are again and again ignored — loop after loop after loop.

I read recently that Einstein began his life with a profound faith in the social good of the scientific enterprise — but he then watched German science hand itself over to fascism. He watched chemists and physicists become creators of weapons of mass destruction. He said that science in his generation had become like a razor blade in the hands of a 3-yr old. He began to see figures like Gandhi and Moses, Jesus and Buddha and St. Francis of Assisi, as

“Geniuses in the art of living.” He proposed that their quantities of “spiritual genius” were more necessary to the future of human dignity, security, and joy than objective knowledge.” (4 Tippett)

“Knowledge is like flour — but wisdom is bread.” — Austin O’Malley

We have knowledge but it is falling through our hands – empty of its potential – when not mixed with all the ingredients, the voices, the beauty of those around us.

It would be wise of us to continue to interrogate who gets the mic – the press – the books – the power – the attention of the world. It seems that “spiritual geniuses of the everyday are everywhere. And yet those in the margins do not have publicists. They are woefully below the radar, which is broken.” (Tippett, 4)

So if our own radar — of knowing who we are deep within — is a little wonky and off, and the radar that puts people on the map of humanity is broken. Then we do need a recalibration. We do need wisdom.

CHURCH

Matthew Fox an episcopal priest, says we need wisdom-seekers who will

“shake up all our institutions—including our religious ones—and reinvent them.”

People who will not be afraid to Imagine. Dream. Even “play” a little. Fox says,

“change is necessary for our survival, and we often turn to the mystics at critical times like this — a mystic being someone who goes beyond intellect. Jesus was a mystic shaking up his religion and the Roman empire; Buddha was a mystic who shook up the prevailing Hinduism of his day; Gandhi was a mystic shaking up Hinduism and challenging the British Empire; and Martin Luther King, Jr. shook up his tradition and America’s racist — white supremacist– society.”

Scholars are in significant disagreement about translations of the verses in Proverbs that we read. Wisdom says,

“I was beside God as a master of crafts”

— some scholars believe the translation of “master of crafts” could be “child” or “nursling.”

Not like the definition of “master” we are used to — where we have conquered the learning, understanding, and knowledge of an area of study.

But like a child — a toddler — skipping and delighting — and exploring — and creating — and falling down — and trying again — a master of a playful, creative boundary-bending energy at work.

This wisdom is necessary. Americans are fleeing churches and fleeing the Christian faith, including its evangelical expressions. The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) finds that around one-quarter (26%) of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated, a number that has risen over the last decade and is now the largest single religious group in the U.S.

Changes and reform are urgent, and we need new relationships, new networks, and new partnerships to do this as well as we can. We need wisdom.

Father Richard Rohr commented on how disappointed he is that “we” in the Church have passed on so little wisdom. Often the only thing we’ve taught people is to think that they’re right—or that they’re wrong. We’ve either mandated things or forbidden them. And this doesn’t make room for a) creativity b) our own intuition and sound of the genuine or c) even the value of failure that can lead to wisdom…. We haven’t helped people enter wisdom’s path.

Wisdom though — seems to believe there are still possibilities among us.
She’s still calling, shouting, whispering to us — “you aren’t lost” — (not totally lost).
Stay found. Stay found.

I want to end with a spiritual practice that might help us orient to wisdom.

The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) puts out advice* for when you find yourself off trail, or lose your bearings. And I want to share them with you because they effectively point us back to wisdom – and to the sound of the genuine within and around us.

1. Grace.
   The first step is to extend grace to yourself, as God does.
   There’s no need to beat yourself up or inflict shame upon yourself — for the ways you feel like you’ve messed up – or should know better or more… for the ways you are afraid or overwhelmed.
   The AMC says no matter how experienced a hiker you might consider yourself to be, no matter how many times you’ve been out on the trails, how many 4,000 footers you’ve bagged, how much expert gear you have… “You are not an experienced hiker when you are not on a familiar trail…. And even the same trails look incredibly different in different seasons — -just a little bit of leaf growth and underbrush — or snow cover — can really change the landscape of a trail.

So start by extending grace to yourself.
Release undo responsibility and shame.

Lord knows we all have a lot of hiking still to do in this life – and we don’t need that unnecessary weight.

1. Stop.

The AMC says, “Moving isn’t helpful until you know which way to go, and if you’re thrashing around in the forest, you can’t follow the next three steps they recommend.”

I invite you right now to stop. To truly be still. In your body, spirit and heart….

To fully stop in this way can feel discomforting and humbling – especially when it feels like every second is precious time that should be spent figuring out how to be “found.”

But the alternative, to charge, react, thrash our way through – without at least a brief pause – has the potential to make ourselves even more lost and disoriented.

So right now to the best you can, stop.

Quiet your heart.

Quiet your mind. Stop overthinking. Over analyzing.

Stop your body from moving.. Your leg from bouncing… Your eyes from scanning.. Your finger from tapping.

Just stop, and ask God to be close.

Stopping is the most powerful action that allows us to orient ourselves to Divine Wisdom/God.

1. Breathe.

“Anxiety can lead to panic, but breathing can help cool your nerves. If you don’t know where you are, staying calm will help you think clearly and figure out your next move.”

Breathing helps let all the feelings tumble through us. It lets the ones that we don’t need to hang on to, fall to the ground… and the feelings we do need to feel – to inform us – to help us clarify our next steps, stick. These feelings are the ones that drive our next steps, because they are often the ones that show us where our deep passion lies.

Possible next steps:

• .. stay still or take a nap.
• .. eat a snack. Drink some water.
• .. look at your map again – with fresh eyes.

Take 3 deep breaths now. IN & OUT, IN & OUT, IN & OUT.

As you do, fully stretch out your arms – so that breath reaches through all of you…

1. Look for landmarks.

   “This might be big, like a mountain, but it could be closer and more modest, like an unusual mushroom or a hollow log. The denser the undergrowth, the more observant you need to be.”

2. What are the landmarks of Divine Wisdom in your day?
   • Maybe something big – a stress-free departure for church — wooo!
   • Likely there are also some small, more intertwined markers of God’s presence too – in the undergrowth, the ordinary moments of your day.
3. Take a moment to consider where you have already seen the markers of God TODAY.

The more we take note, as a practice, to recognize these markers of God in our days – the more we can identify God in the brush, on the unmarked trails…. that we will surely journey on.

Lastly,

1. Listen.

   “Most people who wander off-trail are within 300 yards of it—close enough to hear the voices of other hikers, which tells you which way to walk.”

So when you feel lost – listen.

Don’t just hear, but listen for God’s voice.

It’s there. Always.
What might God be saying to you?

• What kind of day is God inviting you into?
• What kind of path does God want to walk with you? Listen.

It is important when we are lost to stop & breathe, look for God’s landmarks & listen. This work is important work – not just for our journey – but for the next generation, and the generation after that, and the generation after that.

• What trail markers will we leave?
• What new trails will we cut?
• What wisdom do we impart?
• These are the questions of today.

Prayer: “Dear Spirit of God, our TRUE NORTH – thank you for being our guide. Help us to listen to your invitation to us now – maybe it’s that we don’t get back on the same trails we’ve been on so many times before… Maybe you want us to be bumped off trail right now.. But God could you promise to find us there… Could you promise to guide us still – through the darkest and thickest of forest – over mountains – and through valleys – could you, dear God, dwell in our spirit – BE OUR COMPASS – no matter how turned around we get?”

Sources:

1980 Spelman Commencement Address | Howard Thurman

Enfleshed.org | 2019

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In my first month as a high school principal, I inherited a master schedule that was pretty messed up. A lot of kids didn’t have the classes they would need in less than two months. The former administration that had built the schedule were either retired or laid off. And not many people work in schools in July and August. So I had just a few weeks to learn a scheduling software I’d never used before and to fix as much of it as I could.

There was this one central office administrator who knew this computer program and was working during the summer, and it was her job to show me the ropes.

Now I can be a difficult student. I like to learn things really quickly, and I have a million questions, and sometimes I struggle to not interrupt people when I really get focused on something. So a few days into working with Marilyn, the district administrator, and she said to me:

Steve, you’re a damn comet.

I thought she was complimenting me. Comets sound cool. These objects flying through space, looking like they’re stars or on fire or something. And I was pretty sure Marilyn was complimenting me at how fast I was learning and getting stuff done. Comet.

But later I realized I was only like 20% right about this. Because Marilyn was like – it was helpful that you were learning quickly and trying to fix things. But mostly, this is frustrating.

She was like –

You have to slow down. Take a breath. Listen for a while. Slow down, and you’ll learn this thing, and do what you’ve got to do.

I wish I could say I listened to Marilyn’s advice, but I mostly didn’t. I think I tried to convince myself that her whole comet line, which after all she had said “damn comet” and had sounded frustrated when she said it, but still I wanted to think it was a compliment and maybe didn’t listen.

I’d sort of been like this my whole life – that old proverb “haste makes waste” was for other people. When I first got my drivers’ license, I had a number of speeding incidents. And those had cost me money, but never an accident, so maybe it was fine. When I learned to ski, I liked to fly and take jumps and all and I had some spectacular crashes, but no permanent damage, so again, maybe it was OK.

I’ve been a bike commuter most of my adult life, and at that point, my habits on the bicycle were kind of embarrassing. I rode fast, I was really hit or miss about following traffic rules, and when I couldn’t find my helmet now and then, I just rode without it.

I thought I didn’t need this wisdom, because I was a damn comet, and it was working out OK.

Well, later in that same first year as a principal, I was biking home from work one day. And that was one of the days I was riding without a helmet, because I was rushing to get to work early and couldn’t remember where I’d left it. I was also talking on the phone while I was riding because a student at the school had been getting in trouble, and their dad was an important person on the school committee, and this was kind of an awkward situation for everyone, so I was trying to talk it through with this frustrated dad who was also more or less one of my boss’ bosses, and that made things urgent.

I wasn’t biking all that fast, but I was on the phone and not paying attention, and I hit a patch of sand left over from the winter storms and started to lose control of my bike. I don’t remember what happened next. Except that I was on the ground, and my head hurt like hell, and I reached back and it was wet and red. I tried to get up and start walking in the direction of my house, and someone walking by yelled at me not to do that and grabbed and started directing me toward the emergency room of the hospital which I was right in front of when I crashed and split my skull open in a couple places.

A few staples and a concussion recovery later, and I thought:

Maybe haste makes waste. Maybe I have to learn to slow down.

So like 14 years later, maybe my head’s not 100% right anymore, and I still rush into action sometimes, but I’m trying.

Because if you want to reach old age, and you want to not keep getting concussions, you eventually need to listen to wisdom.

Learning wisdom is what makes our lives work. Like however talented we are or not, however attractive, however so-called smart in different ways, our lives don’t work if we don’t grow in wisdom.

They get stuck. Or they fly off the rails, Or we self-sabotage again and again. And the catch all word for the stuff we learn – not just here, in our head – but in our hearts, in our bodies, in our whole selves – the stuff we learn that makes our lives really work well, that’s wisdom.

And that’s what we’ll talk about in our sermons from now through when summer starts on Memorial Day – what makes life work, as we read together some of this part of the Hebrew scriptures, the Bible’s Old Testament, that is called the wisdom literature.

The centerpiece of this wisdom literature in the Bible is a collection of all kinds of earthy advice that’s called Proverbs. We’ll read part of its first chapter today. It starts like this:

Proverbs 1:1-7 (Common English Bible)

The proverbs of Solomon, King David’s son, from Israel:
2 Their purpose is to teach wisdom and discipline,
to help one understand wise sayings.

3 They provide insightful instruction,
which is righteous, just, and full of integrity.

4 They make the naive mature,
the young knowledgeable and discreet.

5 The wise hear them and grow in wisdom;
those with understanding gain guidance.

6 They help one understand proverbs and difficult sayings,
the words of the wise, and their puzzles.

7 Wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

This here is like a title or an introduction. It says these proverbs will teach us what is righteous, just, and full of integrity. What will make us less naive, and more mature. Which sounds old-fashioned maybe or religious, or maybe condescending. But I think the wisdom literature is here to help us develop lives that work. That go about things the right way, that are fair and equitable, that help us be the same, trustworthy person no matter where we are or who we’re with.

It’s like Marilyn saying to me –

try and stop being such a damn comet.

You’ll burn up, or crash, or just be annoying to work with. That was true. And that won’t do you or anyone else any good.

Try wisdom.

This ancient near eastern tradition of wisdom literature is really old. The earliest Babylonian wisdom literature was mostly about magic and exorcism. It was like in a weird and scary world, how do you master the power to be less vulnerable and more in control?

But over time, wisdom literature in these ancient cultures shifted to be less superstitious and more practical. So that wisdom literature became like the self-help material of these cultures – it was about the art of being successful. About life mastery, growing a life that works.

Wisdom literature started to focus on the important, practical matters of life that our schools don’t always teach. Like how do you develop the character of a trustworthy, dependable person? How do you get some wealth but not have it ruin you? How do you not be the kind of person that doesn’t derail your own life, whether by accidents caused by your own foolishness, or by blowing up your friendships or your marriage, or by being unable to commit to things for the long haul, or just otherwise being a fool? How do we keep growing into a life that works?

Proverbs wants to help with this.

But it’s not just self help. Because that’s not how growth works. We don’t do it alone. We need each other, and we need the wisdom that came before us. We need the wisdom of our teachers, the wisdom of our elders, the wisdom of our ancestors, and the wisdom of God, our creator.

This is where wisdom starts, Proverbs says, by slowing down and listening. It starts with respect for what came before us. It starts with the kind of humility and awe that makes us want to listen. This is the kind of attitude Proverbs calls the fear of God. Admitting we’re small, and listening.

Where do you start, though? And what does wisdom sound like?

Let’s see where Proverbs starts as we keep reading.

Proverbs 1:8-19 (Common English Bible)

8 Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction;
don’t neglect your mother’s teaching;

9 for they are a graceful wreath on your head,
and beads for your neck.

10 My son, don’t let sinners entice you.
Don’t go

11 when they say:
“Come with us.
Let’s set up a deadly ambush.
Let’s secretly wait for the innocent just for fun.

12 Let’s swallow up the living like the grave —
whole, like those who go down into the pit.

13 We’ll find all sorts of precious wealth;
we’ll fill our houses with plunder.

14 Throw in your lot with us;
we’ll share our money.”

15 My son, don’t go on the path with them;
keep your feet from their way,

16 because their feet run to evil;
they hurry to spill blood.

17 It’s useless to cast a net
in the sight of a bird.

18 But these sinners set up a deadly ambush;
they lie in wait for their own lives.

19 These are the ways of all who seek unjust gain;
it costs them their lives.

So we read this in my community group the other Saturday and it seemed funny to some of us. Proverbs talks itself up as this well of wisdom, and then as it gets going, we listen in on a parent sitting down their kid for a huge life lesson, figuring we’re going to start with the most important stuff, what we all need to know.

And get this advice – don’t join in with the local street gang. Like don’t jump into the next band of armed robbers that appear. Which, fine, maybe good advice for your kid, but really, is this the thing we most need?

I mean I have made my share of mistakes, but I have never set up a deadly ambush just for fun. I promise. I mean when I’ve done it, it’s been for other reasons, I swear, not just for fun. And my three kids – they have their problems. But we never sat them down before school and were like today, please, do not rob your classmates and share your plunder with us. And please, today, do not spill blood.

On the surface, it seems basic. Is this all that Proverbs has got?

But then as we talked, we were like, hold on, the schools we went to were full of bullying, groups of kids ganging up on someone they thought was weaker or different. And our kids’ schools are like that still, where people get bullied, just for fun.

And aren’t there other ways that when people just go with the flow around us, our schools or our workplaces remain toxic, or our communities remain unwelcoming and inequitable, like the dances some of our suburbs are playing right now to try to skirt the law and keep from building more housing.

See this is another way that Proverbs isn’t self-help literature. Because like all the best wisdom literature, it isn’t just personal, it’s collective. We rise and fall together. If one of us is getting wiser, if God is doing something good in our lives, the sign isn’t so much that we think our life is getting better, it’s that the people around us think this.

And the more I read this first bit of wisdom with this in mind, that it’s not just private, personal advice, the more I’m like I wish any of our societies would slow down and listen.

• Would the explorers that traveled from Europe to these lands I’m on today have wondered – what can I learn from who’s there already?
• And what can I share?
• And how can we do something together?

Instead of running their feet to evil and becoming extractors and enslavers and using my faith to justify it all.

• Or would that when this country I’m a citizen of started emerging as the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world when my grandparents were young, what if we hadn’t decided to become the world’s biggest arms dealer, thinking might makes right, and rushing to spill blood?
• What if we’d just focused on being a food dealer, or a love dealer, or a justice collaborator instead?

I think this ancient wisdom still speaks. It can still still tell us the truth about ourselves. And I still think it’s urgent that we listen.

Because our lives are at stake. I love the wisdom here that people who seek unjust gain, the ultimate harm is it costs your life – not just other people’s lives, but your own life.

Get caught up in violence and extraction and just looking out for you and your own and not others, and you’ll lose yourself.

What will it cost us,

Jesus said,

if we gain the whole world but lose our souls?

Having pastored and counseled people reckoning with serious harm they’ve done, this is true. The harm we do comes back to eat us alive.

And living in this country with decades of innovation and power and wealth and success behind us for some of us at least, I think man if America isn’t soul-sick and defensive these days? Something has cost us our life.

So in walks wisdom to the room saying don’t neglect your mother and father’s teaching. Listen to your elders. Listen to your ancestors. Listen to God.

And then we don’t get laws per se, instead we get a set of stories and a ton of earthy advice.

How do we personalize this, knowing what’s for us? And how do we really take it in? How do we not be like me, when someone tells us we’re moving too fast and mistake the warning for a compliment?

Where do we start?

I think the end of this passage gives us something to take away today.

Proverbs 1:20-23 (Common English Bible)

20 Wisdom shouts in the street;
in the public square she raises her voice.

21 Above the noisy crowd, she calls out.
At the entrances of the city gates, she has her say:

22 “How long will you clueless people love your naïveté,
mockers hold their mocking dear,
and fools hate knowledge?

23 You should respond when I correct you.
Look, I’ll pour out my spirit on you.
I’ll reveal my words to you.

Proverbs insists that not only does wisdom speak, she is shouting in the street, calling out above the noisy crowds. Wisdom is personified in Proverbs as a woman. Later the gospel of John says that Jesus was Lady Wisdom come to life. It says that eternal Logos – the wise Word of God – became flesh and dwelt among us. And so in the Christian tradition, Wisdom is always personal. It’s never a set of facts we learn. And it’s kind of gender-bending. Wisdom is the wisest of women who beckons us to sit at her feet. And wisdom is Jesus Christ, son of the living God, who invites us to follow him. And wisdom is the androgynous, beyond gender, Holy Spirit of God who is the truth-telling voice both without and within.

And so we may wonder: If wisdom is a woman shouting in the street, and if wisdom is the truth of Jesus the word of God, and if wisdom is the Spirit of God seeking to speak life-giving truth to us still, what is wisdom saying to us? What is wisdom saying to you?

One way to start to answer this question is to ask –

what has life been trying to teach us recently, whether or not we’ve been listening.

What truth is crying out to you, to make your life work better, for you and for others?

For me, it’s not so much the haste makes waste thing. I don’t derail my life this way so much anymore. Maybe sometimes, but not as much.

But last year, when I was gifted some time off by this community, in the form of a sabbatical, there was a course-correcting wisdom that came my way. The word I learned is called Enclosure.

I stayed in a monastery a couple times during my sabbatical, and there an enclosure is the place where the public can’t go. It’s the private space, sacred to the monks or nuns that live there permanently. Where they preserve the way of life to which they are called.

And for me, enclosure has become this metaphor for the sacred commitments in my life that I am called to, that make my life work. And over the past several months, I’m thinking more and more about the people and habits and commitments that form the core of my life, and that I don’t let anyone or anything interrupt.

As a person who has tended to want to YES to everything that interests me in life, I’m learning that the small set of people and things I say yes to needs more protecting, and that has meant working on saying NO a little more often too. And that’s taking a lot of practice for me, but man if it isn’t important, and protecting me from regret down the road, I believe.

That’s me, though. You may be in the opposite place today – the kind of person who’s been saying NO too often and needs to learn more YESes. I don’t know. So my encouragement today isn’t to do any particular thing in your life, but to ask:

What has life been trying to teach me?

Where is Wisdom crying out to you with her fierce and gentle voice

What’s calling to you?

We’ll ask this repeatedly in the weeks to come, but perhaps we can close by taking a quick minute on this…

• How is the Spirit of God trying to lead you toward a more healthy, abundant life?
• How is Lady Wisdom crying out to you, with her voice of encouragement or correction?
• If you could sit at a table today with your ancestors assembled, or perhaps even with the living God, what observations might they make about your life? What might they have to say?

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Good morning friends, this Sunday morning or whenever you are tuning in! My name is Cate Nelson, she/her. I lived in Cambridge and worked and worshiped at Reservoir Church for a number of years, and it is a great joy to be back with you all today.

For those of us that haven’t met, or for folks I haven’t seen in a while, here are some things that I’m enjoying this morning…

This morning we are extending the theme of Fire one more week. Today is a coda to last week’s Easter sermon where Pastor Steve reflected on the story of Jesus’ resurrection appearance to two of his followers along the road to Emmaus. We are spending another week with this story — to expand and stretch it, before Reservoir begins its new series next week on the Wisdom Literature.

There will be a few moments to have some reflection to check in.

Grab a match or lighter and candle!

Let’s revisit the scripture we read together last week, as we sink deeper in it today.

This story picks up on the Sunday afternoon after Jesus’ crucifixion…

Luke 24 13:18, 25:32

13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem,

14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.

15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them,

16 but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

17 And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad.

18 Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”

He goes on to tell a long story of the events leading to Jesus’ crucifixion, how brokenhearted and confused their community is… and how maybe he isn’t in the tomb any more and that angels said he is alive…

Jesus responds:

“Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!

26 Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”

27 Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.

29 But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them.

30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.

31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight.

32 They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

Let me pray for us as we begin.

The Fellowship of the Burning Hearts

When I was 19, I was interning at a Christian ministry, and part of the internship involved a group Bible study with my fellow interns. It was a three month program, and we had regular classes where we would explore stories and themes of scripture together. In one of our first meetings, our lead teacher took stock of our group and with all this affection in his eyes and conviction in his voice, looked at us and said,

“I’m calling you the Fellowship of the Burning Hearts.”

He was referencing this passage we just read, where these two men, reflecting on their walk with a person they realize was Jesus, say,

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

I for one looooooved this name. I wasn’t a Lord of the Rings fan at that stage of my life, but there was something in this name about a merry-band-of-motley-travelers that I adored, as well as the notion we might just find our hearts burning in love for Jesus throughout our experience together. The Fellowship of the Burning Hearts.

Let’s return to our scripture for a minute. A couple things caught my attention about the burning hearts in our reading today. First:

• They recognize their burning hearts after the fact. It’s once they’ve recognized him, after he leaves, that they say, “were not our hearts burning within us as he unfolded to us the scriptures…”
• Even if they are moved by Jesus’ words, they recognize him in his actions

: “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…”

Word and action — their hearts know something as they listen. But they understand something when they see him, when they eat together and he breaks the break — this is Jesus, they say. And that was Jesus, as they see in retrospect that their hearts were alive in a whole new way as they listened to him unfold the story of himself.

When has your heart last been burning?

Can we remember too when our hearts burned within us?

A couple things come to mind for me:

• I was at a gathering a few weeks ago, where we all took turns sharing that if we only had one scripture to revisit for the rest of our lives — it would be enough. Just one passage, one chapter, a handful of verses. And as this group spent time going around the circle, reading a passage aloud and saying what it meant to them, and why those words would be enough for a lifetime — I found my heart so tender, so gently glowing with how precious these testimonies, these stories were.

  • Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty….You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day…

  • In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.. and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

  • You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

  • Write the vision; make it plain on tablets. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end and does not lie.

These words filled our room, woven together with stories of mothers’ wisdom and prayers and family dinners, words that sustained people in moments of loneliness, darkness and tragedy… my heart swelled as I listened to these passages that would be enough for the group I was gathered with. For a kid who encountered a good deal of Bible-thumping along the way and sometimes has a spotty relationship with these texts, I was deeply aware that here in this room, as people were unfolding the scriptures to each other, I was in the presence of a

Word that was living and active (Hebrews 4:12).

This is Jesus. My heart burned with love for these people and love for Jesus.

• Leaving a boring meeting — the warmth in my heart from connection afterwards
• Heart burning from the things in the world we care most about — with rage, with hope

Practice: scan your last few weeks. Was there a time where your heart was burning? Maybe in a moment of connection with God? Maybe in a moment of connection with others? Maybe in awe of a sight in nature, like spring unfolding on the red buds…. Light a candle, remembering your burning heart… giving thanks for that fire within you, perhaps even recognizing Jesus’ presence was in that moment of a burning heart…

Finding our own fellowship this morning of our burning hearts…

Letting this flame burn during our service, as a mark of our fellowship together today.

Soft Hearts, Burning Hearts

Why this focus on our burning hearts?

Because the reality is there is so much else that presses upon our hearts…

• 876 search results for “heart” in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Testament….

Some of these “heart” results yield words like gladness and rejoicing… and for sure, it is a wonder when we find our hearts tender, joyful, fiery. Quiet joy of contentment or delighted joy are in our own Disney song, dancing among the flowers in awe of the world with little bunnies hopping around us. Goodness knows I love when this is what my heart is like.

The reality is, life piles up… and with that, troubles, the disillusionment.

As it turns out, a whole lot more of the search results of these ‘heart” words are things like troubled, broken, hardened. Which really resonates.

God is well aware of all that goes on in our hearts, how tough it can be… broken hearted, our hearts are troubled, things can be so much. Last week, Steve talked about how life feels so cataclysmic, both in the world and in our own individual lives. The breaking. The aching, the falling apart. All that is unbearable.

I told you at the beginning of my Fellowship of the Burning Hearts — well this place where I interned has been spectacularly, painfully, catastrophically crumbling in recent months. Heart breaking abuse from a trusted and admired leader leaving people confused, angry, betrayed not to mention leaving some deeply harmed. This place where my heart once burned, now it is breaking, and has left my heart deeply troubled.

• They stood still, looking sad. How very relatable, this may be one of my new favorite scriptures. And even more, how easy it would have been to say, we are too sad to talk to you — they are after all overcome with grief. Of all the days to have an excuse to say to a stranger, “I’m sorry, I don’t have it in me today, I’ve suffered a great personal loss…” it is this day. But they make a choice to invite him in, and they make a choice to keep walking…

How do we keep moving… to keep walking this road to Emmaus with our grief, our troubles? How do we not stay still in our own sadness, at least not for too long?

I was talking on the phone with a friend who was lovingly listening to me share my litany of heart-sorrows — the mounting pile of troubles and heartbreak. I finished my lament and she wanted to pray for me.

“I am putting my hand on my heart, imagining that Jesus is putting his hand on your heart…”

The tenderness of this brought tears to my eyes as she prayed with love for my troubled heart.

There is a famous scripture in the Hebrew Bible, God tells the Hebrew people:

Ezekiel 36:26

“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”

This, too, is spoken to a community – just as the burning hearts happen in the context of two followers of Jesus in grieving fellowship along the road. Our burning hearts, our fleshy hearts, are found with Jesus and in the company of others.

“A new heart I will give you, I will take the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

The truth is, stone can’t burn… a heart of stone cannot burn. So part of the practice of being a people with burning hearts is to be a people of soft hearts… fleshy hearts. Heart of stone for heart of flesh. Can we keep bringing our troubled hearts, our broken hearts into the presence of God and the ones we trust, to say things out loud and to ask for help that our hearts might not calcify? That they may stay fleshy that they can burn with all that makes them alive?

And if our hearts are hard, if they are rocky, may they at least be charcoal, or some other combustible rock that, in due time, can crumble and and burn. And saving that, we do have a God who miraculously can take the hardest places of our hearts and give us a heart of flesh.

Practice: I want to invite you into a moment of reflection, much like my friend invited me into when she prayed for me. If you’d like, place your hand over your heart. Maybe it is a moment to be loving towards yourself. Maybe you imagine it is Jesus’ hand on your heart, close to you in all that troubles or breaks your heart.

And with your eyes closed or softly landing, take a few breaths just like this, naming before God the things that might hurt so much — or cause you so much worry — or feel like they will never ease. Maybe it’s one thing, maybe it’s a litany of things. Allow yourself to feel Jesus’ love and nearness to the parts of your heart that are troubled, breaking, or aching.

Can we practice keeping our heart soft and fleshy — not by ignoring the things that hurt, not by trying to solve them on our own, but giving them back to God. This may be pain that we feel in our own lives, pain we see in the world around us… can we keep our hearts fleshy by letting Jesus’ love press upon our hearts — that our hearts may not calcify.

Maybe we have done this a million times… can we do it once again today. Because the reality is that this is a form a repentance — a form of returning to Jesus again — to say, here it is, my broken heart, my hard heart, my troubled heart… I don’t want to simply stand still and look sad, at least not for too long. I want to bring this into the light, the light of your love, the light of the fellowship of those whom I trust, if only to say, please help.

Jesus…help.

Jesus, hold.

Jesus, heal.

How is Your Heart?

I want to end with one final question. How is your heart?

It’s the question we’ve been asking all morning long…

This heart — however you name it, however it feels — can we bless it, just as it is…

James Baldwin makes a big claim in his book, The Fire Next Time:

“If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving.”

I want to invite us to hold these candles up together (or finger candles) — imagining our friends, our online church gathered together today… let us bless one another… in this fellowship of beautiful, troubled, fleshy, burning hearts — that as our hearts would be larger, freer, more loving as we encounter Jesus along the way. As he presses his hand against our hearts. As his words and love cause our hearts to burn once again. May this be our blessing to one another today, as we blow out our candles, as the smoke extends the blessing of fire to one another.

Let me pray for us.

Jesus, our risen God who walks with us along the way, would our encounters with you leave our hearts burning — larger, freer, and more loving.

I give thanks for this fellowship of sacred hearts here in this online church today — burning, hurting, full of the very same stuff as the galaxies. We love you Jesus and are grateful for all the ways you come close to us with your love.

Friends, may the blessing of God, the God of our burning hearts, be with you as you go.

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Hello, and happy Easter, friends!

I want to start with a bit of a good news/bad news moment, maybe depending on how old you are.

I read a while back that at least according to one large social science study, we know what on average is the least happy age in people’s lives.

Anyone have a guess when that is? Least happy age, on average.

Apparently, it’s 47.2 years old.

Now obviously this is just an average, but for me…

I turned 47 in 2020 – great year, right?

2020 was gonna be a big year, like the best year.

I had done some serious inner life work in my early 40s, and I was feeling kind of happy and free those days. And our church had done some hard change work during those same years. That had been really stressful. But by early 2020, things at church here too were also kind of awesome. Probably the happiest, healthiest season I’d seen in our church as a pastor. And I had my first sabbatical ever coming up in the summer. And our family had been saving up for years for our first ever trip to China, where our Chinese-American kids had never been.

Our oldest kid was graduating from high school that year, and that big trip together just afterwards – it all was going to be epic.

Until it wasn’t. Hello, Covid. And goodbye, everything else. Our schools shut down. Church shut down. Everything was shutting down. We all thought we’d chill out for a couple of weeks and let this weird virus blow over, but then it didn’t.

And the season of canceling began.

We canceled the trip to China, and then we canceled the smaller trip we’d booked instead.

School was canceled, kids’ prom, graduations, canceled. My sabbatical, canceled. Everything, canceled. And we all worried – just how bad would this get? Who would we lose? Just how much would this hurt?

Some of you all were out there being heroic as essential workers in that season. Me, I was figuring out how to properly disinfect our groceries every couple of weeks, and how to be a professional gatherer of community when people weren’t allowed to get together.

We were trying best we could as a church to respond to isolation and fear and grief and then to a movement for racial justice. It was an important time, and in some ways, we did well by each other and by what was happening in this world.

But it was hard and tiring, and then right after we sent our oldest kid off to college. While I was tired and drained, I ended up in a weird and stupid extended family conflict that was the last straw for me.

I was done and I found myself dreaming of walking away from it all.

Like, maybe I could peace out on the people that had done me wrong and just be done with them. Maybe I could walk away from the sources of conflict in my life.

And I’ll admit to you all that for the first time ever in that fall of 2020, I was wondering what it would be like to walk away from being a pastor too. I found myself daydreaming about exit ramps and ways I could live a smaller, simpler life where I could nurse my disappointments in peace or carve out a little world with my family where nobody and nothing could hurt us any more.

So yeah, 47.2 years old landed right on time for me, most definitely one of the least happy moments of my life.

Three, four years later, though, thinking about where I find myself now in a new decade, it’s striking just how often help found me. It’s striking just how often new perspective and new growth found me. It’s striking where love would not let me go, where new life found me.

Again and again in these years, it’s seemed like I’ve met the risen Jesus, coming my way and bringing me back to peace.

So friends, this Easter, I want to talk about the risen Jesus and new life when you’ve given up and you’re walking away.

Each of the four gospels in the Bible tells the resurrection story differently. Here’s a story that the book of Luke tells.

Luke 24:13-24 (Common English Bible)

13 On that same day, two disciples were traveling to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.

14 They were talking to each other about everything that had happened.

15 While they were discussing these things, Jesus himself arrived and joined them on their journey.

16 They were prevented from recognizing him.

17 He said to them, “What are you talking about as you walk along?” They stopped, their faces downcast.

18 The one named Cleopas replied, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who is unaware of the things that have taken place there over the last few days?”

19 He said to them, “What things?”

They said to him, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth. Because of his powerful deeds and words, he was recognized by God and all the people as a prophet.

20 But our chief priests and our leaders handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him.

21 We had hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel. All these things happened three days ago.

22 But there’s more: Some women from our group have left us stunned. They went to the tomb early this morning

23 and didn’t find his body. They came to us saying that they had even seen a vision of angels who told them he is alive.

24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women said. They didn’t see him.”

We’ll pick up more of the story in a minute.

I think Cleopas and his friend are 47.2 years old. Maybe. They are also colonized oppressed people who have lost what they thought was their way forward.

They’re disappointed, grieving.

We had hoped, they say.

We had hoped.

They thought the promises of God for their liberation, their ancestors’ dreams, were coming true.

And now they are walking away.

They are walking away from Jerusalem.

They’re walking away from God, given that the truth they thought they knew about God has let them down.

And they’re walking away from the life they thought they’d have – victorious, fulfilled, redeemed, as they put it.

Then Jesus shows up like that friend of yours who never pays attention to the news.

He’s like –

you all seem bummed out. What’s wrong?

What’s wrong?!? Who are you to ask that kind of question? “What’s not wrong?”

they say.

Friends, what are you walking away from today?

And where do you feel like you’re living in a time of cataclysm that if people would wake up and pay attention, they’d see it like you do?

Beyond that terrible moment at 47.2 years old, I had spent parts of my 40s walking away from a lot of things. Walking away from the easy lives or the happiness I thought my kids would have. Walking away from religious systems and communities that I’d once called home. Walking away from some bad ideas and some old stories about myself that weren’t true and didn’t set me free but were still hard to leave behind.

In my life as a pastor among you, I hear so many stories of disappointment and walking away. Stories of people walking away from a dream, disappointed with where they haven’t yet arrived at this time of life. I hear people walking away from ways of being in their marriage, or ways of being in their bodies, or ways of being in their faith that weren’t walking out? And sometimes you’re glad to be making a change, but dang, if it isn’t hard?

So much walking away.

And just about everyone I talk to feels like we are living in times of cataclysm – big and scary threats and changes that aren’t going anywhere. A lot of us name the cataclysm differently. We don’t all rank order the worst, most apocalyptic things going on in the world the same way. But most of us have got a list, don’t we?

I was spending time with some engaged and newly married couples recently talking about whether or not they’d have kids and if they did, what that would be like. And someone brought up, as someone always did these days, that maybe it’s a bad time in history to have kids. Maybe the future is too bleak.

And not everyone was leaning this way, but no one challenged the premise.

This is part of why I love this resurrection story, that it seems like times of cataclysm – when all is wrong with the world – and times of disappointment – when we’re walking away from our dreams, disappointed – are perfect times for the risen God to appear to us again.

Let’s pick up the rest of the story.

Luke 24:25-32 (Common English Bible)

25 Then Jesus said to them, “You foolish people! Your dull minds keep you from believing all that the prophets talked about.

26 Wasn’t it necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”

27 Then he interpreted for them the things written about himself in all the scriptures, starting with Moses and going through all the Prophets.

28 When they came to Emmaus, he acted as if he was going on ahead.

29 But they urged him, saying, “Stay with us. It’s nearly evening, and the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.

30 After he took his seat at the table with them, he took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.

31 Their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he disappeared from their sight.

32 They said to each other, “Weren’t our hearts on fire when he spoke to us along the road and when he explained the scriptures for us?”

Let’s look at how Jesus appears, how resurrection appears to these two friends who are walking away.

Jesus is a little spicy with them because loving as Jesus is, he doesn’t want to nourish our dysfunction or our bad ideas. Jesus is always kind, but he is not always nice. There’s a lot in the world and if we’re honest plenty in us too that needs interrupting, and nice doesn’t interrupt very well. So Jesus takes the time to interrupt their story.

And in this case, he’s like,

well, with what you know, walking away makes sense. But there’s a lot you don’t know.

And he goes on to tell them.

You didn’t know that suffering always had to be part of the story.

You didn’t know how long good things can take, how un-straight the road to them always is.

You didn’t know that new life usually takes some death to clear the way.

You didn’t know.

And in the coming to terms with all they didn’t know, these two friends find room for Jesus to tell them the truth.

That’s one of the benefits of walking away. Of disillusionment, disenchantment.

Sometimes it makes room for the truth. Sometimes it lays the ground for resurrection.

One of the weird things about Easter is that Jesus rose in secret. No one saw it. Too dang early. (Jesus!) Whatever happened physically, scientifically, whatever the mechanics were, whatever the nature of Jesus’ risen body, no one was there for it.

Our faith just tells us: God raised Jesus from the dead.

But then the fun starts. The resurrected Christ appears to people as they’re hiding out or walking away. Two disappointed friends are walking away in midlife, and Jesus appears as a companion who wonders what they’re thinking. Jesus’ grieving fishermen friends are out on the lake at dawn unable to catch anything, and Jesus appears frying up fish on the beach. Two people welcome a stranger to a simple, small meal in their home, and Jesus is recognized as he breaks bread, blesses it, and offers it to them. Two friends tell a story of their disappointment, how all is lost, and Jesus appears as he offers them a better perspective and they find their hearts on fire.

That last one happened to me too.

During that awful fall and the year beyond, a few friends walked with me and listened, good help and provision and counsel came my way. And by 2022, getting toward the end of my 40s, some things were shifting in my life, but I was still kind of stuck internally. And I noticed this as I was talking with a friend of mine.

I met up with that friend around the anniversary of that last straw conflict in 2020, which was also around the anniversary of another big trauma in my life, and I asked my friend if we could talk about it that day. And as we did, I shared with him how everyone was doing, myself included. And I was like:

things are better, but there’s so far to go, and that’s so disappointing.

And my friend listened to me, and he let me know he understood how big this is to me, how heavy the ache is.

But he also asked me:

can I share what I hear as you tell these stories?

And I told him:

please do.

And he said:

it’s your life, your truth. I don’t want to tell you what to think, but what I hear are stories of resurrection.

And he told a different story of my life than what I was seeing – same facts, but different angle. How despite suffering, this person was alive and not dead, and this relationship may be cut off but wow, how this other one was better than ever, how so many things were so much better than I could have imagined not too long ago.

And he said:

I know you hope for more, I know you hope for more but remember that when Jesus rose, he rose with scars. And you have your scars too. I see them. But a scarred resurrection life is still life, isn’t it? It’s still life. It’s a miracle. You live within a miracle.

And as he shared the truth he saw, I was tearing up because my heart was on fire with the truth of all this.

So many signs of life. The buds and shoots of resurrection blossoming everywhere.

Because Jesus rising from the dead is not only an event in history. It’s not only the foundation of a faith in which we stand here. The resurrection of Christ is also an invitation to a new way of being in the world, where we can have reasonable faith and hope that a way will be made where there is no way. That disappointments and loss are gardens where extraordinary new things can be cultivated. That crappy year after crappy year in midlife can be an invitation to the work of renaissance. That every dying seed tucked into the ground is just waiting to burst back out with life.

Recently, I’ve found myself with a new spiritual habit. I call it looking for signs of resurrection. Where my instincts tell me there’s no way forward, I wonder what way is going to appear. When something in me or someone I love seems lost or stuck, I’m asking God –

where can I be seeding and watering the next resurrection?

I’m looking for stories of resurrection. Because resurrection is looking for us.

Let’s finish our story.

Luke 24:33-36 (Common English Bible)

33 They got up right then and returned to Jerusalem. They found the eleven and their companions gathered together.

34 They were saying to each other, “The Lord really has risen! He appeared to Simon!”

35 Then the two disciples described what had happened along the road and how Jesus was made known to them as he broke the bread.

36 While they were saying these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”

Ha, here it is again. Tell one story of resurrection, and another may be right on its tail. Jesus keeps appearing, in weird and funny ways.

My wife Grace and I heard an interview once with a strange, old fundamentalist lady who had this funny phrase she’d say. She’d say:

Jesus is a tricksy one.

It’s a silly, weird phrase, and I have no idea what she meant, but it’s stuck with me, and now I think it’s true. Nothing Jesus says or does in the gospel’s resurrection stories is predictable. And I think the stories of new life that the Spirit of the Risen Christ is working on today aren’t predictable either.

We call God our creator, and if the Spirit of the Risen Christ is anything, it is endlessly creative. That Jesus is a tricksy one.

When we hit our bad days and our bad years and our walls of awful stuckness and discouragement, we don’t usually feel like new life is on the horizon.

So even if we’re walking away, we are given tangible symbols, sacraments by which to remember Christ, and to stir faith and hope in his risen life among us.

One of these we call communion, a tiny little meal we take in worship every week, where we remember Jesus, broken out for the life of this world that we could be renewed and that we could become the body of Christ ourselves, blessed, and given for the healing of the world.

Another of these we call baptism. We are about to have the joy of baptizing six people with water. And so a moment on what this means. What this means for these six, what it means for you if you’ve been baptized before, or if you haven’t and you want to – just let us know! – what it would mean.

In baptism, we are welcomed into a faith of resurrection.

In baptism, the cleansing water of forgiveness and healing tells us that we are never the sum of our worst days.

In baptism, the water which represents the Spirit of God tells us that God will be with us always, that the faithful, loving accompaniment of our God is everlasting.

And the water we go under tells us too that if we die with Christ, we will live with him. That new life after death is the pattern of our present and the destiny of our future.

We’re not promised an easy road in this life. The faith of the risen Christ doesn’t even protect us or our world for the cataclysms that come, mostly the ones our species brings upon ourselves.

There will keep coming times we want to walk away from.

But the faith of the risen Christ assures us these times are not the end of the story but the beginning of knowing again that we live within a miracle, that our life is again a miracle of goodness, another impossibly great story we wouldn’t have seen coming.

Pray with me.

Spirit of the Risen and kind of tricksy Christ, fall afresh on us.

In the taking of communion, in the bearing witness to baptism, in the kind presence of a friend, in the sharing of a simple meal, in the generosity of every hospitality, in the truth that comes to us and sets our hearts on fire, remind us that we live within a miracle, that we are a miracle, and that with the help of God, the pattern of our present and our future can always be new life. Amen.

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For the last week of our Lenten season, the theme is the fire of love.

Our first scripture comes from a bit of erotic poetry, right in the middle of the Bible. It’s from a book called Song of Solomon that tells a poetic coming of age erotic love story that at the same time the tradition has read as an allegorical celebration of divine love.

The love and fire line is in this bit from the eighth chapter.

Song of Solomon 8:6-7 (Common English Bible)

6 Set me as a seal over your heart,

as a seal upon your arm,

for love is as strong as death,

passionate love unrelenting as the grave.[b]

Its darts are darts of fire—

divine flame!

7 Rushing waters can’t quench love;

rivers can’t wash it away.

If someone gave

all his estate in exchange for love,

he would be laughed to utter shame.

Weird that love, this fiery force as strong, as unrelenting as death, has this fierce erotic longing in it. A kind of impulse in us that by itself may or may not be loving.

Weird that to talk about holy love, divine love, the biggest and deepest love in the universe, the Bible has steamy romantic poetry in it. Weird that these things would be connected.

And weird that we all know that if someone had love, and someone else that this huge wealthy estate and tried to make a deal, everyone would laugh that person off. Who’d ever trade away a great love story?

It’s priceless, the best thing in life.

And yet we give up, or skip out on, or even throw away great love stories all the time, all the time.

Weird but true.

Last week I met a woman who really wanted to show me pictures of her kid.

I’ve done this before, tell people all about one of my kids, whether they cared or not. Probably not, but sometimes parents can’t help themselves.

Well, I met this woman because I was meeting with a small delegation of people whose friends or family members have been killed or taken hostage in the Hamas attacks on Israel in October.

She said to me and my friend:

would you like me to show you videos?

And my friend said:

would you like us to see them?

And she pulled out her phone, and we watched videos of her 22-year old son hiding in a shelter, images of her son being kidnapped and taken away, and an image of him as a small child, looking back charmingly at the camera.

She turned to us emotionally and said:

I know he’s alive. We haven’t had proof of life in a little over two months. But I know he’s alive, and I know he’s coming home. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I know he’s coming home.

A little part of me wanted to go political with the ensuing conversation. Wanted to ask about her about the thousands of Palestinian mothers who mourn their dead children. To ask about the Palestinian families who have no home to return to.

But I didn’t. One, she knew. Most of the members of this delegation were leftists in Israel, no friend to their own government and its actions in Gaza and the West Bank. They knew.

But also, that wasn’t what this conversation was about. I was being asked to bear witness to the fierce grief and the fierce love of a mother, whose 22-year old son was taken hostage.

Fierce, holy love, that says:

I know he’s coming home. And you’re welcome to visit me then and meet him. I hope you will.

Love is like this.

Love bears all things, believes all things. Love hopes all things, endures all things.

This day in the church calendar, Palm Sunday, is a weird one.

We remember Jesus and his students walking into Jerusalem, Jesus riding a donkey, the crowds waving palms and laying them down like a green carpet of welcome to the city as they cheered:

Hosanna, here is the one who will save us!

Jesus smiled. He loved the shouts and the singing.

But some part of him must have known it was kind of a fake love story.

On the other side of town, after all, the Roman governor Pilate rode into down on a battle horse, surrounded by soldiers, to bear in his body the glory of Rome, which would fill Jerusalem with its armies on big festivals, to keep the peace, so to speak, which was code for crushing dissent.

Jesus is the one they would crush this week. They would arrest him, mock him, beat him, crucify him naked on a wooden cross, with a crown of thorns atop his bleeding head.

This day, a week earlier, Jesus had just mourned over his beloved Jerusalem. Pausing on his walk in, he had seen the cityscape before him and broke down crying: saying

– if you only knew the way of peace. But you don’t. And so the day is coming when your enemies will surround you and besiege you, and attack and utterly crush you.

He saw this vision through tears, the angry, weary tears of grief.

And now, he performed this kind of street art mockery of a king’s entrance, riding into the city unarmed, with a scrappy band of rural followers for a royal delegation, atop an old donkey, not a battle horse, determined to bring a great love story to a city consumed with fantasies of fights they could not win.

Jesus didn’t bring the fight they were looking for.

Actually, the whole final week of Jesus’ natural life, the week we call the passion of Christ, is a week in his life filled with threats. Threats of Rome, threats of religious establishment, threats of denial and betrayal. Threat behind threat. Trauma behind trauma.

And over and over again, the sort of script Jesus is expected to follow is the scripts we all follow in the face of trauma, threat, or even tension.

He’s expected to fight or flee – the old fight or flight syndrome for our species, for all animals.

Or he’s expected to freeze or fawn – these additions to fight and flight our psychologists help us understand. Because sometimes in the face of threats, we don’t fight, we don’t run away, we just shut down and freeze – silence, no emotion, no action. Or we fawn – we try to people please our way past the threat.

But weirdly, Jesus again and again won’t do any of these things.

No fight, no fight, no freeze, no fawn.

Just passion.

He just keeps showing up, present with his whole body, his whole self.

And this is a great love story that no one, well almost no one, is ready for.

I’m obsessed with this TV show that ended a couple years ago, This is Us. That’s where I’m pulling this phrase “great love story” from today. Because the show uses that same phrase for the marriage at the heart of it. Jack and Rebecca have this epic, great love story, and who doesn’t like a good love story?

I met this extraordinary woman named Grace when I was 19-years old, and she and I who later realized we are so different, at that time bonded over the sames we share – some same likes, same values, same passions, same looking for someone to welcome us into their arms just as we are, same longing for authentic in a world of fake.

I love all this so much in Grace still. She’s stuck with me, even when I’ve mostly been a pain in the ass, and I can’t imagine anything but showing up with my whole self and sticking with her too. Because love is like that. And this imperfect but still great love story is so good. I’m so grateful.

But in many other relationships among family and friends, I’ve sometimes struggled to find my love stories there. Plenty of relationships in my life have gotten stuck or failed.

Which takes me back to This is Us. Because over time, I realized I was drawn to this show not so much by that romance as I was by all the other great love stories in it. Stories of parents and their children, stories of sisters and brothers and strangers and friends. This is Us is really about the us-ness of all of life.

It’s not easy. Misunderstanding, rivalry, addiction, conflict, even death get in the way.

And this is why great love stories are usually a little tragic too, because they usually end, by death or by some other means. Or they never even really get going the way they should because someone or another pisses them away.

And there’s an ache that comes with that.

It’s an ache that God shares with us, because God who is love has a great deal of experience of people doing so many other things besides living in God’s great love story for us all. So much fighting and fleeing and freezing and fawning. So little love sometimes.

That’s part of the tragedy of the passion week of Christ. So little room for love around Jesus.

But that’s part of why it’s so beautiful that in the passion week, there’s this great love story tucked in there that is so sacred, Jesus says that everywhere the good news of Christ travels, this story must be told.

So before we end today, let’s tell this great love story, and see if its truth, its lessons can’t rub off on us some. It’s in three of the four gospels, here in from the gospel of Mark.

Mark 14:3-9 (Common English Bible)

3 Jesus was at Bethany visiting the house of Simon, who had a skin disease. During dinner, a woman came in with a vase made of alabaster and containing very expensive perfume of pure nard. She broke open the vase and poured the perfume on his head.

4 Some grew angry. They said to each other, “Why waste the perfume?

5 This perfume could have been sold for almost a year’s pay] and the money given to the poor.” And they scolded her.

6 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you make trouble for her? She has done a good thing for me.

7 You always have the poor with you; and whenever you want, you can do something good for them. But you won’t always have me.

8 She has done what she could. She has anointed my body ahead of time for burial.

9 I tell you the truth that, wherever in the whole world the good news is announced, what she’s done will also be told in memory of her.”

I have five things I’d love for us to notice.

One is that great love stories don’t have to be sexual or romantic.

This story is sensual to be sure – this fancy vase and its gorgeous smelling perfume broke open over Jesus’ head. It’s sensual, and with other people at its center, it’s easy to see how it could have gone sexual. But it didn’t.

Because the woman, whose name isn’t given here, and Jesus don’t let it. They’re not looking for that in each other, and they’re healthy enough in their bodies and their hearts and their self-control to not let a beautiful moment go sideways.

In our guide this week, Ivy has brought in the wisdom of the poet Ada Limon, who’s got a love poem to her grandfather in there. Limon says there are too many love poems in the world for people who don’t deserve them.

“The bad partner gets a whole book, whereas the friend just gets a coffee.”

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Limon’s dead grandfather gets this beautiful poem. Jesus gets the whole bottle of perfume. Its owner gets this story about her great love told throughout the world for all time.

What great love stories has God given us – human, animal, or divine? The love of friends and family and pets and strangers and all of creation. We don’t get an infinite number of love stories to be part of, so they’re all sacred. Most of them aren’t romantic and sexual at all. But that doesn’t make them any less important.

Two, great love stories usually break the rules a little.

In this week’s guide, you get a story of me speeding through the middle of the night from New York to Massachusetts to get to Grace, who’d had a bad concussion, I had heard. She had gone to the hospital and apparently kept asking: am I pregnant? When she never had been and also asking: who gave me the shrooms? When I’m pretty sure, at least according to her, that had never happened. Funny now, but it freaked me out.

So I drove to see her at totally unsafe speeds. Speeds I will never be specific about. That I certainly won’t admit to my children. A law-breaking speed at which I would tell you all to never drive. Totally unsafe.

But love often breaks the rules a little.

Like here. Women don’t touch non-relative men like this in that culture. They don’t go into the inner circle of a rabbi with his students. And they certainly don’t pour perfume on their heads. But Jesus basically says:

this is what love looks like.

She has done a good thing for me.

This is what the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead had in mind about Jesus when he wrote: Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals.

Not all the morals, right? Hurt someone and call it love, and you might be an abuser. Be unfaithful and call it love, and you’re a liar.

But some of the so-called morals, some of the rules. Love is extra. You have to let it be.

Related to this, the third thing:

Great love stories are extravagant.

They’re impractical, wasteful, extravagant. The men here are arguing about this. They’re upset. What a waste. A year’s earnings wasted in this extravagant gesture. We could have done something more valuable.

And Jesus is like:

you’re right, but you’re wrong. There’s time for value, there’s time for practical. There is. But not every time.

Love isn’t practical. It may or may not be strategic. But we’ll die without it.

I was at that event I mentioned this week, with the delegation of those whose family or friends had been killed or taken hostage, because a friend I love had invited me. This friend is a prominent Jewish leader, in their own way. And we show up with our friends.

I don’t always agree with this friend, and certainly not with some of this friend’s allies and partners in public life. I think the militarism and aggression and the illusion that might ever makes right is always foolhardy. And so whether it be the military violence of Israel or of Hamas or most dominantly in the world, of my own country, I tend to mourn and protest and say with Jesus – as I personally discern the way of Jesus at least – this is not the way of peace.

My friend has told me before:

this is not practical when your enemies are trying to destroy you. What does love get you then?

And I don’t know. I’m not a politician a foreign policy expert or anything, but I dream of what a politics of extravagant love might look like. I wonder what national defense strategies and budgets of extravagant love might look like, because I believe the words of the scriptures that say that love can triumph over evil, and we are to overcome evil with good.

Away from national defense and politics and all, if we want to be part of great love stories, we have to embrace extravagance. What it means to let someone give us more than we deserve or are comfortable receiving – more praise, more attention, more kindness, more help. And we have to get comfortable turning the dial way up on how to give those to others – bigger compliments, more wasteful presents, deeper encouragement. Longer, fuller, wholehearted presence.

We can’t do that in every moment. We’re people, not God. But if we never do it, or if we rarely do it, we’ll be like that person that takes the estate, that takes money and time, and stuff instead of love. And how foolish would that be!

Fourthly, great love stories take whole-body, whole-hearted presence.

This big crowd of friends is getting ready for the Passover meal we’ll come to know as the Last Supper. And you know what happens with big dinners for friends and family, people are talking and arguing about all kinds of things.

Where are they going to eat?

Who brought this or that dish or supply?

Old arguments show up, in this case about what’s worth spending money on.

And one person, one person has the presence of heart to see the most important thing going on – that Jesus is about to die, and that this is a time to love him.

That’s how Jesus interprets this moment. That one person had the presence of heart and the courage of action to anoint him for burial, to prepare him for his death.

When you know you are loved, like you really, really know it, you can do hard things. And so Jesus says that wherever his good news goes, what she has done will be told. In memory of her.

This is what love looks like. The courage to show up to people, to gatherings, to wherever we can with our hearts open, with our emotions accessible, with the courage to say and do what love looks like, best as we see it.

There’s no rulebook for this. Not really.

Just keep wanting to learn what love looks like. Pay attention. And have the courage to go for it.

Lastly, great love stories are windows into the truest truth of the universe, that God is love and that we are all the subjects of undying, extravagant longing and affection.

This love is a last parable of the good news of Jesus in the gospel of Mark.

It’s a thing that happened, and it’s also a story of what love looks like. See others with whole-hearts, and acting extravagantly for their wellness and the wellness of everyone involved too. Seeding another great love story.

Some of us hear this talk with a sense of the relationships and the communities where we can live it. We know where our love stories lie, or at least we think we do, and I hope we are invited to the giving and receiving of love harder, deeper, fiercer.

Some of us are lonely or heartbroken, though, and we’re maybe not even sure where our love stories can be playing out right now.

Friends, I hope that you know that today you are one of the objects of God’s great love story, that the full attention of our Mother and Father of God is yours with delight and affection, hopeful that you can know just how valuable you are God, and hopeful that you can find your next great love stories as well.

Great Fire of Love we call God,

Everlastingly Broken, poured out, offering abundant love to all creation,

Give us the tenderness, the zeal, the courage, the hope to love deep and full, and the courage to love again.

The post The So-Easy-to-Miss Fire of Our Great Love Stories first appeared on Reservoir Church.

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Alright, friends, this week we leave the fires of danger, hell, and judgment behind and return to another version of where we started in this season of Lent: God is like fire, and that is actually good news for our lives.

If we think of a fiery person, we may think of an especially passionate person, or an angry or loving or fierce or intense person. But it is certainly not someone sleepwalking through life.

Let’s wonder this week about what our version of a life most fully alive might look like. Perhaps a life aflame with passion or energized by beauty and goodness. The God who is like fire does not want to burn us up or make us smaller, harder, or more afraid. Jesus said that he came that we might have life, life abundantly. I wonder what a more abundant life looks like for us all, a life that is larger without ever taking space from someone else, a life that is freer while also focused, a life where our uniquely most loving selves shine bright like stars.

Can you try something with me?

Think about someone you know about, or that you know personally, who seems fully alive. A life radiant with energy, beauty, goodness.

• Who comes to mind?
• What are they like?
• If you know, how did they get there?

The people I think of are not heroes, they are not perfect, if there is such a thing. They are human, but they are perfectly wonderful humans.

I think of a monk I know. He lives a life bound by many restrictions – vows of poverty and chastity. He is also radiantly present, kind, and insightful. He laughs and smiles and tears up easily. He listens well, tells the truth fiercely and graciously. He encourages people in ways that uplift and empower us. A focused life, a limited one, but also large, free, so good.

I think of a public school teacher I know who, like most teachers, moves through her days filled with unpredictably chaotic and disordered people and situations and bureaucracy. But she’s also set two of my kids on fire with her work in their lives. She asks really deep questions. She pushes young intellects, keeps her hobby of drumming in a punk rock band going through busy seasons of teaching and parenting. And day after day, she offers passion and presence and grace to her community. Young people like my kids are learning justice and forgiveness, careful thinking and attention to detail, greater hope in themselves and their world through their relationships with her. It’s so beautiful. Her life is beautiful.

I think of stories I’ve known of elders who visit with their spouses daily, even when their partners no longer remember their names. Their faithful presence, their perseverance in love keeps them and their spouse afloat in what could otherwise be a season of despair. The rest of us wonder at their grace as we learn more about what love looks like.

Friends, what does your life look like when it’s aflame? Who are you, on fire?

It has been said that many of us spend enough time thinking about ourselves as descendants but not enough time considering ourselves as ancestors.

From dust we come and to dust we go. We are limited by our genetics, our circumstances, by all the places – good and bad – that we come from. And we’re limited by the brevity of our mortal lives. We are earth, not fire. And yet we may not wonder enough about the full possibilities of our lives when we are most inspired and set alight by the living, life-giving God.

Maybe there are still stunning ancestor stories in the making within even us.

What do our lives look like when they are aflame? Who are we, on fire?

Hear the words of the good news of Jesus. This is a weird and wonderful story, called the transfiguration, from the gospel of Luke.

Luke 9:28-36 (Common English Bible)

28 About eight days after Jesus said these things, he took Peter, John, and James, and went up on a mountain to pray.

29 As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothes flashed white like lightning.

30 Two men, Moses and Elijah, were talking with him.

31 They were clothed with heavenly splendor and spoke about Jesus’ departure, which he would achieve in Jerusalem.

32 Peter and those with him were almost overcome by sleep, but they managed to stay awake and saw his glory as well as the two men with him.

33 As the two men were about to leave Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it’s good that we’re here. We should construct three shrines: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—but he didn’t know what he was saying.

34 Peter was still speaking when a cloud overshadowed them. As they entered the cloud, they were overcome with awe.

35 Then a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him!”

36 Even as the voice spoke, Jesus was found alone. They were speechless and at the time told no one what they had seen.

I don’t know what your reaction is to hearing this, friends, or hearing it again. What a strange story. So weird and wonderful. No wonder they’re all speechless. What do you say?

I have no idea what happened up on that mountain.

We know that it was like nothing the disciples had ever seen. Jesus looks like he’s spotlit from the heavens, just ablaze with light. And they see visions of two of the greatest fathers or mothers of their culture, their faith. The great prophets Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

It seems like this maybe happened late at night, or maybe at sunrise after they’d been hiking through the night, I don’t know. But it feels like a religious, a mystical experience, so Peter’s like:

I think we should build a shrine, right?

But then clouds blow through, and they hear God saying, Shutup, Peter. Just kidding, doesn’t actually say that, even if God maybe thinks it for a moment. No, the voice is like:

Jesus is my kid. The one and only. Listen to him.

Again, no wonder they are speechless.

The tradition around this text tends to focus on all this scene is meant to tell us about Jesus – how special and wise and important Jesus is, how he too was destined to be among the great leaders of his culture and faith, how like Moses and Elijah, his legacy would not end with his life but would resound for generations, even hinting that Jesus would rise in glory after his death, as we will celebrate in two weeks on Easter Sunday.

And clearly, this mountaintop moment was a big moment, this epic day in the life of Jesus, when his followers and we by their testimony see him most aflame, most fully alive, most revealed for all he is.

So it’s a weird and wonderful story about Jesus.

But in the Eastern tradition of the Christian faith, the Orthodox tradition, this transfiguration of Christ, isn’t just a story about Jesus, it’s a story about all of us too.

The Orthodox church teaches that this illumination of Jesus also gives us a glimpse of the transformed state which followers of Jesus will reach in the life to come, and sometimes in part, in this life.

The word for this is theosis, which means deification, or divinization, the process by which we mortal humans become like Christ, where we too become humans who fully embody the glory of God.

The second century bishop Irenaeus wrote,

“The glory of God is a human fully alive.”

Some people pull this quote out of context as they think about chasing the adrenaline of adventure, like a Red Bull cliff jumping contest. That’s cool, if it’s for you. The thrill of intense experiences can certainly make us feel fully alive, and maybe there’s something of the glory of God we taste in that.

Irenaeus didn’t mean less than this but he did mean more than this. He was writing about Jesus, that in the most fully alive human of Jesus we see God’s glory. But he was doing so inviting both our worship and our participation. He was inviting us to notice how large, how free, how beautiful Jesus is, because he was so fully human and so in touch with the love and purposes of God in every moment. And he was encouraging us to imagine for ourselves and our species a pattern of imitating Christ in this, in our own ways. With the help of God, and with our faith and cooperation, we too can be transfigured. We too have the possibility of being humans most fully alive, transformed from glory to glory, as it were.

This is our best chance at becoming the ancestor people tell stories about after we are gone.

It’s our way toward being the person who comes to mind when someone else is asked:

Who do you know that is most fully alive?

Let’s think about how this happens,

First, we’ve got to wake up.

I think it’s interesting that the text says Peter, James, and John almost missed this moment – we never would have heard about it either – because they just about fell asleep.

Maybe they’d been hiking all night and just needed a nap.

But maybe it’s easy to sleep our way through some of what’s most important in life. It’s easy to sleepwalk through life in a way, isn’t it?

I was hanging out with a couple of friends this week. And one of them was talking about how he kind of lost it last week after a particularly bad day. He was a little sheepish when he talked about his reaction, like why did I shut down so much? And another one of the friends was like:

hold on, think about all you’ve been through the past few years. Think about how much we’ve all been through the past few years.

And he started naming some of the things we’ve shared about in our circle the past few years – health problems, family crises, impossibly difficult issues at work. But not just our private stuff, but some of the things we’ve all been through by just being alive the past few years – pandemic, and lock down, and bearing witness to threat after threat, violence after violence. He was like:

It’s been a lot. No wonder that you’re tired. No wonder that your tank is empty sometimes.

Some of us are tired, aren’t we?

Maybe your tank feels empty too. And so you’re just sputtering along. Or sometimes over-reactive to a new problem or a bump in the road.

The weight of the past is heavy. As we hold our past in our bodies, and receive it again and again in our memories, it’s really easy to assume that the past is always prelude. That the future is going to play out just the same.

Marjorie Suchocki is a theologian and philosopher I appreciate, who I got to meet online at a conference I was presenting at last month. She talks about how the weight of our past can feel so unchangeable that it becomes demonic. She doesn’t mean that in a spooky, exorcist kind of way, but in the literal sense of that word – accusing, a weight of heavy resignation and despair that there isn’t a better way ahead, that the worst ruts we’re in are just going to stay the way they are or sink deeper.

This happens to us, it happens to me – that our most pressing discouragements and intractable difficulties – personally, collectively – we just get stuck, we feel like things can not change. And we need help to imagine another possibility.

We need the help of God and friends to interrupt this sleepwalking, stuck in a rut, despairing way of passing our lives.

It’s a waking up to new possibilities.

It’s a remembering of what we know from investing, that past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. The future is unwritten.

It’s a hope that what the scriptures say is true, that the steadfast love of God is new every morning. Every morning, the steadfast love of God is coming our way anew.

One great way to wake up to love and hope and possibility is through wonder and worship. Wonder and worship.

Peter, James, and John are falling asleep when they catch Jesus out of the corner of their eyes and he’s bathed in sunlight. His clothes, his face look aflame like lightning.

I don’t think they’re sleepy anymore.

And then even when they try to analyze or control the moment – Peter is like,

hey religious moment, let’s make a shrine,

but the voice of God is like:

actually, hold on, you’re kind of right, Peter, but there’s more. There’s more. Just listen. Keep listening. Pay attention.

These same sleepy fishermen, who have themselves been battered by life, and who in the gospels say and do the stupidest things, keep walking with Jesus. They keep listening. They stick around. And in time, with the help of God and one another, it catches. Their lives are set aflame with passion and purpose. They become the dwelling places for God Peter dreamed of building that morning. They become the leaders of the first century Jesus movement, which is to become one of the largest, most influential movements in human history.

They are some of the spiritual ancestors that get us all in this room today.

This is why I pray when I do, in my own personal devotional life. And it’s why I come to church too, to get help waking up as I wonder and worship, knowing this is going to make my life larger, freer, and more loving.

Sometimes it’s in the music, when I’m singing with you all and it gets into my heart that the creator God of the universe calls us friends.

Sometimes it’s in the taking of communion, when I eat and drink and I remember that God shares everything with us all – love, forgiveness, adoption, second chances, everything. Or I look around at you all beautiful people and think I really am part of this community of love and hope that we call the body of Christ.

Sometimes in a sermon or a moment of prayer, a word will come to me, a word that feels like truth and sounds like freedom. A week and a half ago, I was sleep walking my way through a wall of stress, just gripped more each day by worry and a sense of doom over one piece of my world I really care about.

And it came to my mind or soul or spirit – whatever you want to call that deep center of ourselves – that God knew it all, that God was intimate with my concerns and stress, and intimately held the object of my stress too. None of us are alone, none of us cut off, we are all connected to the caring compassion of an ever present Spirit we call God.

And that broke the stress, broke it entirely. And that’s held.

Wonder and worship open us up. They open us up to the steadfast love of God, in all of today’s new forms. They help us wake up.

Now I want to acknowledge that as much as I encourage worship of the God we meet in the face of Jesus, there are ways that wonder and worship reach people who aren’t religious, or aren’t interested in the Way of Jesus.

It can be nature, art, unexpected or profound kindness, an experience of God or of love that is mediated through any form. And it can do this too. God can come to us through many means.

There’s science to this too, this awakening that comes through wonder and worship. Sometimes it’s called the science of awe. How apprehending vastness or beauty or kindness interrupts us, wakes us up, kind of stops us in our tracks and widens our gaze, widens our hearts.

Awe takes us outside of ourselves for a moment. It breaks our sleepy, doomsy rhythms. And then if we can really let it in – not analyze it or control it or walk away from it – but let the awe take hold, we can come back to ourselves with more calmness and compassion. This has been measured.

Trying new things, paying mindful attention to whatever moment we are in so we notice whatever kindness or beauty might appear, even noticing and admiring the moral beauty of others. All these things bring wonder, they produce awe – and that calms us, deepens us, extends our lives – lights us up.

So for our lives aflame, we’ve got to wake up, to wonder and worship, and lastly, to welcome. To welcome.

To welcome the life that we are in. And to welcome a larger, freer, more loving version of that same life.

Jesus and his disciples come down from the mountaintop. They have to. They have lives to live, people to see, work to do. We all have to come down from the mountaintop, into the mundane and sometimes disappointing realities of our lives.

But what if we can welcome our life a little more each day, not as we want it to be but just as it is? Because our transfiguration, our joining Jesus in becoming the glory of a human being most fully alive is going to happen in our lives as they are. Not in a fantasy version of our life where everything is better, but in our life as it is today.

So we welcome the good stuff, and we welcome the mess, and we welcome things just as they are today, in the hope that this is good enough for God, good enough for us, good enough for fire.

And then we welcome the largest, freest, most loving version of that life we can. This is language we’ve been quoting from James Baldwin in this season, that a God worth worshiping is one that will make us larger, freer, more loving versions of ourselves.

Some of the ways of our lives don’t do that. We play by old rules in our family systems. Or we play capitalism’s rules – thinking our funds or our success define our worth. Or just working and working and working and then when we’re not working, letting big tech corporations make money off of our data and our weary attentions. Baldwin said that when we assimilate to racist, capitalist, violent, white world that is much of mainstream society, it’s being integrated into a burning house.

There are plenty of ways of living we can welcome that won’t make us larger, freer, and more loving.

In the way of Jesus, we’re invited back to our own lives rejecting and resisting all this. We’re invited to the purifying power of God within us and in our communities to resist or transform everything there that is small, hard, unfree, and unloving. And instead, we’re encouraged to admire what is best and most beautiful in the world, God included. For we become what we worship. And to welcome whatever vision God gives us of a larger, freer, more loving life, that we can be filled with all the fullness of God, shining with our light and the light of God, growing into the ancestors our future world depends upon.

I want to end by a bit from Ada Limon’s poem “Dead Stars” you’ll find in this week’s guide.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds…

Let’s pray.

Light of Christ, Fire of God, burn in me, shine through me.

Light of Christ, Fire of God, burn in us, shine through us.

That we too could experience and manifest the glory of God in a life most alive.

The post A Life Most Fully Alive first appeared on Reservoir Church.

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Hey, Friends,

Good to be with you all again. I was preaching last Sunday at Great Road Church in Acton. They’re friends of ours who are connecting with us through the post-evangelical collective. So greetings from out West! And I’m glad to be back with you all exploring our theme of God and us and our world on fire.

I wonder if you’ve heard the story of Carlton Pearson. He died late last year. Before that, though, he was a fascinating Christian minister made famous by an equally fascinating Atheist storyteller. Twenty years ago, Carlton Pearson was the subject of a full-length podcast from Ira Glass on This American Life. It was so gripping it became a feature film called Come Sunday.

And the story that the podcast and film tell is how this pastor of a 5,000 person Pentecostal megachurch lost it all – his colleagues, his career, the church he led, even his marriage. And it wasn’t because of an affair or embezzlement or anything else like that. For the people in Pearson’s circles, it was something worse. Based on his experiences of God, and based upon the words of the Bible, he stopped believing in hell. Was he a heretic? A visionary? Something else?

We knew this Lent that when we talked about fire in church, and encouraged us to sit around fires and wonder about God and life, for some of us, the first and last thing that would come to mind is whatever we’ve been taught or wondered about hell fire.

For others of us like me who weren’t raised on threats of hell, we may or may not think much about it. But still, hell is a huge part of the history and legacy of the Christian faith. It casts a big shadow over the reactions to this faith still, for believers and non-believers alike. And if you read the stories and teachings of Jesus, as we always invite you to do, you’ll see that now and then Jesus talks about something like hell. What is it? And why does Jesus talk about it?

So today I’m going to give a sermon on hell. I checked – it’s my third sermon on hell in the past few years. I never thought I’d become a hellfire preacher, but here we are. I think the other two sermons are good, maybe more than enough, but third time’s a charm, so here we go.

I’m going to share five thoughts about hell.

And we’ll start with one of the places where it seems like Jesus is talking about it, as he does a number of times.

Mark 9:45-48 (Common English Bible)

45 If your foot causes you to fall into sin, chop it off. It’s better for you to enter life lame than to be thrown into hell with two feet.

46, 47 If your eye causes you to fall into sin, tear it out. It’s better for you to enter God’s kingdom with one eye than to be thrown into hell with two.

48 That’s a place where worms don’t die and the fire never goes out.

This whole cut off your foot, cut out your eye teaching shows up in different places in the gospels. Elsewhere, it’s applied to lust – how you look at and think about and touch people you’re sexually attracted to but aren’t in committed relationship with. And Jesus argues that learning self-control is pivotal to a good life and good relationships. Sex is good, but we’re not safe sexual creatures without self-control.

Here in Mark, though, it’s not about sex, but about hurting kids, and Jesus is like:

get any help you need, any therapy, any limits so that this will not happen.

Because the consequences are grave. He’s like:

enter God’s kingdom or get thrown into hell.

And just to shake the imagination a bit, Jesus is like

hell, you know, that place where the worms don’t die and the fire never goes out. That’s the kind of hell child abusers face. So don’t.

• What in the world is Jesus talking about?
• What did Pastor Carlton Pearson get in so much trouble for not talking about anymore?
• What and where in the world is hell?

You ready?

Alright:

Hell is a place on earth

At first, from this teaching, you wouldn’t think it was any place at all. When Jesus talks about cutting off parts of your own body, he’s clearly using metaphor. There was an early church father who literally castrated himself to comply with this teaching of Jesus about cutting off parts of yourself, and he lived to regret it. He was like: don’t do that. It’s a metaphor. I take his word for it.

So if Jesus’ advice on self-control and getting help to be safer, healthier people, then maybe his warning for the horrible things that will happen to you if you abuse kids is a metaphor too. After all, we do know that without deep healing work, the lives of both abused children and the adults who abuse them can become living hells.

But we know that Jesus’ metaphor for the consequences of are harm-doing aren’t totally abstract, because the word he says isn’t actually “hell,” it’s the word Gehenna, which isn’t really a word at all, it’s a place. Ge-henna, or the Valley of Hinnom, in Jerusalem.

And that gruesome image Jesus says that this is a place where the worms never die and the fire keeps burning, he didn’t make that up either. He’s quoting the last verse of the prophet Isaiah from the Hebrew scriptures, where people who persist in organizing their lives against the justice and peace of God will end up mass graves in this valley, victims of their own wars and moral chaos.

Friends, I’ve been to Gehenna. It is and always has been an awful place.

So still now, if you can get to Jerusalem, you can go to hell. You find the top of this narrow but lush green valley of olive trees. At the top of it, there’s this space for seasonal outdoor music festivals for middle class and wealthy Jewish youth. It’s like the Israeli version of a hip hangout spot in Somerville.

But then you descend down a steep, poorly paved road, as I did on foot when I was in Jerusalem. And conditions deteriorate. You pass an old graveyard, you pass a little monastery that marks the cite where the disciple Judas killed himself in despair after betraying Jesus. You pass the spots of ancient mass graves and spots of child sacrifice, and old dumping grounds for burning trash and corpses. Toward the bottom of the valley, you still see more trash than people. When I was there, I peeked behind a crumbling brick wall and saw a fly-covered, gutted corpse of a sheep lying on the ground.

And then at the very bottom of the valley is a working class Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem, across a no-man’s land barrier where I was rebuked for running to, where it’s apparently not safe for Jews or Muslims or outsiders like myself to go.

Gehenna then and now is a spot of enmity, death, fear, and decay. It’s where trash and corpses and the best human dreams of progress and peace go to die.

And Jesus, wise and teacher and healer that he was, tells the truth about it to his contemporaries in ancient Israel and Palestine. He says:

don’t get healthy, live the life of a fool, and this is where you’ll end up. But you don’t have to. Don’t let this happen.

Hell is a place on earth. Don’t go there.

Now by the time of Jesus, after centuries of relative disinterest in the afterlife in ancient Judaism, more and more people were wondering how the mercy and justice and faithfulness of God would play out beyond the grave for us all. So sometimes in the times Jesus lived and taught, people would use Gehenna as a metaphor for consequences and suffering we might face beyond this life. And we’ll get back to that in a few minutes.

But first, most primarily, hell is a place on earth.

But it’s not just one place. It stands for many places. Second point:

Hell is many places on earth

Jesus warns us about the consequences of hurting kids. I’m going to keep this general, but I knew a child abuser when I was a kid. I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back he was coming into adulthood as a lonely, miserable, broken young man. It took a while before it all caught up with him. He did a world of hurt in kids’ lives before he was caught, but for the past 30-35 years, he’s been in and out of prison, living a pathetic, miserable, small life. It’s tragic.

Now, when I was in hell a couple years ago, running through Gehenna on foot, I didn’t see him there. Because he was in a state prison in Massachusetts. He wasn’t magically transported to a mass grave in Gehenna, because his living hell is a state prison here, where he is confined because he’s been unable to get well.

Hell is many places on earth.

It’s prison.

It’s neighborhoods in our cities and countrysides, where generations of poverty and racial oppression, and class segregation, and bad education and bad environmental stewardship have created whole ecosystems of isolation and despair and no opportunity.

Hell right now is Gaza in Palestine, which for years has been a kind of large open prison, where millions of people are penned in in isolation and poverty not for any crimes of their own, but because of generations of displacement and dispute and repeated vicious cycles of violence that in the past five months, have been playing out more brutally and with more death and suffering than we have seen in generations if ever.

And now to live in Gaza is to live in hell, where people are sick and hungry and terrified. It’s a picture of the anti-vision of the commonwealth or beloved community of God, where plowshares are turned into swords, and where children suffer from and study and make war.

I even write in our guide this week about unhappy households and unhappy families as their own kind of living hell. When in our supposedly safest, most intimate communities, we can not really see and hear one another, where we can’t face the truths of our own life and of one another with love and compassion, the isolation and heartache and resentment that grows there is its own kind of living hell too.

I actually agree with Carlton Pearson that there isn’t some place where God tortures people for all eternity with worms and fire. If that’s what we mean by hell, it’s not an idea worthy of God or of us, but I think Pearson and others make a mistake when they say that means there’s no such thing as hell. There is. Jesus warned us about it and wants to help rescue us from it.

But tragically, there are many hells on earth, at least in this life, maybe in the life to come. On that note, two points about hell in the afterlife.

Hell as eternal punishment for the wicked is fear-mongering spiritual violence and abuse

Friends, I’ve been gentler about my perspective on this in the past, but more and more, I feel like some things have to be said strong and plain.

The Christian doctrine of hell as a place where God tortures God’s enemies for eternity is maybe the most harmful, dangerous, damaging doctrine in the history of the church.

Early in the 14th century, an Italian writer published the epic poem Divine Comedy, and the first part stuck in our imaginations. Set during the season of Lent, a man who has lost his way in mid-life is guided through nine layers of hell beneath the surface of the earth. There, unrepentant sinners suffer eternally and without hope. Heretics lie in burning coffins. Murderers perpetually drown in rivers of boiling blood. This brutalish, frightening tour through the underworld is meant to shake the conscience and protect the believer from going astray.

Dante may have had some of his geology right. The earth does get hotter as you go deeper, thousands of degrees hot at the center! But his theology missed the mark badly. By placing fear rather than love at the center of Christian religion, Dante and his many imitators have shaped God in the image of the most controlling and violent tyrants. And they have incentivized anxious, obedient compliance in the church while weaponizing judgment against Muslims, Jews, indigenous people, and all manner of people the church has labeled dangerous or deviant.

This imaginative vision of an angry God with a violent, fiery hell seems to burn brightest in the imaginations of believers who are afraid and go to war.

Here’s a quote from friend of Reservoir Brian McLaren on this:

“Fear is one of the earliest childhood associations with fire. We all remember warnings from parents and adults to keep away from the fire. Fire is dangerous and will burn you; play with fire and you will get burned. The church has often used this fear of fire to very destructive effect. This was done in two ways. Firstly, so-called heretics and witches were burned to death at the stake. Secondly, the church colonized the minds of its subjects with fearful visions and threats of hell and purgatory.” (Should I Stay Christian, p. 108)

And here’s one from the late pastor Carlton Pearson:

“I do believe in hell as a state of being or consciousness, and I believe that people can dwell in hell and that many do, right now, today, on this earth before rather than after death. I will argue … that hell is the most erroneous, outdated, misunderstood, and misguided dogma in all of Christianity, and the one that must be discarded if this spiritual tradition is to survive as anything more than a contemptible curiosity…. Hell was never God’s intention. It is man’s invention.”

This kind of hell is used to control and hurt people. Jesus says that it is the enemies of God who come to steal, kill, and destroy. Jesus comes that we may have abundant life. This vision of hell has got to go.

But is there any kind of hell in the afterlife?

Well, we don’t know. We actually don’t know much about the afterlife, do we, since none of us has been there. But I can say this:

If there is a hell in the afterlife, we can hope there are ways out.

If there is any hell in the afterlife, we can hope there are ways out.

Before Dante’s Inferno, if people believed in a place of fiery punishment in the afterlife, they likely got the idea from the final book in the Bible, Revelation.

Revelation is a weirdly told story of the great evil of human empires and great, faithful love of God.

On the evil of human empires, you get lots of fire image, lots of stuff like this, from the 9th chapter:

Revelation 9:16-18 (Common English Bible)

16 The number of cavalry troops was two hundred million. I heard their number.

17 And this is the way I saw the horses and their riders in the vision: they had breastplates that were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The horses’ heads were like lions’ heads, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and sulfur.

18 By these three plagues a third of humankind was killed: by the fire, smoke, and sulfur coming out of their mouths.

This is one of Revelation’s pictures of evil unleashing hell. God sees it, God doesn’t stop it, either because there’s some greater timing we don’t understand or because God can’t.

But if we’ve paid any attention to this history or the current news about the war and violence and suffering that large nations unleash, we know what this looks like. John the revelator is telling the truth about the horrible evil powerful nations unleash beneath their propaganda of peace and prosperity.

But Revelation’s vision is also anchored in the hope that a beautiful and wise Jesus, once slain on a Roman cross, still lives as the resurrected Lamb of God and Prince of Peace.

And in Revelation, there’s a hope that there is a place where all the bad things go, so they will haunt and plague us no more. Near the end of the book, in Chapter 20, this is visualized as a giant pit of fire.

Now it does say that people who aren’t in God’s book of life go there, and that’s a hard, complex line to wrestle with. But we should read that in light of what comes before and after. Because mostly, people aren’t going there at all.

What goes into the pit are big realities and systems of evil that live beyond any one particular person. Accusation goes into the pit of fire. Lies go there. Violence goes there. Death and the grave themselves are swallowed up in a fiery defeat. It’s not a place to punish people, it’s a place to vanquish evil, it’s a place where all the bad things go.

This is an image of the judgment of God. Some of the ancient texts make that sound like punishment of particular people, but we can be convinced that because God is love, all of God’s judgment is ultimately restorative, not punitive. The judgment of God exposes and heals. God’s judgment is truth telling about lies and harm and evil, so that all that stuff can get burned out of our human story and we can be transformed. Out of love for the harmed and the harm doer, out of love for the victim and the victimizer.

So when horrible violence or disasters happen on earth, I never speculate whether or not they are God’s judgment, and I’d ask you not to as well. But when the truth about bad things gets told, when exposure of evil and harm occurs, I do think this is in part the judgment of the living God, that healing could come.

And if that kind of judgment extends beyond this life in some way that we can not predict and understand, we can hope that it is not the end of the story. After all, in the next and final chapters of Revelation, as a new Jerusalem is described, as a symbol for a renewed heaven and earth, there are trees whose leaves are good for the healing of the nations, and there are gates which shall never be shut.

We don’t always see it in this life, but the faith of Jesus dares us to hope that God’s mercy is wider than God’s judgment, that God’s healing is deeper than our evil, and that love is stronger than hate, that love is even stronger than death.

This takes us right to the final point, friends, that:

God is better worshiped as a firefighter, not a fire starter.

When we think about hell, or when we think as Ivy had us do last week about all the suffering and hardship we face in this life, it doesn’t do any good to imagine that God is somehow starting all those fires. That thought’s mostly not worthy of a loving God.

Instead, friends, we can put our hope in God whose arm is strong to save, in God who isn’t the great fire-starter, but the great firefighter.

We’ll have an opportunity to hold in worship in just a moment any ways we see or face fires of suffering in this life. We hold those to God in hope for God’s help, for God’s strength and perseverance for all facing the fire, and for God’s help in putting out those fires.

And I encourage us to wonder together, throughout this week using our Lenten guide, and now together as well:

I wonder what you see in our land that is against the loving, renewing, restorative, and just purposes of Jesus for Beloved Community? How do we spiritually and otherwise resist whatever sin and death harms us all?

I wonder what dangers you feel you are prone to? What does resisting that look like for us? .

I wonder what dangers our cultures and countries are prone to? What does interrupting all that look like for us?

This week:* Each morning or evening, light a candle. If you’re lucky enough to have a fireplace or a firepit, you could even safely light a fire. By yourself, or with a friend or your family, take a few moments to watch the flame. Imagine the flame as representing whatever in you or around you is suffering or causing ripples of harm.***

WONDER

What will put out the fire? What is your part? What help do you need?

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I’ve seen a house burn from top to bottom once in my life — thankfully only once.
Ten years ago in Maine, this time of year — I watched it burn from the 2nd floor of the house my Dad grew up in. That 2nd floor was the perfect vantage point to watch birds float to the small roof below, and identify unannounced visitors pulling in the driveway coming to say their “last good-byes” to my Dad. It also gave a nice view of that house directly across the road that sat at the top of a short but steep hill. . . one that always was of interest in the winter as the owners gave test to their plowing and de-icing prowess – often skidding their vehicles to a merciful stop just before they joined the main road at the bottom.

Firefighters say that it only takes 30 seconds from the start of a fire for it to rage out of control. And only two minutes for it to overtake a structure. I think I had learned this fact in 3rd grade when Smokey The Bear visited our classroom. It scared me enough that I convinced my parents to put a metal escape chain ladder out my bedroom window for fire safety — which I happily used for many things unrelated to fires.

But on that unusually warm February night 10 years ago I bore witness – firsthand – to the uncontrolled power and speed of fire. The impact of the terror of fire – the screams and the cries …the damage, the destruction and the danger of fire.

It is true that fire is scary as hell.

In one minute life holds shape – heartbeats, and flannels, and chimneys, and snow shovels, and dogs barking — and in the next minute it is smoke and ash.

Today we’ll spend some time pressing into this theme of Fire as Danger – it is our 3rd week of Lent and we will wonder together:

• 1) why has the church used the imagery and metaphor of fire to put terror into the hearts of so many who are eager to experience the love of God?
• 2) What do we do when we are burned? When those around us are in fires?
• 3) And what potential does fire have to shape us?

We’ll look at the historic story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who were thrown into a dangerous, fiery furnace and consider its contemporary messages for us today.

Before I pray for us, I would be remiss to not flag how intense this imagery of fire is… how it moves from the metaphorical realm to our lived reality in many ways. This week US Airman Aaron Bushnell died in the fires of self-immolation protesting the genocide of the Palestinian people. It is intense, hard, and it is real. As we move along in today’s service please take the space and care you need for yourself and the Spirit of God to be with you – with as much freedom as you need.

Let me pray for us:

My God(!) there is a lot to fear these days…so much is burning. There is a lot to rage against and a lot to fight. And so today we ask for your warm presence as we gather together. Help us to remember that you call us by name – that we are precious in your eyes, that you honor us – that you love us unconditionally.

And remind us that through every age of struggle, every era of hope, you are with us. And in the labors of liberation, could you sustain us with joy and courage?

We praise you God, because your presence is a force OF, and FOR life. Your love is like oxygen to our spirits – that fans the flames of all good things.

In community, we pray – – AMEN

It isn’t that surprising to imagine why churches would gravitate to the imagery of fire — I mean it is almost a flawless means by which to control. Fire’s destructive power is an effective symbol for fearsome threats of eternal suffering and torment for particular targets of divine or human judgment. *next week – fires of judgment.

Fire of course, leaves the symbolic realm and is a real experience of pain and suffering. We know – the minimal centimeters between the pleasure of warming your hands by a fire and the jolting pain of having them singed by fire – we know that a drop of boiling water, or a brush of skin against a hot pan — leaves its mark in blisters and searing pain for days. John O’ Donohue says

“a burn is unlike any other pain – it cuts to the soul.”

Therefore — threatening people with a future that is an eternal burning was the ultimate threat that could be issued against them. And for followers of Jesus who had witnessed heretics and witches and any other person deemed “deviant” burned at the stake – this wasn’t a far off threat – it was convincing.

FEAR – it’s how the church colonized the minds of its people with a blazing image of a controlling, angry, punishing God. A conditional God – a conditional faith. And even without an identifiable flame as a warning all the time, or words like “damnation” or “eternal suffering” always spoken from leaders… the smoke of this fear is what has been absorbed into our churches, our nation, our society — and for many of us, our bodies.

But… if we can roll back and look at scripture we can see that fire isn’t usually a weapon in God’s hands — it is violence from which God longs to rescue us.

Isaiah 43:1-5 (Common English Bible)

1 Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name; you are mine.

2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

when through the rivers, they won’t sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire, you won’t be scorched

and flame won’t burn you.

3 I am the Lord your God,

the holy one of Israel, your savior.

I have given Egypt as your ransom,

Cush and Seba in your place.

4 Because you are precious in my eyes,

you are honored, and I love you.

I give people in your place,

and nations in exchange for your life.

5 Don’t fear,

I am with you.

From the east I’ll bring your children;

from the west I’ll gather you.

You will not drown. You will not be scorched. You will not be burned. I will be with you.

These are the promises that Isaiah pens to those in exile who are under the empire of Babylon. A people who had journeyed and suffered, who had been enslaved — then free, and now in exile. A letter to say “there is hope”, God has not forgotten you.

Remember your ancestors who kept their eyes on God. God who came in the column of fire that lit the path in their nighttime travels … remember your God as fire & light.

Remember fire that lit your ancestors’ way through the wilderness – that glowed as manna fell and warmed as the desert night temperatures cooled .. remember your God as fire & warmth & protection.

Remember that in the flame of fire — God spoke to Moses. The one who would lead your ancestors out of slavery.

God a column of fire. . . present, comforting, a spark of hope.

It’s a bold letter of promise. A promise on God’s behalf for rescue. To return home from exile. A promise that God is an unconditional God. An everlasting, proactive, persistent loving kindness – kind of God… toward all of God’s creation.

These were the promises I too believed. God will save. God will deliver those God loves from suffering. God will protect. These too were the promises my Dad believed.

They were the ones that stirred in our spirit as we watched the house burn across the street – as my brothers ran to help, as we called the volunteer fire department…

We clung to those promises because we too were watching as our father’s body was ravaged by a rare cancer that spread like wildfire through his body and engulfed his life in the blistering speed of four weeks time – before the age of 60.

It’s why my four siblings and I were all in Maine, on that 2nd floor. It’s why we could watch visitors pull into the driveway.

This house burning across the street at the same time – felt emblematic of our reality.

And we leaned on our faith — on these promises. We prayed the gut-wrenching prayers…

“God rescue. God of miracles – rescue, please.”

At the heart of the promise in these Isaiah verses is the rescue from floodwaters and fire.

But it is not literally true for everyone. It wasn’t true in our case with our Dad. There were Jews who died in the fires of Babylon used in their siege of Jerusalem. I know many of you have experienced and witnessed fires – suffering, pain, oppression – that does burn, does scorch, does hurt.

Here’s the thing when it appears that God doesn’t rescue or save… a conditional faith – with foundations of fear – develop/construct new promises that in suffering sound like,

“God has his ways that are bigger than ours,”

or

“everything happens for a reason.”

I heard those words over and over throughout the wake of my Dad’s death. And as so many of you might know — that is an additional fire to endure. Like a 3rd degree burn… I mean when you need a hand – or an emergency ladder, or a lifeboat or a lamp (as Rumi says), the worst thing you can be handed is a “reason.” That is not rescue. That is not the loving care of God.

It is a burn that asphyxiates and poisons again and again. It’s not the blatant “fire and damnation pounding from a pulpit” – but it is the same smoke.

Smokey the Bear says when you are in the presence of fire you should “Stop, drop, & roll.” Functionally, it is a life-saving technique to cease any movement that will fuel the flames — and LIMIT the harm of fire by depriving it of oxygen.

I knew if there existed one lick of this flame – of a conditional God – even way back in the corner of my subconscious – it would show itself, it would still be live. And I knew I had to be fully rescued from this – needed to extinguish it. I knew that it would be critical in stoking my own fire within for the good of this world, for the work of justice, and for the godly work of liberation.

I want to invite you to consider the story we’ll read together of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Perhaps a familiar story – it’s one that I remember from early in my childhood. One that was relayed to me as an example of the unwavering faith we were meant to have, the miracles that would unfold as a result, and a God who would cheer us on in such tests of life and faith.

I invite you to consider – as we read this historic one- your own story. The fires you’ve endured…the ones that you’ve been burned by — have been rescued from? How you have perceived God in those times.. And now?

Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and Daniel were taken captive during the period known as the Babylonian exile when the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar – described by some as a narcissistic maniac – besieged Jerusalem. These men had impressed Nebuchadnezzar and so had been promoted to administrative positions despite remaining faithful to their Jewish beliefs. Except the conditions ramped up to show allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar – and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to bow down in worship of a nine-story tall golden statue that Nebuchadnezzar had ordered built, and the king became enraged.

And here we pick up the story:

Daniel 3:13-18 and 24-25 (Common English Bible)

13 In a violent rage Nebuchadnezzar ordered them to bring Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were brought before the king.

14 Nebuchadnezzar said to them: “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: Is it true that you don’t serve my gods or worship the gold statue I’ve set up?

5 If you are now ready to do so, bow down and worship the gold statue I’ve made when you hear the sound of horn, pipe, zither, lyre, harp, flute, and every kind of instrument. But if you won’t worship it, you will be thrown straight into the furnace of flaming fire. Then what god will rescue you from my power?”

16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered King Nebuchadnezzar: “We don’t need to answer your question.

17 If our God—the one we serve—is able to rescue us from the furnace of flaming fire and from your power, Your Majesty, then let him rescue us.

18 But if he doesn’t,….. know this for certain, Your Majesty: we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you’ve set up.”

Nebuchadnezzar has them bound up – and throws them in the furnace… and then we read this:

24 Then King Nebuchadnezzar jumped up in shock and said to his associates, “Didn’t we throw three men, bound, into the fire?”

They answered the king, “Certainly, Your Majesty.”

25 He replied, “Look! I see four men, unbound, walking around inside the fire, and they aren’t hurt! And the fourth one looks like one of the gods.”

The book of Daniel, set during the Babylonian exile, has something to say about history. It explores the vulnerability of people living under oppression. These three men — who were stripped of their Hebrew names — given these Babylonian names of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego have something to say about the

“choices faced by those who must either support a repressive regime or face certain death. And just how quickly the dangerous fires of empire overtake… Nebuchadnezzar wanted them to bow—forget their heritage, forget their legacy, forget their journey, forget their God, forget their rights, and bow down.”

(Rev. Barber sojo.net) Forget who they are — and that starts with de-naming them.

The name Nebuchadnezzar literally means “one who will do anything to protect his power.” That’s why Nebuchadnezzar built his towers. He built his tower more than nine stories tall – he put his name on his tower and everything he built, and then he put gold on his tower, and he promised that he, and only he, could make Babylon great again, as Reverend William Barber points out. (sojo.net)

He wanted control. He wanted power. He wanted worship. He wanted to be God.

But Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to fan this fire – they would not give oxygen to the flames of the religion of the king, the religion of greed, of fear, the religion of racism, the religion of hate.

Under oppression, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego knew who they were. And they knew who God was. A God that was inside the trouble with them – in the fire. God who they declared,

“even if God doesn’t rescue us — still we will not bow”

an unconditional God.

And as they come out of the fire – the attendants to the King saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them.

And Nebuchadnezzar

“Praises their God! And these three men say, “they trusted in this GOD and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God.” (v.28)

This is a “strong, miraculous, unwavering faith” story — AND it is a story that extinguishes the voice of the oppressor, and it is a story that shows that

“in the midst of the burning – the oppressed can again and again try to liberate (unbind) themselves to show something more deep, more honest, and more powerful than the blazing!” (Dante Stewart)

And it is a story that gives shape to an image of God as a larger, freer, and more loving God than even surfaced the imagination of Nebuchadnezzar.

And it is our story.

A story that suggests the fires of this life can shape and transform us.

Friend to Reservoir, Rabbi Spitzer — who’s book, “God is Here”, we used to form a series last year — offers an image of the Divine that I found helpful in this conversation and one that I want to share with you as we close. Because ANGER is a big part of what we feel when we scan the landscape of our lives. When we think about the people we’ve lost – when we see the fires of injustice, and oppression that are not extinguished, and the actual wildfires (Texas), and the endless, unanswered calls for ‘ceasefire’ — we are angry and sad and angry again.

Throughout the Hebrew Bible – God’s anger does blaze as fire. Fire is unleashed at times – consuming complainers and rebels alike (188) – particularly when they refuse to accept the challenge of creating a new kind of society with God.

God as a “consuming fire” is also called “El qanna” (Kah-nah) – often translated as a jealous God. But also understood as a “heated divine emotion.” Some scholars suggest it is an essential attribute of God. . .but more like the intense heat, fire, and lava that flows from volcanoes.

One scholar Nissim Amzallag suggests that while “jealousy” is a sufficient description in the human realm – it is not complete in the Divine realm. When referring to God he says, it is more like the process of “Furnace remelting.” An ancient process where a corroded copper object is completely melted down in a furnace and the molten metal is then shaped/reshaped into something new.

In the ancient world it was not uncommon for divine beings to be associated with this concept – with the intense, transformative power of flame and heat.

Amzallag says

“this attribute of God was not viewed by Israelites simply as the destructive expression of anger by God. Precisely as in furnace remelting, it was conceived as a wonder– leading to a complete rejuvenation of creation” (189).

Completely reshaping of one thing into another.

In prophetic texts, God’s anger and the divine qanna (kah-nah) are connected both to the condemnation of oppressors and to a vision of transformation.

Collective anger at injustice, like the flames that erupt when God is angry – CAN ROAR – and seem out of control. Yet out of those flames can also come disruptive and necessary transformation. Anger is the work of love that protests an unloving world. And often the catalyst in the fire that opens up a new way through… a type of rescue that wasn’t given shape before.

Smokey the Bear (this is the last time I’m going to mention him – I promise!), also says that when a fire is raging another action you can take is to shut the doors – to limit the spread of damage. To protect & safeguard that which is susceptible to fire. And yet – preferred above stop drop & roll and shutting doors is to just extinguish the fire as quickly as possible – to not wait to see what happens, or think it will probably amount to nothing.

Now some of us aren’t always able to do this — but some of us have the energy, the capacity, the position, the privilege, the power – to do just that.

I took this role to be a pastor, a couple years after my Dad died – by which I took on a personal oath to “do no harm.” To spread no versions of God that demand unquestioning obedience, performance, exclusion of other people, political alignment, or conformity of belief. To never promote falsely constructed “reasons” for atrocities in the name of God — but to open up more ways that we can authentically find God in our lives with one another – in the fire, in the doubt, grief, in the ashes, and in the rubble. Life is precarious and often beyond our control, and this is part of what it means to know God too.

It wasn’t the “reason” that explains why my Dad died of cancer – but it did give new shape to my way forward… to see with clarity that to be a follower of Jesus — is to vow to shut the doors on any of the acrid smoke that tries to actually make Jesus unfindable.

Perhaps we do have an opportunity to hear a divine message coming directly out of our terror, our pain, if we are able to withstand it. And in moments when we can’t.. perhaps we need to hear again and again the promises from our ancestors that God will … as the verses in Isaiah say:

Bring us through the waters and through the rivers and through the fires…

And that in the midst of our times that suggest our world is indeed on fire – we might be able to hear these lines not just as poetic ways of describing tough times. But to remember that these words ring true of the most significant moments of liberation in Hebrew history. That with full context we could read those lines this way:

“When you pass through the waters like you did through the Red Sea out of Egypt . . and through the dry bed of the River Jordan into the promised land… when you walk through the fire like brothers Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego…”

It might help us remember this faith and these miracles are ours too. These these three boys who endured unspeakable horrors. Who underwent two fires: a physical burning in a furnace, and a prolonged burning, set ablaze by empire. And remember that they didn’t simply make it through the fires, somehow just embracing the violence of the empire politely and passively —

the miracle was their audacity. The miracle was their courage to stare down terror. The miracle was found IN the fire – where there WAS A GOD who says,

“the violent flames of EMPIRE will not and do not have the last say.”

Black preacher and author Dante Stewart says,

“empires may be able to enslave our people, plunder our resources; they may try to destroy both our bodies and our future. But in the midst of the burning, we somehow try to liberate ourselves, again and again — [‘remelting’]– giving shape to the audacious belief that one’s body, one’s story, one’s future does not end in this moment”

a promise of God… to ring in our ears today, as truth – and as a call to action.

Rabbi Spitzer says we don’t know if there will be a period ahead in our nation where a true “remelting” is occurring . One where the structures and the ideologies of racism will be melted down so that something new and better can emerge. Embrace Boston released a Harm Report this week — connecting the past to the present – the history of fiery harms to their contemporary impact of Black Boston….action in this direction.

We don’t know if it will be a period — where we’ll care for and investigate our actions and their impacts on our environment and climate …

We don’t know if it will be a period where we’ll regard our nation as part of a global community. . .

But we can do our parts to shut doors, limit harm, extinguish dangerous fires — and keep holding on to a faith that promises to transform us if we can hang in – to bring power out of pain, mercy out of meanness, love out of hate, joy out of sorrow, good out of evil, hope out of despair, and life out of the fire.

May God protect you, keep you warm, comfort you, and guide you in the days ahead.

In the name of the fire, the flame, and the light – Amen.

Sources:

Amzallag, Nissim.“Furnace re-melting as the expression of YHWH’s holiness: Evidence from the meaning of qanna (קנא) in divine context.”

Stewart, Dante. “Shouting in the Fire: An American Epistle.”

Casey Overton. Enfleshed.org

Reverend William Barber. Sojo.net “We Will Not Bow Down”

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https://genius.com/Gloria-gaynor-talkin-bout-jesus-lyrics

So I went out to the movie theater a couple weeks ago to see the Gloria Gaynor documentary. If you don’t know that name, you know her voice:

I will survive, I will survive!

Yeah, that anthem of resilience, empowerment, that’s Gloria Gaynor in peak form.

Gloria Gaynor, though, also has one of the most interesting life arcs you can imagine. She was a global disco star through her 30’s into her 40’s. But by the time she hit her 60’s, she was in constant, horrible back pain. And she was full of regrets and pretty much broke. But at 65 years old, her life took a turn.

She started living the anthem of her song for the first time.

See, as a teenager, Gaynor had wanted to go to college and become a teacher, but she didn’t think her family could afford it and no one told her otherwise. But at 66 years old, she went to college.

In her mid 60’s, she also got a new manager and decided to pursue her lifelong dream of recording a gospel album. It took a long time for anyone to be willing to invest in someone they saw as an over the hill disco queen. But at 75 years old, her gospel album Testimony was released. And she won a Grammy for it, at 75.

She’s got a documentary out now, and it ends telling us she’s working on another album that will be released around her 80th birthday.

Wow. You don’t hear about enough turnaround stories that start in people’s 60’s, do you? Wow.

What happened?

Well, at least two things.

One is that Gloria Gaynor had a come to Jesus moment in her 40’s, a few years after her most famous song came out. She was partying one night, about to do a whole bunch of coke, when she felt like someone was grabbing her by the shirt and saying,

“No more.”

No more. Somehow she knew this to be the voice of God, calling out to her. And she came back to her childhood faith.

Now it took a long time, but years later, her faith gave her the fire she needed to finally divorce her toxic husband.

Now I know this is a weird story for a pastor to tell. Since God is love and love is faithful, and all divorces are a tragedy. I’m not here to stump for God doing a revival in your life so you can get divorced. Not in general. But sometimes divorce is the only way out of a marriage that’s already become so tragic that there is no return. And this was the case for Gloria Gaynor with her ongoingly controlling, abusive husband. He had been taking, taking, and taking for years, and just running her into the ground.

And there were things in Gloria Gaynor that predisposed her to accept this way of things. She says she had a deep fear of abandonment, ever since she was young. She had been abused as well and had come to assume and expect really ill treatment of her, especially by men.

But there was something about her faith in a God that made her and loved her that slowly burned this away, until Gloria Gaynor realized that if God loved her this much, maybe she could too.

She says of her divorce:

I never stopped loving him. But I began to love me.

Hallelujah. Love found a way.

Gaynor sings about this in her gospel album.

She says:

Let in a little light

And it’ll help you see

Surely the truth

Gonna set you free

Or the chorus of another song, where she sings:

I’m talking about love. I’m talking about freedom.

Talking about the one you can depend on when you need him.

Hallelujah. I love that Gloria Gaynor found her way into singing like this in her 60’s and 70’s, when the fiery love of God had burned away her hurt and worthlessness and fear enough to finally get free.

Because this, friends, is how the fire of God cleanses and refines – reducing us to love, purifying us so we can get larger, and freer, and more loving.

We find this in the scriptures.

Let’s go to the final prophet in the Hebrew Scriptures, the very end of what Christians call the Old Testament.

In the third chapter of Malachi, we read:

Malachi 3:1-3 (Common English Bible)

Look, I am sending my messenger who will clear the path before me;

suddenly the Lord whom you are seeking will come to his temple.

The messenger of the covenant in whom you take delight is coming,

says the Lord of heavenly forces.

2 Who can endure the day of his coming?

Who can withstand his appearance?

He is like the refiner’s fire or the cleaner’s soap.

3 He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver.

He will purify the Levites

and refine them like gold and silver.

They will belong to the Lord,

presenting a righteous offering.

If you grew up singing in the tradition that I did, the White, Western choral tradition, you hear music to these words too, because they are set in The Messiah, the choral anthem about the life of Jesus Christ. And they’re kind of frightening – who will be able to stand when God appears? For he’s like a refiner’s fire.

Our images of fire and religion are so fearsome that it can sound like God wants to burn us down.

But let’s look at what this is really saying.

Malachi is a little book of arguments between people and God. It’s set in the 5th or 4th century BC, when the people of the Southern kingdom of ancient Israel had been back in Jerusalem for a while – two, three, four centuries since they’d resettled after exile. Folks had come home. The city walls were rebuilt. Temple was renovated and back up and running.

But they’re not satisfied. Their lives, their nation feels small. They’ve got disappointments and they blame this on God.

And God’s like, I don’t know that it’s me. I think it might be you.

The people are like:

God, you’ve neglected us. God, you’re not just.

And so God says:

here tell you what, I’ll send a messenger who will get you ready for something really good. And then, even better, I’ll come visit you myself. And the effect of this messenger and my time in your house will be that the stuff in you that is messing up your life will be washed, purified, burned away.

Then you’ll be golden again, just right. The very mode of your existence will enable you to flourish, and that will make me smile.

Now and again, there come times in our lives where things aren’t working as they are, where things have got to change. I wonder if you can remember a time in your life like that.

I wonder if any of us feel like we’re in a time like that right now. A little stuck, like something’s got to give.

Gloria Gaynor spent decades like this – pushing through a life that wasn’t working.

This happens to people. It can happen to all the parts of us, our faith included. It happens to cultures, even religions. That we need to be renewed, that some stuff that isn’t working needs to be purified out, burned off.

I think of the great writer James Baldwin, raised in Harlem to be a preacher. But as he confronted the dominant modes of Christian faith in this country, certainly in white churches but sometimes in Black churches and other churches of people of color, he wrote:

“It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being … must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church.”

(If you want to be a moral person, you’ve got to separate yourself from what passes for morality in a lot of the church.) He says:

If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.

Harsh statement on the surface, fire. But it’s true. Baldwin is doing something that at its prophetic best, the Black church has often done. At its prophetic best, members of the global church, the formerly colonized people and nations have done this too. They have said:

• What has passed for Christian faith in many places is immoral. It needs to be shaken up, cleansed.
• And what have passed for ideas about God have too often not been worthy of a loving God.
• What have passed for our ideas about God have not been worthy of the God we meet in the face of Jesus.
• And when that is so, those ideas have to go to the fire. It’s time we got rid of them.

This fire language of God, our need for refining to get larger, freer, more loving, this is not just Old Testament stuff. It continues in Jesus.

In fact the New Testament argues that Jesus is the climactic figure in this line of prophets that God in Malachi calls his messengers, who will speak for God and show us the way.

In this week’s Lenten guide, alongside Malachi, we get these words from Jesus:

Mark 9:49-50 (Common English Bible)

49 Everyone will be salted with fire.

50 Salt is good; but if salt loses its saltiness, how will it become salty again? Maintain salt among yourselves and keep peace with each other.”

Like food needs salt so it won’t spoil, we all need some fire.

The context here is our wild ability to screw up on our own lives and to hurt each other. Specifically, Jesus is talking about people who hurt kids and how important it is that none of us become the kind of people that could hurt a kid.

The kind of person that could abuse a kid, sure.

But maybe also the kind of person that could punish a kid too harshly, or that would ignore the kids around you and not bother to learn their names, or that wouldn’t take the time to listen to them, encourage them, or inspire them.

I say it this way because of course, lots of us have been these people. And Jesus is like:

Let’s make a change. The past does not need to be prelude. You don’t have to keep living the way you’ve been living. It’s not too late, even if you’re 65, 75, 80, right?

It’s never too late for renewal, for a change to come.

Now I want to be clear that there is a difference between different types of change projects that can get promoted in the name of God.

There are projects supposedly of purification, of sanctification, of transformation that are actually projects of control. Someone who’s afraid of change or afraid of you tries to dull your fire, doesn’t actually want a larger, freer, more loving version of you, they just want to make you into a plastic version of some performed model of a good person, in their eyes.

The so-called Christian purity culture of the 1980’s and 90’s and beyond that put no sex outside of straight marriage as like the #1 goal of Christian moral teaching did this. In trying to control people, it mostly shamed them, and especially shamed girls and women and queer folk, without helping us love God more or love ourselves more or even have better marriages.

Colonial White Christianity was like this too – it claimed it was saving the world when really it was trying to dominate it. Baldwin’s like:

Let’s burn that version of God. It’s got to go.

These same beautiful words, though – purification, sanctification, transformation can be descriptions of encounters with the holy and living goodness of God that set us on fire. That weed or burn out stuff that’s messing up our lives – and that make us larger, freer, more loving versions of ourselves.

This is kind of like the difference between a ravaging wildfire and a controlled burn. The ravaging wildfires we’ve had more and more due to climate change and the loss of indigenous land management practices don’t make our land or our climate better – they just wipe out everything in our path and do life on earth a world of harm. But that same fire, used in a controlled manner as indigenous people have done for centuries, to clear out dead wood and brush, can clean a forest, make it stronger and healthier and more resilient.

These are the kinds of encounters with God we’re looking for, friends.

Why, though, call it fire?

Friends, God’s doing some work of change and growth in me that is profound, it’s happening in core parts of my being, and when I talk to my pastor about this, I sometimes wonder what I need to be doing.

And he’s like:

I don’t think this is about what you are doing at all. It’s a thing that the Spirit of God is doing. It’s happening in you, it’s happening to you. Just pay attention and don’t back out. Just pay attention and don’t back out.

Friends, I wonder what you feel needs to be burned down in our world? Is there anyway it’s starting to happen already? Anyway the fire is burning. Maybe God is in that.

And I wonder if there are things in your life that need some fire. Are there ways of thinking and living and being in your life that are holding you back, that are shaping a way of life that you will regret in future years? What do we need cleansed, purified, burned off in us, so we won’t regret this time in our lives?

Let me give you a picture of how this works, from one of the tools God’s using in me.

I go to a hot yoga studio once a week. Been doing that six or seven months. And I quote my teacher in the guide this week.

Because as the heat in the room settles into us, and we move from warming up to really pushing our bodies and our minds, as the practice gets harder and harder, he’ll talk about letting the fire build, letting the fire do its work in us.

And I’ve heard him say, many times:

There’s no cleansing force like fire. There’s no cleansing force like fire.

I still don’t understand this entirely, but over time, as I persevere in the harder parts of the practice, I sense two dispositions, two attitudes slowly burning off. One is: I must be in control.

Because when I hold a pose past what I think my body is capable of, when my muscles are aching and shaking, and I’m sweating out and ready to give up, to instead breathe steady, focus my gaze, and to hold is to surrender. It’s to relinquish the control I can exercise to stop and to just let it go. That surrender seems like it’s burning off the: I must be in control in me that goes beyond that moment.

And the other thing it’s burning off is: I can’t. Because just like you, just like all of us, with the help of God and friends, I’m capable of far more than the mediocrity I accept from myself – mediocrity of body, of moral fiber, of spiritual depth, and of love, justice, freedom, and joy. There’s so much more hiding behind the “I can’ts.”

And a little bit of that is burning off in this practice.

Less control, more surrender.

Less giving up, more perseverance.

It’s slow growth, but I value it. And it takes fire.

Which means I can’t make it happen. But I can give my attention to something that does it, and not back away from that.

So it is with God. God is interested in us giving our attention to that in God which will burn off our “I must be in control” and our “I can’ts” and all the other stuff that makes us smaller, less free, less loving.

We can’t self-improve our way into this because we’re not in charge of the world. We’re not really even in charge of our own lives, in that we can’t control them very well.

But we can give our attention to God, to the person and words of Jesus, and to however it is that the Spirit of Christ is moving in us or around us to transform us into our fullness as children of God.

Friends, as we close here, I ask:

If you could safely direct the flame of a fire to burn away bad things without doing any harm, what would you burn?

• What do you wish for the fire of God to burn off in this world?
• In your school or workplace?
• What do you wish God would burn off and purify inside your home or inside yourself?

Let’s name these things as a prayer. Name our desires for personal and collective purification as an offering. Trusting that God of the refiners fire hears and cares and will gently burn among us and within us.

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As we get started on our Spring season of Lent, I remember in December when I was doing some preparation and prayer, trying to get my head around this theme of fire that Ivy and I were working with together.

And there were three things that kept coming to mind.

One was the way we feel like so much of our world is on fire. The headlines of our news and sometimes the headlines of our hearts scream of toxic politics, disastrous climate change, brutal violence, crumbling religions – Christianity included, and yet a failure to imagine and organize together around a better future.

This world is on fire, and that can be really scary.

A second thing that kept coming to mind was this one weird and haunting line from the Bible.

It’s in the New Testament’s letter called Hebrews. It’s a collection of reflections and encouragement for a first century Jewish community trying to follow in the way of Jesus. And near the end, without a ton of context, there’s this line, that says:

Hebrews 12:29

“Our God is a consuming fire.”

Our God is a consuming fire.

• What does this mean?
• What is God like after all?
• And how does fire as a metaphor for God speak?

I wonder if it speaks warmly to you – with the glow and wonder of candles and campfires, like the ones Ivy remembered and brought to life for us last week.

Or I wonder if it is scary as hell to you – some of us know about burns from fire, about home fires, about the threats people make using hellfire language.

Our God is a consuming fire.

I wonder how this line speaks to you.

Growing up, both my grandparents’ home just a few miles from me and the home I was raised in had fireplaces in the middle of them.

The fireplace in my grandparents’ home was one of my favorite places as a kid. My brothers and I used to beg to sleep over at their house on Christmas Eve, where like many other nights of the year, we’d sit up late around the fireplace.

It was so warm, so beautiful, and when we were little, my PopPop – that’s what we called my maternal grandfather -my Pop Pop had these salts he’d throw into the fireplace that would make the flame blaze different colors, like blue or green or deep red.

I know now it’s chemistry, but when I was a kid, it seemed like magic, like PopPop was some kind of beloved wizard who’d make the most perfect fire more beautiful, more wonder-full. Staring into those colored flames, my little world seemed so big and beautiful and surprising.

Glory!

The fireplace in our own home was a little more complicated.

We didn’t have any special chemicals to change the color of the flames.

But it was also a family gathering place in our house during long New England winter times, at least back then. And all kinds of things happened there.

One of my more complex memories of shame, and of the things my family could and couldn’t talk about, happened around that fire.

I was in seventh grade, I think. It was not a happy time in my life.

I had some secrets I kept, one of which was that I stole things.

I had, for instance, stolen a pack of cigarettes from the store as a curiosity, to see what smoking felt like. And I had smoked a couple of them, just a tiny bit, in the woods behind our house, and then forgotten about them.

But one night around the fire, as I remember it at least, my older brother was like: hey, look what I found in Steven’s jacket. And he held up the pack of cigarettes, or at least what was left of them.

I remember my face turning bright red with embarrassment, with shame. And I lunged toward my brother, grabbed the cigarettes, and threw them in the fire.

And as I did it, I said:

I have no idea how these got in there. I didn’t do it. They’re not mine.

And I stormed out of the room.

This is a long time ago. I don’t know if everything in my memory is 100% accurate, but what I don’t remember is any follow-up. I don’t remember anyone asking me more about what happened, or why it was so upsetting, or if I wanted to talk about any of it.

We just moved on, silent – the drama and shame and lies and tension of that moment just lingering in the family, smoldering with its own kind of fire.

Even with those kinds of memories, though, I kept coming back to that fireplace, with and without the rest of my family. The feelings and memories I carry from that place are more complex than my grandparents’ fireplace, but even in my own house, I kept coming back.

And I always took one of two seats in that room – the two seats closest to the fireplace. Where I could feel the heat there and get long, unfiltered stares at those dynamic, flickering, consuming flames I couldn’t take my eyes off of.

I wonder if that complexity of experience, but that returning again and again to wonder isn’t a little bit like the experience the ancients had of God, when they associated God with fire.

In the old stories of Exodus, fire is again and again a metaphor for God’s presence with ancient Israel.

The scriptures in the first week of our guide to this season are all from Exodus, including this one:

Exodus 19:16-18 (Common English Bible)

16 When morning dawned on the third day, there was thunder, lightning, and a thick cloud on the mountain, and a very loud blast of a horn. All the people in the camp shook with fear.

17 Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their place at the foot of the mountain.

18 Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord had come down on it with lightning. The smoke went up like the smoke of a hot furnace, while the whole mountain shook violently.

The 12 tribes that would make up the ancient community of Israel were desert nomads at this point in their story – free from past enslavement, but not yet settled and organized as a city-state or a nation.

And here, they gather around Mount Sinai to worship and reckon with their God.

I have no idea what literally was happening, like if someone could get photographs of moments like this from 3,400 years ago, what would we see?

We can’t of course, so we get the ancient metaphor and poetry of it all, where there was a storm with thunder and lightning, and the mountain where God is appearing feels like a blazing furnace, shrouded in smoke.

What did it mean that God with them felt like a lightning strike turned to blazing, smoky fire?

On the one hand it scared the hell out of them.

They were like:

Moses, you talk to God. We do not want to join you there.

They viewed the power of God with wonder and awe, but also something like terror. Who can see God and live?

And yet in this moment they assemble with Moses to be with God. And in the ancient story of these people, God terrifies them and yet they can’t help coming back and longing for God to be with them, hoping that God lives among them.

Because God may be wild and powerful, but they also knew they were better off with God than without.

Why was that?

What spoke to them about God being a force, a person, who blazes with consuming fire?

What spoke to Moses in his first encounter with God? He was a middle aged man, full of his own secrets, living in geographic exile from his home, but also living in a kind of metaphorical exile too – not at home in his own body, in his own life and story, when working as a shepherd, he saw something like a burning bush.

• Was it the glare of the morning sun after a long night in the desert?
• Was it a blaze of color in spring flowers spotted far from home?
• Or was it a literal bright, but unconsuming wildfire?

We don’t know.

But we know that when Moses first discovers God, he discovers God as an un-consuming fire – dynamic, vibrant, powerful, blazing like flames, but not burning up or harming whatever God touches. Fire that burns bright without harm.

This is God as Moses came to understand God – fierce and powerful enough to be an everlasting creator and mighty liberator but also safe and good enough to call friend.

• What speaks to us when we think about a living God among us?
• What speaks to us as we imagine a God who is somehow like fire?
• Beyond the world on fire, beyond that haunting line about our God being a consuming – or is it un-consuming – fire?

As Ivy and I started work on this season, the third thought that came to my imagination – and one that I think Ivy shared as well – was picturing us all again and again gathering around little fires and wondering together about God.

I picture some of us like I do, awake early by ourselves with a candle lit, looking at the flame and wondering how God is here with us .

I pictured families over a meal, lighting a candle in the center of the table, and having a moment together to wonder about what God is like and how God is part of the household, and what God might be doing there

I pictured friends meeting up for a community group or whatever else and catching some time together to silently look at a flame and wonder about God.

In this season’s Guide, there are six weeks of material. Today starts the first week, where we wonder about God as fire.

It’s only 10 pages, and not too many words. But don’t rush through it. Pull it out again and again, even just to read one little bit, or to gaze at an image for a while.

And this week, as with each of the six weeks, there is an invitation to sit by a fire for a moment. The hope is you do this at least once a week, but it could be every day if you like.

If you’re lucky enough to have a fireplace or a firepit, awesome!

If you want to use a candle, that’s great! That’s probably what most of us will do.

If it feels safer or better for our climate to use electric fireplaces or candles or have that image of a glowing fireplace on your television, that’s cool too.

Or burn incense, or find yourself an active volcano, or whatever.

But the idea is to be with yourself or even better, be with someone else by something like a flame, each week, even more than once a week, and wonder about God, and wonder about God with us, and say a prayer.

There’s a different way to do just this each week.

See what it’s like.

And as you do this, one place in particular I encourage you to notice the presence of God isn’t just in the fire, but in the people you are with, yourself included, and what the flame illuminates there.

Because as in the days of Moses, still now we most often and sometimes most brightly feel the fire of God among us. We sense the presence of God with most glory when we are with others.

I help organize the citywide clergy group for the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. We are Jewish, and Muslim, and Christian clergy, sometimes Buddhist leaders too, who like to know and understand and care about one another, and to practice solidarity as we work for a more just city together.

And one of my co-leaders is a local rabbi named Toba Spitzer. Toba is wise and brilliant and interesting. She wrote a book called God is Here that inspired a sermon series of ours a year or two ago.

And in our latest clergy gathering, we were looking at Muslim, Christian, and Jewish sacred texts that speak to the importance of our relationality, our togetherness.

For the Jewish text, Toba brought a rabbinic commentary that says:

“if two sit together and there are words of Torah [spoken] between them, then the Shekhinah [God’s Presence] abides between them.”

The Shekinah is an old Hebrew word that refers to the dwelling, or kind of settling presence of God. It’s when you know that God is here.

And you’re speechless with wonder, or it’s so good and weird and sweet and powerful that you say a word like: wow, or like: glory!

And the rabbinic tradition says that whether you realize it or not, this is always happening when people together read the sacred text.

And the way my friend Toba and others have read this is even more broadly, like anytime we communicate for the sake of deeper understanding and wisdom together, to bring some benefit to the world, than the Shekinah, the dwelling of God that makes you say: Wow! Is there.

When we’re in real communication, going deeper, together for the good, there’s that extra something we feel – that heat, that power, that warmth, that magic – why call it God?

Maybe because it is.

Maybe because we need God among us, to bring fire to our earthy selves.

And maybe because we don’t ever see God directly, like you can see your hand before your face.

No one has ever taken a photograph of God.

Our experience of God is mediated. Even at its clearest, it’s a little bit indirect. We encounter God through things that evoke wonder, like the ocean, or perfect music, or amazing food, or yes, even fire.

We encounter God through the person and the life and words of Jesus for sure.

And also through the presence of God when two or three are gathered in God’s name. To me that does not mean when two or three get religious. We know from the Bible and from our own experience, that being religious is no promise of the felt presence of God. But when two or three gather in the spirit of Christ, which is the Spirit of love, there’s something there.

My childhood memories around fire – some are of presence, like at my grandparents’ house where the warmth of the room and PopPop’s magic fire-changing power and all spoke to me of the presence of God.

And some of my memories are of absence, like the time around the fire where I knew shame and distance and inability to really be together as we were. To me, all that spoke of a kind of absence of God.

Both can be true when we are with others.

So I thought at the clergy gathering about recent human encounters when I could sense God’s shekinah – the dwelling, the settling of God among us that makes me say: Glory, wow. This is too good.

I thought when a goddaughter I really missed and wanted to see reached out to me to ask for prayer for something at her school. And the way she reached out and reconnected brought me so much joy.

I thought of one of you who asked me if you could share a confession in privacy and confidence. And how you bared your soul by sharing what is to you a most shameful memory, so that we could speak the truth together that even there, you are seen and loved and forgiven. So good.

I thought of when I gather with my community group on Saturdays to read the Bible and to share of the most important things in our lives, and how it’s holy how we share the truths of our lives and seek the truth of God, in a circle of loving-kindness.

Or the couple minutes during Grace’s and my latest dance class we’re doing, where inexperienced stumblers that we are, for a few moments, something clicked, and we felt like we were gliding through the room together – two of us as one, soaring, dancing across the space. And it felt elegant and smooth and all sparky with decades of love.

All really different kinds of moments, but all sparked by fire. All a window into the truth that God is there.

There’s something about the openness and vulnerability that all these moments have in common. There’s something about the safety everyone has experienced, that this is a person and a place where you can be really open, where you can be true, and that will be safe. And there’s something about the tenderness and connection there, where one is saying – I see you truly, kindly. And the other is saying – I am seen truly, kindly. And in a way, everyone is saying both at once.

It makes me feel like: wow, glory! So good.

We begin, friends, where we will end in six weeks.

There are forms of fire that only burn… that “steal, kill, and destroy.” We’ll talk more about those. This is the kind of fire that is not God. This is Jesus’ description of every force in and among us that is an enemy of God.

But there are also forms of fire that open us up, that make us larger and freer and more loving – that set our heart on fire in the best of ways. And love seems to make space for those.

Love is the hearth where fire roars.

Love is the ground where we sense God and say glory.

Love is the wick where fire burns.

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A few years ago, it seemed like an old friend and I were drifting apart. At least one of the reasons was that we’d both changed over the years – … Continue reading Old and New

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PRAYERS Students, and Parents and Caregivers of Students, and Educators May you be safe from harm this year, safe from over-worrying, safe from threats and bullies, and when you do … Continue reading Everyday is Your Birthday

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Nehemiah 8:5-12 Common English Bible

5 Standing above all of the people, Ezra the scribe opened the scroll in the sight of all of the people. And as he opened it, all of the people stood up.

6 Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all of the people answered, “Amen! Amen!” while raising their hands. Then they bowed down and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

7 The Levites—Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, and Pelaiah[c]—helped the people to understand the Instruction while the people remained in their places.

8 They read aloud from the scroll, the Instruction from God, explaining and interpreting it so the people could understand what they heard.

9 Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all of the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Don’t mourn or weep.” They said this[d] because all the people wept when they heard the words of the Instruction.

10 “Go, eat rich food, and drink something sweet,” he said to them, “and send portions of this to any who have nothing ready! This day is holy to our Lord. Don’t be sad, because the joy from the Lord is your strength!”

11 The Levites also calmed all of the people, saying, “Be quiet, for this day is holy. Don’t be sad!”

12 Then all of the people went to eat and to drink, to send portions, and to have a great celebration, because they understood what had been said to them.

Holy and Loving God, You gave your people the laws to guide them. You gave yourself through the person of Jesus to be with them. For us to know and experience your love, your compassion. To show us a new way forward, a new life forward. God, give us the courage to see your light. God, give us the eyes to see your good news. We thank you that you reveal yourself to us. Show yourself to us now, We pray, Amen.

I moved to Boston about five years ago from California. There are some adjustments you need to make, when you move to a new town. There were winters getting used to. And the vibe of the town. The people. And an adjustment, to how. you. drive.

Driving around greater Boston, Lord Jesus, is quite the experience transition from driving around northern California. First of all, we’ve got these things called a Rotary. If you don’t know what it is, it’s this round thing, and there’s usually at least four intersections coming into it, and we all have to go around. We should simply call it Pure Chaos. I go. You go. Everybody yields. While we all go around and around in a circle. Try following that and Google maps and cars and pedestrians all at the same time and after a while you’re like, I know this dance!

When you move to a new city. Into a new house. Starting a new job. Beginning a new relationship. Beginning of a new school year. New Season. These are the times when we take stock of what has served us. What changes we might make going forward. What I will keep and promise and agree with others around me to do. New land. New laws. Adjustments. And a hope for the future. What this new venture will offer to me and me to it, and how we will move forward. How I will make meaning on this new landscape.

This is actually what’s happening in today’s text. The Jewish people had been away, held captive in Babylon, and now, they were back in Jerusalem, ready to rebuild their land. They were returning from years of exile in someone else’s land, and as they were re-landing back to their own, it was time to regroup and lay down ground rules together again.

The priest and a teacher of the law, Ezra pulled together the old laws, reviewed them, made revisions, and then brought the people together, standing on a wooden platform, he read the laws out loud to everyone. He read, and they apparently interpreted for each other, maybe there were some breakout groups to discuss and process together, explaining to each other so that they’d understand the laws, they did this all morning from sunrise to noon.

As they were listening, and this is the part that’s the most intriguing to me, the people cried. They cried listening to laws. Why? Were they upset? Were they like, this is gonna be impossible to abide by? I really wonder why they cried.

Our scripture reading today actually comes from our Kids Church “curriculum” from July. I say “curriculum” in quotes, because, for one thing, we don’t call it Sunday School, and call it Kids Church on purpose. It’s not just a place you learn. Schooling, teaching, learning is not the center of it. And so it’s less a “curriculum” but a more framework and approach that shapes what we do with kids on Sunday mornings here at Reservoir church. It’s simply a story from the Bible that we tell, as is, and then just listen, ponder, wonder, ask questions, and discuss with and around it–is the main point.

The “curriculum” is based on one called Godly Play. It’s been one of my favorite children’s ministry curriculum in the past decade or so, one that’s a mix of spirituality, wonder and play and the Montessori approach.

Our pre/k program actually uses the Godly Play method pretty intentionally. Our elementary program more or less does kind of Godly Play lite.

And what they do is, they tell a story from the Bible and then afterwards, the kids cry, just kidding, afterwards they ask these things called, “wondering questions.” The questions are not a set up answers for memorization or to conclude the moral of the story. It’s to literally just get their reaction. I wonder why the story happened like this or like that. I wonder what’s your favorite part. I wonder what can be left out.

So we’re going to actually do that now. I’m going to first give all of us a moment to think, for like a minute. Cause I’m really curious. Why do you think they cried?

So close your eyes if you want, to really wonder and ponder on it. Maybe imagine all these people and Ezra standing on a podium reading the law, and people crying. Why do you think they cried?

Let me gather us back together.

So in the spirit of Godly Play, my message today is not an offering of any answers but an invitation to wonder together this story and just to make space.

The beauty of it all is how you resonate with the story with each of your unique stories.

It may be that there have been times when you heard some news, it made you cry and at the same time you also celebrated. Maybe you also know what it means and feels like to be both really sad and yet also joyful at the same time. When something touched you deeply and you felt it, it made you feel like you could cry and laugh.

I was just so struck by this story because I love tears. I’m a person who is very close to their tears. I see a touching commercial and I cry. I imagined that after being in exile, and coming back to their land, hearing the laws might’ve even felt unreal. Are we really here? Back? Can I dare live as if we’re not slaves?

And I still don’t know what to make of the priest and Levites (side note: apparently Levites doesn’t just mean descendants of Levi, yes and it’s a group of people referred to that were the priest assistants). It kind of feels like they were cutting off the grief and tears and encouraging them to go eat and celebrate for this is a joyous occasion. I sense on one hand, maybe this was good leadership. “Stop crying, we’re done grieving having been exiles. We’re done now. Let’s lean in and enjoy our life now!”, helping them move on as a nation? And on the other hand, was there a real mix of responses and were the leaders trying to just shut it down and diminish it?

A theme of the book of Nehemiah and the book right before it, Ezra, which often are found in manuscripts as just one book, and most attribute the two books to one author, is that one of the glaring issues was one of identity. Particularly since while they were in exile, there was some mixing… mixing of races and intermarriages, that at that time, under their original law, was frowned upon. There are prayers of Ezra, confessing the sins of so many intermarriages, and even a list of the names of men who did so. We don’t know for SURE what they exactly decided to do with this issue. And we don’t know exactly what laws were condensed, or rewritten, either to further reinforce the tradition of not intermarrying, or somehow made efforts to include them in some way or form. It’s unclear from the text.

The response was real. People cried. Audibly. Visibly. I just think it’s so funny, this call to rejoice right at the heels, right in the midst of grieving, weeping, crying, but go eat rich food and drink something sweet. I mean that’s what I do when I’m sad. I eat chocolate.

This text reminded me of a text in the New Testament. Another time when some folks heard some news and were bewildered. I don’t know why the connection came to me, but that’s what I’ve been wondering with, the connection maybe between these two texts. I’ll read for us. It comes from the end of the Gospel of Mark.

Mark 16:1-8 – Empty Tomb

1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they could go and anoint Jesus’ dead body.

2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they came to the tomb.

3 They were saying to each other, “Who’s going to roll the stone away from the entrance for us?”

4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away. (And it was a very large stone!)

5 Going into the tomb, they saw a young man in a white robe seated on the right side; and they were startled.

6 But he said to them, “Don’t be alarmed! You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.[a] He has been raised. He isn’t here. Look, here’s the place where they laid him.

7 Go, tell his disciples, especially Peter, that he is going ahead of you into Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you.”

8 Overcome with terror and dread, they fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.[b

Overcome with terror and dread, at the announcement that Jesus has been raised from the dead.

This is actually the original final ending of the book of Mark. In our Bible there’s more. Verse 9 to 20, that has a reappearing of Jesus, a kind of a few more words from Jesus that wraps up the story better. And you’ll see in your Bibles, between verse 8 and 9, a tiny footnote that says

“The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20.”

The original ending of the story of Jesus that Mark wrote ended with, verse 8,

“Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

That’s it.

• How are we to respond to the Laws?
• How do we respond to a vision of a more idealized hope of how we should live (that’s what a law is, or at least should be)?
• How are we to respond to the fact that when all we knew was death, and here was a man named Jesus, who spoke of heavenly things, apparently raised back from the dead?
• How are we to respond to the Good News or the Gospel?
• How do you respond?

I think it makes sense for us to be utterly shaken. If we are not, I wonder if we really heard it at all. And I think it is natural to have a mix of emotions. One of fear, like a fear of God, and also at same time, a nervous excited joy of the unknown future. I think the story of Nehemiah and the story of Mark both show us the depth and breadth of the range of responses and the permission to have them all. There’s not just one way to respond and the response might feel very visceral or intense. It’s okay to have a mix of feelings of being sad and happy at the same time for the same reason.

A few weeks ago I met with a fellow Asian American woman for coffee. This kind of similar socio-location is fun to do. It’s like if the intermarried women of Jewish exiles got to chat after they heard Ezra’s laws. There’s this shared experience and wisdom. We shared our location, our settlement and the timing. She was born here, in America. I moved here when I was nine. She talked about being a child of poor immigrants, seeing their parents not being able to fully be honored or accepted and seen for who they are and what their gifts were. And at the same time, I saw a woman in front of me, who was gifted in her career, successful in many ways, blessed with a good life as good as anyone next to her.

And I asked her,

“so how does that feel? Like being a child of a poor immigrant, and now living the life you have now?”

She was a little stunned by my question, like who asks questions like that haha, saying,

“oh right you’re a pastor”

and I was like,

“yes and I’m also projecting, because it’s a thing, that specific experience… I have feelings about it.”

Well I let her go first and she said this… The first few emotions that she shared with me were not like, I’m so blessed and I’m grateful I’m so lucky, but that she feels guilty. She felt guilty that she’ not maybe having more joy like she’s supposed to. She felt guilty that sometimes she felt down like she’s not allowed to do that. And she felt guilty for feeling guilty. She’s grateful of course for the life she has now, but yeah, it was a mix. And I felt the same. Like I didn’t know how to live this life. A life that has been gifted to us too abundantly, too mercifully. And the pain and the suffering of our past, of our parents, our people, that that still is with us and lingers in us and that still hurts.

I wonder if we feel like that after God has brought us back from what might have felt like exile, or suffering, or near death. I wonder if we have a hard time coming to terms with the extravagant love of God that God has bestowed upon us. Do we even know what to do with that? You can even be bewildered and not know how to process it all in the moment and feel speechless, the women at the tomb did. And I think the Bible tells us today to go eat something sweet. I’m… kidding… kind of.

I wonder how it’s felt for you when God’s spoken to you. Or when you first encountered the resurrected Jesus. I wonder if you cried. Or if you were a bit scared. I wonder if you were told to rejoice cause you’re supposed to but you found it all a bit confusing all at the same time.

I do like the added ending of Mark too though, verse 9-20. Jesus appears to them and says to them,

“Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.”

I don’t know, I mean I have mixed feelings about it. I kind of feel like some other author added a happy ending to it and I don’t know if I agree with that. But the part I like is, “Go.” Just like Nehemiah too, “Go.” Go talk to people. Go eat with them. Go party. Go Celebrate. Go.

And actually this brings us to the exact format of the Godly Play curriculum. In the classrooms, after the children hear the story, discuss, they respond, and then they GO to a time where they might interact with the theme but also just play games, build something, paint/draw, whatever you want to do, but the intention behind really is all about just being in community. Go and be in community with whatever you just heard, however you heard, whatever it might be bringing up for you, wonder and play and interact with it with others and see what it does.

This was my teaser for a class I will be co-teaching with pastor Dan in October called Godly Play Spirituality for Everyone: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Faith Traditions in October. It’ll be a three part series on the Bible, Spiritual Practices, and Community. I feel like for so many of us, we’re asking the question, what does faith look like for me in my context, in my life. What do I keep from traditions of Christianity and what can I part with that no longer serves me. Again, a way forward that will begin to shape your own faith identity. We’ll do that together as a community. And yes, it’ll end with a meal.

Hopefully with rich food and some sweet drinks. Because no matter what we go through together, even if it’s through many seasons of grief and through tears, not despite it but with it and through the crying, we are called to go and celebrate, to claim joy. The joy of living. The joy of our God who delights in us. The joy of our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s invite one another, to be together, share dinners, tables, and meals together, even cry together, and choose joy again and again. May joy be our strength.

Okay, let me pray for us.

Lord, you have our hearts. And we search for yours. Let us be your living sacrifices, a fragrant pleasing to you oh God. Let our tears fall on thee. Let our joy rise to thee. And give us one another to do so as a people, who can remind one another of the law you give us, of the life you give us, of the joy you give us again and again, in and through all that we might be facing in our own lives in work, in family, in relationships, in our nation, in our society, in our world, give us your strength. The strength of joy through it all. We pray. Amen.

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Matthew 7:7-11 Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, … Continue reading A God Who Treasures

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Take a moment to review your week, or the last couple of days – and reflect on where you experienced and/or witnessed the love of God? Today, we’ll talk about … Continue reading An Evolving Faith | Longing for More

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A  message from guest speaker Rose Percy.

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Roman 8:15-17 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, … Continue reading Jesus is Calling; The Spirit Answers

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Good morning, my name is Willie Barnett and I’m a pastor at Great Road Church out in Acton, MA. Pastor Steve has become a dear friend over the past two … Continue reading Coming and Going

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Good morning everyone! It’s a joy to be with all of you – to be together, to devote our time to be in this particular building in North Cambridge and … Continue reading A Living God

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A  message from guest speaker Taj Smith.

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Good morning Reservoir friends!  To those of you that I haven’t had the honor and privilege of meeting yet, my name is Howard Kim. I have been working with Reservoir … Continue reading Transfigured Life: A Different Way Is Here

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A  message from guest speaker Rev. Carrington Moore.

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Good morning. I’m Lydia, if we haven’t met, one of the pastors here at Reservoir. My pronouns are she/they. I want to share with you a text that came to … Continue reading Breathe on these Dry Bones

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Reservoir’s 2023 PRIDE Service Emmett Jorgenson, Reservoir’s LGBTQIA+ community & Taj Smith  Communion Script and Prayer by Reverend Megan Roher and read by Emmett Jorgenson.   COMMUNION | by enfleshed.com/liturgy/lgbtq-related/ … Continue reading Pride Service 2023

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Hello everyone! Memorial Day weekend often marks the unofficial start of summer and I am incredibly excited about our summer ahead, here at Reservoir!  We will have a few guest … Continue reading Panel on Beloved Community

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Birthday blessings…

John 1:35-51 (Common English Bible)

35 The next day John was standing again with two of his disciples.

36 When he saw Jesus walking along he said, “Look! The Lamb of God!”

37 The two disciples heard what he said, and they followed Jesus.

38 When Jesus turned and saw them following, he asked, “What are you looking for?”

They said, “Rabbi (which is translated Teacher), where are you staying?”

39 He replied, “Come and see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon.

40 One of the two disciples who heard what John said and followed Jesus was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter.

41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Christ).

42 He led him to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

43 The next day Jesus wanted to go into Galilee, and he found Philip. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.”

44 Philip was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter.

45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law and the Prophets: Jesus, Joseph’s son, from Nazareth.”

46 Nathanael responded, “Can anything from Nazareth be good?”

Philip said, “Come and see.”

47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said about him, “Here is a genuine Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

48 Nathanael asked him, “How do you know me?”

Jesus answered, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”

49 Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are God’s Son. You are the king of Israel.”

50 Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these!

51 I assure you that you will see heaven open and God’s angels going up to heaven and down to earth on the Human One.”

I’ve shared this story before, but it’s a good one, so I’m going to share it again. Almost nine years ago this church left our old evangelical church association and was renamed as Reservoir Church. To help with the whole branding and website process and all, we worked with a communications professional who knows and loves this community well.

And at one point, she asked me:

if your church was a person from the Bible, who would it be?

And I thought? That’s a weird question. I have no idea. So I asked her:

who do you think we’d be?

And without hesitation, she said:

Oh, you’re Philip.

Philip, one of the less known of Jesus’ inner group of students.

Why? Well, because of this story.

Phillip is a minor character even in this story.

There’s Andrew – a very religious person. A student of a counter-cultural radical rabbi out in the countryside, and when that rabbi – John – more or less refers his students to Jesus, Andrew gets to know him.

There’s Peter – Andrew’s brother. He was apparently not quite so religious, but there was something in his brother’s experience meeting Jesus that is compelling to him. And he begins to have a really important and complicated relationship with Jesus and with the whole movement that gathers around him.

Later there’s Nathaniel, another complex character. He’s kind of judgy. But he has this transformative experience that the gospel here only hints at the depths of. But it results in a really profound hope that Jesus can show him the way to God, which Jesus encourages.

But in the middle of these three more dramatic encounters, there is Phillip.

Phillip isn’t especially religious. Not everything about his encounter with Jesus is dramatic. He gets caught up in this way of Jesus not because he’s looking for it but because it finds him.

He’s from the hometown of Andrew and Peter, and the text just says Jesus found him.

So many of your stories with Jesus, and so many of your stories with this church are like this.

You inherited the Christian faith of your family and something about Jesus in it grabbed you.

Or you started rejecting the forms of Christianity you inherited but the way of Jesus was too important, too good to let go of.

Or you came into connection with someone in this church who did you a kindness or stumbled across the building or the website and you decided to visit and it felt like home.

Our stories are all different. Not just our stories of faith but our whole life stories. This is a really diverse community.

But what connects so many of us is that like these early disciples, we’re finding some of the important things we’re looking for in life in a community of faith connected to the good news about God and life and ourselves we find in the way of Jesus.

We’re finding friendship, we’re finding ways to anchor our purpose, finding a way of loving God without a lot of the garbage we thought went with being religious, maybe even just learning to love ourselves more.

This is what it means to be Phillip, to realize that something good is finding us in the way of Jesus. And to then turn around and say “Come and see” to someone else who’s looking too.

In this story, Phillip’s the first one that uses the words of Jesus – “come and see,” even to a skeptic. He doesn’t argue about religion or God or try to convince anyone of anything – that’s a waste of time. Nobody wants that.

He just shares his story in an authentic relationship with his friend.

And we are known for this as well. We’re known for a community that isn’t pushy or pressuring but is welcoming and authentic. Like Phillip, this too is who we are.

We’re releasing some stories on video from the 25 years of this church. There are five or six out so far, all from the early years. And today we’ll watch two of them. Keep an eye out on our social media and YouTube page as more keep coming. I think they’re really great. We hope you enjoy them and consider sharing any that you especially enjoy.

Here’s a story from 2000, from someone who’s still with us. It’s his version of how the way of Jesus found him and how this church invited him to come and see.

MANNY’S 25 STORIES VIDEO

Thank you, Manny. I love you and I love everything about that story, how like me, you’ve found yourself sobbing in worship here, how you’ve experienced feeling different and relieved when you feel like a God of love is with you, how in your faith story, you’ve not only learned how to pray, but you’ve “learned about yourself, got to know yourself, and began to love yourself.”

That’s really powerful. Friends this is your story too, your spiritual path as Manny calls it, to be found by a loving God who knows your name, who wants you to love yourself, and find peace.

It’s in this community’s DNA for this to happen here for us and for us to say “come and see” when we find someone else looking.

I want to play one more of our videos – this one a 2003 story. It’s got another “We Are Phillip” aspect to it. A different way we say “come and see” together.

The movement that follows Jesus’ death and resurrection tried out a lot of names before they were called Christians.

Sometimes they were called “Followers of the Way.” I like that, that faith isn’t mostly about what you do or don’t believe, it’s about a way you follow.

And sometimes they were called “the Body of Christ.” For some reason, I don’t like how that phrase sounds quite as much. It sounds super-religious to me, and a little uncomfortable, like overfamiliar to think of a faith community as all members of a body.

But even though the vibe doesn’t grab me as much as “Followers of the Way,” I like the meaning of this metaphor too, the idea that to be in the way of Jesus is to be connected to a God that looks like Jesus, and it’s to be connected to one another too. And it’s to be the body of a loving God to the world, to be God’s hands and feet, as it’s said.

Friends, most of what makes me proud of this community is you – the ways you live this story day in and day out in the world. Most of what makes this church special is what happens outside the church.

I find myself all the time telling my friends stories about the amazing people I meet here. The way you’re great friends to one another and help each other out, the cool stuff you’re doing to make your part of the world more decent and human and good as you coach youth soccer and do cool and creative and important things in your job, as you live with integrity and stand up in your communities for what’s good.

Again, most of what makes this church special happens through you out in your communities. I hope what happens when we’re together gives you love and hope and support and ideas that inspires all that being the body of Christ.

But some of what is special here is also what we do together. The impact we have in our community for instance. We started a youth soccer program over a dozen years ago that’s still going strong. I hope many of you will volunteer with it next month. The link for that was in last week’s newsletter. But just three days ago, we together awarded four more scholarships to graduating high school seniors from the neighborhood who grew up participating in this Soccer Nights program and volunteering in it and are now the first members of their families to go to college in America.

It’s so great. I love how this church loves the city, loves the world, lives the story of the love of God for us all together.

And so we’ll watch one more video about the joy of doing that, Adam and Ann’s story. I play this one for us because sometimes being the body of Christ together is really mundane. It can show up in making coffee and laying out cable for a sound system for worship. And it can show up in how we give to a church campaign to invest in our future, as we last did 20 years ago and are doing again now.

In the end, the invitational way of Phillip, the way of Jesus and the Body of Christ is real simple sometimes.

To love well, you have to plant roots somewhere. You have to plant roots with people and a place. This story is about Adam and Ann planting roots in this church, and planting roots in this city where neither of them are from. I hope some of you will do the same over the next 25 years.

And then it’s about loving who and what you find yourself connected to. Friends, our world needs a lot more of that generous love. And so I charge us to keep being a generous, abundantly loving community together.

Here’s Ann and Adam’s story.

BAKUN 25 STORIES VIDEO

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I experienced a trauma in my childhood that was significant enough that I couldn’t reckon with it until I left home. But at 18, I was old enough and had enough space that I could start.

One of the places I started talking about this was with people in the Christian student movement I was part of. They were to me what we call the body of Christ, the hands, the feet, the kind and accepting listening ears of God to me. I’m very grateful I landed in such supportive community.

But in one case, I told a young staff member in this movement about the trauma I was trying to reckon with, and he made some not so great choices.

He offered to pray with me, which I appreciated. I appreciate that impulse, that offer still. But looking back, I don’t appreciate what happened when we prayed. He tried to engage the trauma with me too much, in a way he really had no business doing. He was in his mid-20s, not much older than me and had no real training or experience in this.

His intentions were good, but impact was not.

There are so many other questions he didn’t ask me.

He didn’t ask me if I needed a therapist.

I had seen one but way too briefly and I really needed to go back.

He didn’t ask me if I’d reported the crime done to me to the authorities. It had been years, but not too many and I think that might have really helped me at the time. It certainly may have helped some other people.

There were actually a lot of things he didn’t ask me.

But he did ask me if I felt ready to forgive a perpetrator of the trauma in my life. He was wondering if I wanted to forgive my enemy.

Again, I get it. Forgiveness – God’s forgiveness of us, and our forgiveness of others, is a big deal in the way of Jesus.

But I want to ask:

Was this encouragement to forgive appropriate or not?

And more broadly, when it comes to what we might expect when we’ve harmed others, and what Jesus wants for us when we’ve been harmed, what is the role of forgiveness? What is it or isn’t it?

Let’s read one of a number of teachings from Jesus that touches on this topic.

Matthew 18:21-35 (Common English Bible)

21 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Should I forgive as many as seven times?”

22 Jesus said, “Not just seven times, but rather as many as seventy-seven times.

23 Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.

24 When he began to settle accounts, they brought to him a servant who owed him ten thousand bags of gold.

25 Because the servant didn’t have enough to pay it back, the master ordered that he should be sold, along with his wife and children and everything he had, and that the proceeds should be used as payment.

26 But the servant fell down, kneeled before him, and said, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’

27 The master had compassion on that servant, released him, and forgave the loan.

28 “When that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred coins. He grabbed him around the throat and said, ‘Pay me back what you owe me.’

29 “Then his fellow servant fell down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’

30 But he refused. Instead, he threw him into prison until he paid back his debt.

31 “When his fellow servants saw what happened, they were deeply offended. They came and told their master all that happened.

32 His master called the first servant and said, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you appealed to me.

33 Shouldn’t you also have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’

34 His master was furious and handed him over to the guard responsible for punishing prisoners, until he had paid the whole debt.

35 “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you if you don’t forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

So Jesus is really into forgiveness. Can you see that? Seven times, seventy-seven times… that’s a lot of times to forgive your brother, your sister, your enemy, anyone really.

Jesus is serious about the way of forgiveness, so serious he tells this story that is so weird in at least three ways.

I mean how does one come to owe 10,000 bags of gold? The term Matthew uses is meant to be obscenely large – it’s something like 160,000 years of wages. That’s even more than a mortgage in Boston these days. Yeah, a lot of money.

And who settles their debts by selling whole households into slavery? Well, it turns out a lot of people do that around the world. We used to do stuff like that in Massachusetts too. But it’s horribly cruel.

So the first weird thing about this story is that the details are all way over the top.

The second weird thing in Jesus’ story is that the cruel, rich money-lender suddenly has a change of heart and wipes out the whole debt. Paid in full. Someone’s life, their whole household is in ruins, the kind of ruin that is going to curse the fates of multiple generations to come. And, was canceled.

It’s weird that Jesus would make any kind of comparison between God and this crazy mafia boss figure. But I think the connection is about God’s intentions, to initiate this kind of extravagant transformation in the world, to so release people from ruin and shame and bondage that generations find freedom and blessing because of the power and impact of God’s love.

That’s an awesome word, that God wants to do something so deep among us.

But the story doesn’t end here. There’s a third weird part, which is that this first person who’s managed to rack up all that debt runs into an old gambling buddy who owes him maybe a few hundred, maybe a few thousand bucks, and he is after him. He’s like:

If you can’t pay me, you’re getting payback.

Have you ever had a blessing enter into your life? Unexpected favor or kindness or happiness or good luck or whatever, but find yourself still nursing a grudge, still bitter, still easily provoked?

Jesus is like:

This is worth interrogating. This is worth paying attention to.

Then the story ends with a twist. That bitter, ungrateful fool gets arrested by the authorities after all, who go ahead with the original sell-this-man’s-family-into-slavery-for-generations plan, because if he’s gonna be like this, then he’s going pay every last cent of that multi-million dollar debt, no matter how long it takes, no many how many people have to suffer.

Thus sayeth the Lord. Amen.

Friends, Jesus drew crowds. He was an entertaining and provocative story-teller. He knew how to get people’s attention.

But sometimes, the church has misconstrued Jesus and spun his teachings with a meanness and a rigidity that I don’t think he meant to convey.

So, you get a degraded interpretation of this teaching that goes like this:

Forgiveness is transactional.

We are so thoroughly evil in God’s eyes, that God’s disappointment in us is like a billion dollar debt. One that merits us an eternity in hell. God, though, is willing to cancel that debt, rescue us from everlasting suffering, if we forgive other people the smaller harms they do us. Don’t go for payback, no revenge, be nice instead. And maybe God’ll be nice to you.

Now, if the church had followed even that teaching for centuries, we might be better off. There would have been a lot less war, a lot fewer prisons.

But still, it’s a degraded teaching, to treat forgiveness like a transaction and say if you do or don’t do this, then God will or won’t do that.

We can do better than this.

I read this teaching more like Jesus is describing a whole economy of forgiveness. There is a way of Jesus. There is a way of Jesus that we can more or less live within, and the way of Jesus is about mercy.

We get a negative example. The newly debt-relieved servant is like my working class European ancestors who (as soon as they found themselves accessing a little bit of security and standing in American society) joined the people above them in anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-indigenous attitudes and policies.

And I think Jesus would say:

That’s not the way of grace. That’s not the way of mercy.

Jesus is announcing an economy of universal spiritual liberation that he puts in terms of debt and status and all to emphasize that everything is spiritual, that the economy of God’s mercy should touch everyone and everything. The way of Jesus has no room for profiting off others’ misery. No room for harshness, bitterness, punching down. Jesus wants to be in the way of mercy, to be vessels of kindness and mercy. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

But Jesus also isn’t teaching isn’t some kind of spiritual obligation that will keep vulnerable people more vulnerable.

As Lydia preached, forgiveness is not a summons to stay in relationship with someone who harms you.

As Keri preached last week, forgiveness is also not a license to leave injustice or bad behavior alone.

Forgiveness is not necessarily a change in our feelings, so that we feel warmly and kindly to people and forces that harmed us. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t.

What is forgiveness?

In our small, day to day annoyances with each other, forgiveness a lot of the time probably looks like a way of empathy, of understanding, of letting go. Most people don’t mean harm most of the time. Love covers a multitude of evils, the scriptures tell us, so day to day, a lot of forgiveness is probably just letting go.

But in this love our enemies series, we’re talking about the bigger stuff, the stuff we can’t, we should just ignore and let go.

So what does forgiveness look like with our enemies, with the big debts, the big harms?

It’s two nos, and one yes.

No #1. Forgiveness is not seeking payback. It rejects the cheap resolution of retaliation or revenge.

No #2. Forgiveness is also not forgetting or minimizing the harm. In fact, forgiveness is how we deal with the very real hurts we still remember.

And now the YES: in between retaliation and forgetting is a way of mercy, where we reckon with past hurts we can’t change, and where we hope for a new way forward that is redemptive for us, and maybe in time even for our perpetrator.

But this reckoning doesn’t start with forgetting or niceness. It doesn’t start with good feelings or reconciliation. It starts with grief.

That campus minister who prayed with me, who wanted to know:

Have you forgiven your abuser?

This is what he should have asked. He should have asked:

Have you grieved yet? This is such a big hurt. This is such a big hurt. Would you like to grieve some more together?

One of the surprising aspects of the good news economy of forgiveness is that forgiveness starts with grief.

My friend Matthew Ichihashi Potts, who’s the minister of Harvard’s chapel, has helped me see this better. He has a fascinating scholarly book about this called Forgiveness: an Alternative Account.

Minimizing and retaliation are both ways to keep us from the pain of grieving. Minimizing and retaliation pretend on the one hand that it’s not that bad, and on the other hand, that we can make it better by payback.

But the truth is that we can never undo our past hurts. There’s no reverse gear in life. Never.

We can’t make our childhood traumas, if we have them, not have happened. Impossible.

We can’t take back words said, trusts betrayed, failures to act – whether they were ours, or whether they happened to us.

What we can do, though, is grieve. And as the scriptures say, we can grieve as people of hope, grieve as people who believe in resurrection.

We’ve been taught there are five stages of grief. A lot of folks in the field have expanded this list. It’s called the Kübler-Ross Change Curve and it talked about seven aspects of grief.

They’re not linear, step by step in a row. They’re not a path or a guide, they’re a reference to recognize what grief looks like.

The eight aspects are:

• Shock
• Denial
• Anger and frustration
• Depression
• Experimentation with how we live in our new situation.
• Decision to move forward in our new reality.
• And Integration

When it came to my childhood trauma, I had plenty of shock and denial as a child, as a teen. When I first faced what was happening, I had some depression too.

But all this encouragement to forgive and move on for me actually kind of slowed down the grief, slowed down the healing, and so slowed the deeper work of mercy.

A number of years ago, I discovered that decades after that person encouraged me to forgive, there was still a buried well of anger and frustration in me. And a number of years ago, circumstances drew that out, and with the help of God and friends, I was ready to feel it and face it.

I needed that anger and frustration over a lot of things I’d lost. I needed a lot of it. And friends, I needed some help for that to not eat me up, and I needed some help and some hope to integrate this anger and frustration into my life.

Only after significantly completing this grief do I have freedom around this trauma. I can’t erase the past. There are still impacts on me. But I feel full and loved and whole, including in those parts of my past. And I don’t always want to be connected to the people involved, but I see their own hurt and weaknesses now, and not only do I wish them no harm, but I wish them wellness if they can find it. You might call that love.

I would. Now I love the ones who harmed me. I’m not in relationship with them all, but I’m free from them. They don’t define me. And I wish them well.

That’s what forgiveness looks like.

Friends, knowing that forgiveness takes grief means I can do it a little faster now, faster than decades at least. Maybe you can too.

And this is the miracle I’ve experienced during this series.

When Ivy preached on making space in our second week, I thought of an old friend with sadness. I thought: too much space, too much space. And I prayed as I have many times:

God, I’d love for that friendship to get better.

But in the moment, as has been true in many other moments, I felt:

There’s nothing for me to do just now but hope and pray and wait.

This is a friend who in some big ways had let me down. I hadn’t been perfect myself by any means myself, but the hurts I experienced were enough to need to recalibrate my expectations of this relationship.

I had noticed some things that had been true before, would probably always be true. And there wasn’t a way for me to undo that. Again, the way toward mercy, the path of forgiveness was in grief. So I spent some time with this space, where I could work through the the shock and denial, the anger, frustration, and sadness around this deteriorating friendship before deciding what to do next.

And my decision was: I still wanted the friendship in some form. We all know that you don’t just replace people in your life. Some you need to let go, but some you fight to keep. And I thought, this is a keeper, even if the friendship can never go back to what it was. I want it in some form still.

So I decided I’d accept friendship back in a different form, and I’d pray for and look for an opportunity.

A few days after that sermon and that prayer, it came. The person reached out. They didn’t reach out about how they’d let me down. They reached out for other reasons, but we had a warmer, more honest conversation than we have in years.

There was even a window where it was appropriate for me to share one of the ways I’d been hurt. And I found myself able to do that in a way that was real, but also that wasn’t like unloading on my friend. I could share the truth in a way that was also constructive for my friend to hear. And they did.

And as Jesus says, friends, the truth will set you free.

Something is resurrecting here. I won’t get the old friendship back. But I’ve got something, something that looks like it’ll be different but still pretty good.

And forgiveness, which looked a lot like grief, paved the way for that on my end.

Friends, here’s the teaching.

Forgiveness for our enemies is a command of Jesus. It’s one part of his way of mercy for us all. No shaking it.

But forgiveness is not a lot of bad things. It’s not forgetting, it’s not minimizing, it’s not necessarily reconciliation, it’s not always good feelings, and it is not changing or undoing the past.

Forgiveness is actually the refusal to minimize and the refusal to retaliate.

Forgiveness is participating with God in God’s great arc of love and redemption and mercy.

It starts and sometimes it ends with grief.

You can’t rush it.

But when you grieve honestly and well, you find the truth setting you free in all kinds of ways. And one way or another, you make room for resurrection.

The post What Forgiveness Is and Isn’t first appeared on Reservoir Church.

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This Sunday Steve talks with Keri Ladouceur -the executive director of a brand new church support network the Post Evangelical Collective.  The Post Evangelical Collective is a home for churches committed to the Way of Jesus, full inclusion, holistic justice, deep and wide formation, and a gracious posture.

The post A Conversation With Keri Ladouceur first appeared on Reservoir Church.

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Matthew 5:38-42

38 “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

39 But I say to you that you must not oppose those who want to hurt you. If people slap you on your right cheek, you must turn the left cheek to them as well.

40 When they wish to haul you to court and take your shirt, let them have your coat too.

41 When they force you to go one mile, go with them two.

42 Give to those who ask, and don’t refuse those who wish to borrow from you.

Good and Gracious God, you have woken us up, given us breath and life and called us here today. We thank you for this day. We thank you for the rain. We thank you that you are a God who loves us no matter what we might be going through in our lives. Help us now, no matter what morning or what kind of week we had this past week, whether it was full and joyful or just busy and distracted, bring us to this space now with reverence and centeredness, on what our body needs, what our spirit needs, and there we pray that you will meet us with overwhelming abundant love. Help us to believe that as we open our selves up to your word now, we pray in your precious and holy name, Amen.

Hey, Love Your Enemies is the series we’re on these days here at Reservoir and to preach on this feels like, (shaking head no violently) “I don’t want to!!!!!”

My unholy human ego reacted strongly to this preaching prompt with, what I would like to spend some time on today, an understandable resistance to this teaching. I want to spend some time on it because I don’t want to jump to the moral teaching conclusion. I mean, you know the ending already, so now go, love your neighbors. Love your enemies. Cause Jesus said so. So you better.

Because for so long, I have seen and heard the beautiful teachings of Jesus wrapped in as a command, for us to obey. It’s a shorter and easier way to spread the teaching, when you begin with, God said so. But I refuse the misused tactics of shame and guilt to do this, one because I believe that God is not a tyrant. God is not just a rule enforcer. I want us to go slow, go easy, gently toward this message, because at least in Matthew, before Jesus gave us teachings, advice, wisdom, and guidelines, he first did the miracles of healing the sick.

And so I believe that in order to love your enemies, first we need to do the miracles of healing. because without it, first of all you can’t do it. Loving your enemy while you’re still really hurting – it’s impossible. But if you have experienced the miracles of healing, well then we can start talking.

And maybe I know that because I know that firsthand. When you have been hurt, when you’ve been truly wronged, when you actually really have an enemy that’s done you wrong, and you haven’t had the practice of healing and loving poured into you, you don’t have the faculties to forgive and love yourself, definitely not others. And so I want to make space for that. Because to preach to a hurting person with the command to “love your enemy” is not only ineffective, I believe is abusive.

You know how you teach someone to love their enemy? You love on them. And to love someone is to make space for their pain and not try to erase it by telling you,

just love your enemy because that’s what God wants you to do.

So I want to unpack first of all, the ways in which we have misused and misunderstood the teaching “love your enemies”, especially in and through church and Christian traditions that have been unhelpful and even harmful.

The reality is that people, people from places of power and through the power of the church have used teachings like “love your enemies” to further shame and oppress and keep people in their place. And that’s a real pain point, a triggering point for some of us.

Sometimes I hate taking a few texts out of the Bible and shining on the screen because it takes it out of context. If we actually take out the whole book, the text in its context, today’s is in Matthew 5 verse 38, but you look up just a few verse, earlier in the chapter, verse 23 says this, for example:

“23 Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you,

24 leave your gift at the altar and go. First make things right with your brother or sister and then come back and offer your gift.”

Now I clearly see the good wisdom and intention of these verses.

But in my years of growing up in church, I’ve seen it used to shame and prevent people from coming to the altar, serving in church, from coming closer to God. I mean, it was taken literally and applied blanketly.

Again, I can understand why one would like to make this good practice into a law. But, We picked and chose which “sins” were allowed or not allowed, like greed and hoarding weren’t checked with your small group leader but if you drank, if you went to a party or listened to secular music, then you felt like you couldn’t come to church at all.

Like we forgot that we’re ALL sinners, but some sin prevented you from taking communion, like premarital sex, while other sin, like owning a company that underpaid and abused workers were totally fine. We turned the wisdom into a convenient social rule that we wanted to enforce. I keep saying we because Christians are bound to one another and what churches have done in the name of Christ, we have to be at least aware if not account for that in our faith journey talks.

Here’s another one, a few verses down in verse 31:

On the Law of divorce

31 “It was said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a divorce certificate.’

32 But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife except for sexual unfaithfulness forces her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Okay, first of all, this teaching is directed at men only. The “Whoever” is not really “whoever” but it’s “men.”

Jesus is not talking to me in this text. I am not even in the room. I cannot simply and literally apply everything he said to me and us all, because he would not do that, no relationship is like that. Audience matters. So who was Jesus talking to at this moment? At the top of the chapter it tells you, chapter 5:1

“Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down, His disciples came to him and he began to teach them saying,”

He was talking to his disciples.

We have used this to those who are divorced to shame them. You see some churches are still wrestling with LGBTQIA affirmation (whether they can marry or not) or women’s ordination (whether they can preach or not) and not long ago churches wrestled with divorce (whether they can do that or not and still be a member of a church).

Can we just admit that we have misused, and continue to misuse so much of the Bible? It’s been weaponized against people where the divorced are outcasted from the community. No wonder people are leaving the church. We’re kicking them out with shame!

The thing is today’s text has been used by colonizers and murderers, upon victims who are converted through force and then taught to love their enemies after they’ve pummeled through their land and their communities. Love your enemies they said, as they pressed their heels to their heads. THAT IS NOT THE TEACHING OF JESUS here.

Let’s not shove “Love your Enemies” down the throat of those who are victimized and oppressed from a place of privilege and power to those who are suffering.

Okay, so there’s been bad and toxic interpretations of the text. Then what is the good interpretation here? We gotta dig.

Cause I mean, when you just read texts like this at first glance:

But I say to you that you must not oppose those who want to hurt you. Or another translation says. [Do not resist one who is evil]

WHAT!? Um, is Jesus being complacent with evil or co-conspiring with evil?!

The natural response is, what? You just want me to hurt again? You want me to go another mile at this rate?

And now, welcome to the part of the sermon when we’re preaching from the Bible: Consider the cultural location and historical context of the text.

Why did Matthew write this?

This is why we have the four gospels because from Matthew we get an angle. And we can get a better sense of Matthew’s angle and purpose for his writing by comparing it to others. In order for us to better understand Matthew’s text we have to try to understand Matthew’s overarching message that it’s trying to convey, because every text is wrapped in that motif.

The book of Matthew is uniquely Jewish Christian, meaning it is particularly interested in laying out the stories of Jesus in close relationship and in connection or in comparison to the Jewish laws. Our today’s text is specifically in regard to the Law of Retaliation, found in Exodus 21, Leviticus 24, and Deuteronomy 19. It was directly trying to address these specific questions at hand.

In Matthew 5:17 Jesus says,

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

This is a central motif and the driving force of the booking of Matthew. To distinguish, juxtapose, and specifically compare Jesus in close relationship to the Jewish Laws was the purpose of Matthew’s writing.

That’s important because the awareness of the specificity of the audience humbles us in our understanding and application. It is not to say, oh it doesn’t apply to us, but the point is, we have to take into account that it in fact was not written for us, 21st century American, women for example. The takeaway for us in realizing this is, Matthew shows us the pastoral, contextual, and cultural interpretation and application of Jesus’ teaching to his people and his traditions, inspired by the holy spirit, to the best of his ability.

We must do the same. And it must be lived and alive, a conversation and not a heavy handed law but a live rendering of what is convicted in our hearts to the actions of our day. That’s exactly what the writer of Matthew was trying to do, to not simply accept the Jewish Laws, but reinterpret it to fit their time and their social location, their hunger, their need.

Similarly, Jesus,

“interprets the law within its proper horizon and according to its proper use, a task that at times involves criticism even, especially of particular features and interpretation of the sacred text itself” (p. 383)

by saying,

“you have heard it said, but I say….”

he is critiquing their holy scriptures, and contextualizing it, a model for us to do the same.

In this way, it shows us that we must rely on one another, one another’s voice and story and another’s social location, to testify what the spirit, what Jesus has convicted them of, and we take it all at face value and with a grain of salt. That is what it means to live the faith, which is to do it in community. That’s why we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And Mark and John don’t have the sermon on the mount really. Whatttt! Yeah.

And even with Jesus, you can have a conversation with Jesus from your cultural context and location (take the story of woman at the table)

Matthew 15: 21-28

21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

This story tells us that yes, even Jesus had a certain perspective, or to put it more provocatively, an agenda, which was only for the lost sheep of Israel. So, could it be that his message was only for the sheep of Israel? Maybe?! But again, taking Matthew’s motif into account, his whole message of the Gospel of Matthew is a thrust of pushing on the outer edges of affirmation of the Jewish Laws and then above and beyond the Jewish laws to go to the end of the earth, as it concludes in Matthews chapter 28. And so this story begs the question for me, then what would the crumbs of the “loving your enemies” be?

Because our text today makes a few assumptions. It assumes that when they take you to court for your shirt, that you have a coat even to give to them. It assumes that you even have enough things for someone to even want to borrow from you. From the pedagogy of the poor, the biblical criticism of this text from the perspective of the oppressed is that the call to follow the law of retaliation might have been spoken to a certain audience that had some power and privilege. And maybe just maybe, I wonder what kind of example Jesus would’ve given to those who are marginalized and oppressed and broken, as a model of loving your enemy.

Maybe it looks like being slapped across your face but not letting the abuser take your hope away. Because I in my pastoral context could not tell a domestic violence victim to simply turn her cheek to her perpetrator. And if I thought the gospel was telling me to do that, I would not be here. I do not believe so. My faith, just like this woman at the table, demands of the Lord to throw us the crumbs of this provocative wisdom, to ask God, then SHOW me this world you speak of where enemies are loved!

What do the crumbs of your picture of “loving your enemy” look like? From the place of an outsider? If the message of “love your enemies” was only for the lost sheep of Israel, and this woman fought for even a crumb of that wisdom in her social location, as a dog as Jesus calls her, what would that be? And her faith was that that would be enough. I think so, I think what you can muster up, what you deem as the wisdom of loving your enemies may look like in your specific case, that would be enough. We’re not meant to follow the rules literally but receive the whole kingdom of Heaven, as Matthew calls it, as a whole ethos, and move in the spirit of love here and now.

I remember in 2015 uh trigger warning I’m going to talk about gun violence. Please feel free to step out if this is not for you. I remember seeing the clip of the white shooter brought into court to face the survivors of the nine dead at the black Emanuel AME church in Charleston. And the family member saying to him,

“I forgive you”

It made me so angry, to see such foolish mercy, like throwing pearls to the swine, and of course and yet, touched, distraught by the shooting and that pain being disrupted by love. The confusion of such radical forgiveness. Why would anyone do that? How could anyone do that? To forgive someone who has shot your mother dead?

You know who? One who has Received this kind of love from God first. One who knows deeply the love and grace and mercy of God no matter what befalls them. I’ve heard it said, an eye for an eye and everyone will go blind. To love your enemy is to usher in a total new way, to break out of the system, a new way forward. A liberation from the same old cycles and systems of hurt, retaliation, and more hurt. One of grace and mercy that snatches us out of that loop. By loving your enemies, you show them a new game, you usher in a whole new rules of engagement (although they might still respond with old ways of engagement).

A biblical commentary said this,

“Upon closer inspection this stance is actually rooted in a profound resistance, an unexpected refusal to play the opponent’s adversarial game. By voluntarily going a second mile, for example the first mile is likewise refigured from something “forced” into something chosen; so what might superficially seem to be docility is actually at a deeper level a form of non adversarial defiance.” (p.383)

They called it moral jiu jitsu, which I learned is a form of martial arts that’s not of violence but redirecting violence. The word literal translation meaning, gentle art.

Matthew’s big point was trying to marry Jesus’ way to the known laws of the day. He was trying to show the Jesus’ way in and through and above and beyond the laws that were so important and dear and highly respected. But in doing so, I believe that it can be misunderstood that here’s a new law to follow, and that is what its intent was, but that new law is not a rule but a person. Loving your enemies is not just a new law to follow but realize that this is the kind of world that Jesus invites you to.

Jesus loves your enemies. Jesus loves his enemies. Jesus loves you in this way, even when we were God’s enemy. While we were still sinners. Even when you feel like you’re the furthest from God, by way of distraction of work and life, by way of deep dark void-like depression, by way of apathy or indifference, even there God does not oppose you but moves toward you. God turns the other cheek for you. God would give you God’s shirt and their coat to you. God goes the extra mile for you. God doesn’t refuse you but greets you with open arms with radical love and grace and endless mercy.

May the crumbs of God’s love towards even enemies fall on us and heal us. That we may receive it, may it cover us and embrace us. That it might shape not what we do but who we are, no longer enemies but God’s beloveds. May we drive that deep into our hearts today.

Let me pray for us.

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*Thanks to conversation partners Howard Kim & Trecia Reavis and scholarship by Cate Anthony, *www.ecfvp.org/vestry-papers/article/1034/call-out-cultures-shadow-side, Reverend Laura Everett, www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2023/04/21/beyond-boston-strong-equity-laura-everett, and Www.enfleshed.com*

I was at a local spot this week writing/rewriting/sitting with this topic of “Loving Our Enemies,” the current sermon series we are in. And I was trying to call forth some wisdom, “good news” that might offer us all some hope in territory that feels hard and often times absolutely impossible.

And as I was sitting there this young waiter came over, maybe 20 years old, and he asked me, “oh, are you just here working?” I mean maybe he was questioning what I was actually doing (because I had been there for five hours at that point) and I said

oh yeah, I’m trying to write something about ‘loving your enemies

And immediately he said,

oh I have an enemy

and he pointed at this person across the room.

And I was like,

“oh wow – look at that!?”

And he jumped in,

“yah, you know I dated the head barista here for a while…”

And I thought – do I put on my pastoral hat here – or just stay in customer mode…?

Turns out they are the same thing… because I said…

“Ooooh, tell me more…..”

He said,

“you know – I don’t know – I don’t know I dated this girl – she left for London over a year ago – and we kind of ended things… and I don’t know if this girl got jealous about our relationship? But it’s been a long time – and she is still making me an enemy – she’s just really mean, says harmful things about me… but I’ve got to make money to go back to college….. So I just give her space..”

Me:

“Space, huh?”

So I’m going to talk about the importance of space today in “loving our enemies.”

The necessity of space – for us to feel, for God to move, the potential in space – for our enemies to change/grow/repent – space for love to be possible.

We have so much capacity as humans. This wild, wild capacity to love so fiercely and so deeply and also this wild, wild capacity to so fiercely hate and destroy.

We love, we hate. God calls us to love our enemies, and we love to hate our enemies. And yet there is a lot of space between those two ends of the spectrum – where a lot of complexity resides, complexity that we often snuff and cancel out.

And I went back to my past self at that cafe, I re-read past sermons I’ve written on this topic of “loving our enemies.” And I was like dang those were good sermons… and the stories, the wisdom, the practical invitations still are true….

Part of me was hoping those past sermons would hit just the same today. – that I could reprise one for today. But the tenor feels different than even a few years ago – the tenor and state of our nation, the tenor and state of my heart. The impatience, the eagerness, the rage, the waning energy to keep calling out the evils/the enemies in our day to change our world, to make it better…. All the fundamental components seem to be the same… but it feels different, amped.

That was part of the not-so-great feeling of reading my past sermons. I shared stories that were from years before…

• 1) where we had major friction with our neighbors – and realizing today it’s the same if not worse.
• 2) I shared a story about my brother refusing to marry Scott and I saying “God wouldn’t bless our marriage.” The sting is still there… and the impulse to throw it in his face and say, “Hey! Look at us now – 22 years!! I guess somebody BLESSED us!” that impulse is soooo strong and live it makes my heart pound even now.

And all those old sermons started with the intro, “and today we are more fractured than ever… more divided than ever…more polarized…”

And I wonder, “are we getting better?” Maybe – I should say, “am I getting any better at loving my enemies?”

Ooof

Well you are in for a meandering sermon my friends, because I’m still actively living my way into those questions! But today we’ll take a stab at how to love our enemies…with the help of the prophet Jonah, some consideration of this term “cancel culture,” and the space we all need for, and to love.

PRAYER

Jesus thank you that you are unhinged, reckless, risky in showering us in your love – in finding the soft spot of our hearts… and flooding it with grace and mercy and beauty… when we don’t want to find it… when we can’t feel it. .. .

Cancel Culture/Call Out Culture

Part of the beauty of these days is that we can call out our enemies – their destructive behaviors and words all at our fingertips… from our couch, our cars, our desk – wherever we access social media.

*and I’m not about to go on a diatribe about how bad social media is – there are pros and cons – both of which I participate in.

And really we’ve been able to publicly “call out” injustices forever but today the ease by which we can practice this is more accessible, more immediate, and potentially more permanent…. and destructive.

In favorable ways the platforms of social media have allowed more marginalized members of society the ability to ‘call out’ – to seek accountability and change – particularly from people who hold a disproportionate amount of power, wealth, and privilege. Celebrities, politicians, public figures, etc..

I’ve been helped so much by my wise niece, Cate who is an Episcopal priest and has written publishable thoughts on calling out & cancel culture. She says,

“calling out” has the potential to reclaim and redistribute power in systems previously unbalanced.

In this way, call-out culture is a kind of “cultural boycott” which refuses to amplify enemy-voices of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ableism and more. This practice is central to the growth/creation of a more just, safe, equitable world – and it hangs on the belief, the hope, the prayer (perhaps) of the redeemability of what was previously not o.k.

And yet, in all of its potential – we find that social media also risks a kind of dehumanization of those with whom we interact on such platforms. Rather than calling out in order to improve relationships and society, call-out culture transforms into cancel culture. Intention transforms, too: rather than boycott voices of oppression, cancel culture seeks to cut out real people whose opinions, ideologies or identities are not in line with our own. We turn in some ways – in the opposite direction of the thing we really want – and cancel human beings. Cast them out – as irredeemable. Unchangeable.

This has a kind of allure and in many cases has become an acceptable/default way that we regard and relate to one another in our actual lives. And this is where I want to really focus today. “Our initial desire to redeem what is broken – twists into excising what we deem as broken (flawed, different, wrong, bad) – from relationship and community.” –

Cate Anthony Out of sight, out of my mind, out of my heart.

The functionality of cancel culture uses shame, isolation, zero space as tools. And they are pretty effective punishments. But I’m not sure they bring about the accountability, change, repentance, the redemption we really are seeking.

I want to invite us to look at the story of Jonah – I hope a) it can help us feel ok about being human and b) it can help us feel thankful that God is God. And maybe help us navigate where we are at with our own enemies…and how to value space to run, or to sit – physically, emotionally, spiritually – might be more effective than canceling our enemies.

JONAH

We are going to pick up the story here where Jonah is finally going to Nineveh as God had told him to do but it comes after this wild little journey Jonah takes. Where he is pretty clear from the get-go – that he does. Not. want. To. go. and God is pretty clear about well

‘you do have to go’

and there’s tossing of the seas, and a few nights in the belly of a fish – and then finally Jonah walking about this big city of Nineveh to call them out for their wickedness and deliver a message of God’s impending judgment.

And wicked the Ninevites were! Now Jonah and his people were part of ancient Israel and the city of Nineveh was known at the time as the “bloody city,” the capital of Israel’s greatest enemy, Assyria. Assyria was the imperial force of the day, and the Assyrians were horrible, brutal, and they kept their empire together by way of extreme terror, barbaric cruelty.

You would think that maybe Jonah would be up for delivering this message of God’s – declaring judgment and destruction – to his enemies… but Jonah is like,

“no – nope, there’s no way I’m doing that!”

I don’t know about you – but if I was directed by God, with God’s backing to go to my enemies and say, “Guess what? The time has come you wicked, bad, horrible people you are all going to pay!” I don’t know – I would be ALL OVER THAT! It’s kind of what my day-dreams are made of!

But Jonah initially runs in exactly the opposite direction away from Nineveh.

And only semi-reluctantly finally delivers this rousing eight-word message to Nineveh,

“forty days from now Nineveh you’ll be destroyed!”

And here’s how the rest unfolds:

SCRIPTURE | RUN & SIT

Jonah 3:10 – 4:11

When God saw that they, (the people of Nineveh) had put a stop to their evil ways, God had mercy on them and didn’t carry out the destruction he had threatened.

This change of plans upset Jonah, and he became very angry. So he complained to the Lord about it: “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. I knew how easily you could cancel your plans for destroying these people. Just kill me now, Lord! I’d rather be dead than alive because nothing I predicted is going to happen.”

The Lord replied, “is it right for you to be angry about this?”

Then Jonah went out to the east side of the city and made a shelter to sit under as he waited to see if anything would happen to the city. And the Lord God arranged for a leafy plant to grow there and soon it spread its broad leaves over Jonah’s head, shading him from the sun. This eased some of his discomfort, and Jonah was very grateful for the plant.

But God also prepared a worm! The next morning at dawn the worm ate through the stem of the plant, so that it soon died and withered away. And as the sun grew hot, God sent a scorching east wind to blow on Jonah. The sun beat down on his head until he grew faint and wished to die. “Death is certainly better than this!” he exclaimed.

Then God said to Jonah, “is it right for you to be angry because the plant died?”“Yes,” Jonah retorted, “even angry enough to die!”

Then the Lord said, “You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. And a plant is only, at best, short lived. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?”

• And that is the end of the book of Jonah!

And we see here Jonah run and Jonah sit and I want to talk about those two things – because Jonah is angry.

OOOoooo Jonah is angry! Angry! Angry!

His primary anger is not at the actions of the Assyrians or Ninevites – his enemies – but it is at God.

And his primary reason for running – is not to avoid God – but try to make sense of a God who is merciful, gracious and loving to his enemies.

He says,

“I knew it! I knew you would be kind.” AAAAGGGHhh! I knew that you were a compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. But why, why, why show that to my enemies?

“GOD – we want “our” people to live – to be safe. NOT THESE PEOPLE – who have done so much harm, destruction. Come on DESTROY, PUNISH, CANCEL them – before they destroy anything else!”

I mean – “right on, Jonah!” He is in full on anger mode-

“I hate this. I hate you, God. I hate these people. You should have mercy on me – by killing them. All of them. And everything… except this plant. I like this plant.”

And God leans in, and is like,

“Cool. Cool. Cool, Jonah. You want to tell me more?…. Do you think it’s right that you’re angry about this?”

It’s an interesting question – kind of an infuriating question to me…

I remember when I was telling my therapist about “the absolute rage I had about this really hard season with my neighbors… and she said,

“you know Ivy, anger is a secondary emotion..”

And I replied with such shocking maturity,

“you know Ivy.. me ehe ah eheh. You know what’s under this anger – more anger, another layer of anger, and anger and anger… I would run to the opposite end of the earth to convince you of how much anger I have….”

– and of course she was lovely and let me run all over the place and all over myself… and the space to do that opened up all these questions I had

• “What does this mean about me – can I love?”
• “Did I listen?
• Should I try again?
• Should I apologize?
• And if so, for what?
• Will they apologize?
• Will they mean it if they do – will it change anything?

I think Jonah allows us to see that “running” might just be the way to make some space to sift through yes – emotions – but also the spiritual, ethical and human questions loving our enemies likely brings up for us. And to see that jumping to quick destruction – or even to jump to quick ‘forgiveness/love/mercy” – might cancel the space we need.. And what we most need to hear within ourselves.

Jonah needs the space to think about all this a kind God, people who destroy… He has to work through what that means. And when we do that it is like walking into a storm – and it is likely we will be tossed around by the reckless waves of God’s love. Because Jonah’s realizing the complexity of what it is for God’s love to truly be for everyone – enemies and all. And that reality – if we are honest – is enough to make us sick to our stomach sometimes.

Sometimes it’s ok to run.

Sometimes it’s ok to not rush towards forgiveness.

Sometimes it’s ok to make space.

Sometimes we need the space of the belly of the whale – as sticky and messy and dark as it can be – to find out that it’s normal to have no empathy for those who destroy our communities, our people, our safety… To even wish them harm. And to wrestle with that reality in ourselves.

To realize that doesn’t mean we are hate-filled people – but we are heart-ful people.

This heart-space is not to be condemned but should be listened to.

It’s not to be covered up – it’s to be exposed.

It’s why I love God asking not once but twice – this very therapy question,

“tell me about your anger…”

Anger and pain need space, an ear, and a “route to re-connecting with life in the midst.” (enfleshed.com)

It’s where we can wrestle with all that it means about God and us and our enemies – if we love them. God destroying or loving Nineveh raises a lot of questions for Jonah…

“If God destroys Nineveh – then would it mean Israel would be safe forever more?

If the repentance of Nineveh is real – is it enough to turn the whole of Assyria around?

Are the lives of those repenting in Nineveh worth more to God than those who would suffer and be killed under the Assyrian empire?

Is their repentance real – will it last? Will change stick?” (Www.enfleshed.com).

These are the questions that can surface – and it’s important that we try to wrestle with them.

Here’s the thing about cancel culture… it allows zero space. There’s no room to run in opposite directions, there’s no shade, no shelter, no grace = there’s no checkpoint of someone asking, “Hmmm .. I wonder why you are angry about that?” No space for you to wrestle and question – and no space for the offending person to figure out if they are capable of more than the sum of their offense…. No room for growth/change, mercy, or forgiveness.

Now for some of you – it’s not healthy or safe to make that space … and boundaries are essential… or if you are a marginalized person it likely is not your responsibility to make that space…

.. but somehow, someone has to make that space…

In part social media removes space because it is an effective vessel for instantaneous – reactionary – the-stakes-are- all-or-nothing-scenarios. And very large, complicated social issues get condensed into truncated sentences, short TikTok videos or a photo – and reduces the complexity of human nature into quick categories – ones that fall as swiftly as the punishment – ‘you are all good’ – or ‘you are all bad.’ You are to be praised, you are canceled. You are on my team. You are my enemy. The stakes are high – and the space is minimal.

The waiter I had at the cafe the other day – said

“I make space for her.”

And what he meant was physical space – they actually have different routes that they follow in the restaurant – enough space to – acknowledge that each other has real fundamental needs to work and that to blow up the restaurant might not work in their favor – a subtle recognition that somehow they are connected – that their life is tied to one another and they both need the space.

SITJonah wanted his enemies to stay his enemies.

I think I deeply believe that it is important to love your enemies. I think I deeply believe that it matters to live and work in such a way that humility and graciousness allow us to see the image of God in the other person. I think I believe that it matters to have face-to-face conversations even if they are hard.. I think I believe that “listening” to one another can transform.. I think I believe that to love your neighbor – even if they are your enemy should matter.

• But after living next to our neighbors for 17 years now. I’ve come into a season where all indicators point to,

“Nope. nope. That doesn’t seem to be how it’s playing out here.”

And let me tell you – this sounds dramatic – (maybe like Jonah) – but it feels like part of me is dying as I wrestle with what it is to no longer want to engage, and feel like it’s impossible to love my neighbor.

I just want to keep them my enemies.

I just want to cancel them.

And so I have done my share of running and sitting – what does this mean? That this core belief – of my faith – but also just as a human being does not seem to work?

Where since October I’m literally going in the opposite direction coming and going through my side door because to risk facing people that I feel have been mean to me and my family over a long stretch of time – makes me feel sick.

And to face the fact that I know God loves them – and their kids, and their grandchildren, and their pets – which of course objectively is good – but lived out, sucks the actual life right out of me.

Jonah goes to the east side of the city and sits. In part I think he waits to see if God would just send a sideways lightning bolt to the city just for him….come on, God!

And we see him sit with the reality that God is gracious.

We see him sit with the reality that Nineveh is a brutal enemy.

We see him sit because he’s tired…life drained right out of him.

It is so risky and so tiring to extend possibility, nurture, care, to our enemies. Ones that have inflicted harm and oppression and suffering for a moment , for years, decades, all of history. What, if anything, is left of our beating hearts is meant to keep us alive – and honestly canceling other things that come against that precious heart-space is very compelling.

Jonah is tired. So weary of violence coming at him and his people every day.
We are tired of the evil that prowls – tired of the fear of it – the fear of ringing the wrong doorbell – or pulling into the wrong driveway and getting shot.

Tired of hearing as my friend Reverend Laura Everett said,

“that we’ve gone through a “racial reckoning” and a “Me Too” movement – when there’s still so much to be resolved.. Tired of being through COVID, nationwide protests over systemic police brutality, collective psychosocial trauma of thousands dead, and an armed assault to overthrow our democracy.”

Our empathy can feel worn out.

Tzvi Abusch (Brandeis professor and scholar of ancient Near Eastern texts) says that,

“Jonah is just no longer in a state where he can empathize with humanity.”

And I think God knows this and embraces his time of sitting. Sends him a plant. A plant that is then killed by a worm. Life and destruction. And somehow Jonah can see it, and feel it through this plant – more than he can for the people of Nineveh.

Which allows God to teach this object lesson – that

“destruction can not be the only tool for change – because it will affect us all.”

This plant is destroyed – and you are so angry about it you want to die – it affects you – there is interconnection everywhere.

God says,

see – Jonah – “yes” there are 120,000 people that are in spiritual darkness – but there are living animals in this city, there are babies and toddlers walking the streets, there are people who disagree with the oppressive powers, there are people who are resisting building the empire… there are trails of connection everywhere.

We can’t just broad strokes wipe out and give up on humanity – –cancel culture shames the person into realizing their individual beliefs aren’t always acceptable, but it fails to make the space where the person can learn (if they choose), why those beliefs are problematic and hurtful. Which ultimately allows the hateful ideology behind cancellable offenses to exist unchecked -and amplifies an environment where contempt, disgust and the very ‘wickedness’ we are trying to call out – instead grows wickedly out -of-control. And maybe that affects all of us.

It’s why I think God withholds judgment at the slightest sign of repentance – God creates space.
*God’s call to Jonah and to us is to not destroy too quickly.

It’s why the only thing that God cancels … is God’s own plans to destroy.

God cancels plans for destruction. God doesn’t make a habit of canceling people. It’s a risky, risky move of God’s to give Nineveh this space because the story of Israel and Nineveh is not happily -ever-after. Their repentance was temporary – their wickedness grew. Israel would be destroyed.

If we step in to do the judging/canceling what we risk is succeeding at canceling the presence of not only “our enemy” but we cancel the presence of the divine the one that we too, very much rely on to survive.

God is interested in helping Jonah’s heart remain supple – one that doesn’t abandon the living God. God is as interested in that as he is interested in offering life to a whole city. God knows that ensuring that Jonah finds his own way back to a life worth living …

“is inevitably a life that values other life.” (enfleshed.com)

So God runs with Jonah, and offers grace in a whale – and God sits with Jonah, and offers grace in a plant. And the grace of God meets Jonah in those spaces…. So that we can extend space with grace to our enemies too.

The book of Jonah ends with God’s mercy. And Jonah’s silence.

Jonah’s silence to me isn’t a sign of defeat or frustration – or a hardened heart…. it is just more space.

• And it’s God’s invitation to us today – what space do you need – to love your enemies?
  Do you need to run? Do you need to sit? Do you need to jump on a plane for a hot second?
  It’s not an unproductive space – it’s where God greets us with grace and love, revives where we are weary – and asks us, “Tell me about your anger?”
• It’s where God asks us, “What will we do?”
• “How do we aid in preventing empires from unchecked destruction?”
• “How will we love our enemies?”
• “How do we keep making space to be nimble in heart – to continue to be bold and free – in a culture that keeps suggesting that our enemies should stay our enemies?”

If I could give each of you a plant today, I would my friends. (one without a worm).

Instead I’ll say,

“grace to you,” my friends… “grace to you..”

Amen.

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Born in the 70s, part of the soundtrack to my childhood was the album Free to Be You and Me.

It taught us boys and girls can grow up to be anything they want, have any jobs they want. It told us boys can love dolls and everyone can use a good cry now and then.

It was mostly awesome!

But one of its songs captures a way I wasn’t as prepared for the real world as I might have been. It was the tune “Sisters and Brothers.”

Sisters and brothers, brothers and sisters

Ain’t we, everyone

Brothers and sisters, sisters and brothers,

Every father’s daughter, every mother’s son.

Yeah, groovy tune.

It was the early 70’s, it didn’t have today’s more fluid gender identity language or anything but the message was, we’re all in this together. One big human family. Let’s all love each other. Let’s all get along.

Great message, great song.

But how I heard it as a kid was:

if we can all share, if we can all be nice to each other, we will all get along, all the time.

I picked this up in a lot of other places, it wasn’t just the song. But all this didn’t prepare me for a world where a lot of the time, nobody’s very nice.

And what do we do when they aren’t?

In my early childhood, a guy who worked at one of my parent’s part time jobs lived in our basement for a while, and he had an aggressive dog that attacked me. Being nice to that dog, being nice to its owner didn’t help me feel safe.

A little later, I remember when a neighborhood bully, a mean and tough older kid took one of my brother’s jackets from him and pushed him down a hill. My family’s response to that didn’t seem adequate to me and it left my brother vulnerable. I didn’t think being nice was working there.

Later, in my teenage years, I got opened to just how dangerous the bigger world was. Learning about my grandparent’s war – World War II – was devastating. I vividly remember the first time I heard a survivor of the Holocaust speak. Sacred, important memory. Still true. This afternoon, I’ll represent our church and our faith as an ally at Boston’s annual remembrance of the Shoah, the destruction, which is what Jews mostly call the Nazi attempt to exterminate their people. I remember learning about the terrifying violence our species is capable of.

And then I remember learning about the US firebombing and atom bombing of Japan. It was taught to me like it was a necessary evil, but when I first heard a Japanese survivor speak, that logic didn’t sit right with me. I remember thinking:

my country is also capable of the most terrifying violence.

I remember learning that I lived in a town, a small outer suburb of Boston, that had zoning laws that were intentionally designed to keep poor people out of the community, and really also to keep it white. And this is totally legal. Still is. It’s something our GBIO Housing justice campaign is trying to address in 2023. My own town was the enemy of goodness this way. Evil so close to home.

And then, as an older teen, I had relationships and experiences where I realized I was capable of evil too. There are many enemies in the world, some far, some quite near, and some even within me and my capacity to hurt others.

“Sister and brother”, “we are the world” aspirations hadn’t prepared me for a world of evil. And niceness and sharing didn’t seem equipped to handle a world of enemies.

Sometimes niceness made it worse, for everyone – the person who got hurt, and even for the enemy too.

In a world of conflict, in a world of evil, in a world full of enemies – without and within – the good news of Jesus is unique and clear and absolutely difficult.

The call is to love our enemies. Hard to understand, harder to do, but absolutely central to our hope of salvation.

Our pastors decided it was time to go here together. We won’t say everything there is to say, but we’re teeing up five weeks of loving our enemies.

Here’s the teaching of Jesus that is most famous on this.

Matthew 5:43-48 (Common English Bible)

43 “You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you

45 so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous.

46 If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same?

47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same?

48 Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.

Once Jesus said that all the scriptures could be summed up like this.

Love God with all your being. And love your neighbor as yourself.

A lawyer, who didn’t like the simplicity of all that, asked:

But Jesus, who is my neighbor?

Lawyers. Geesh.

And Jesus told him a story that made it clear. Your neighbor is everyone. Your neighbor is even your enemy.

And now Jesus says:

love your enemies and pray for those who harass you.

And so we, or at least the lawyers among us, might ask:

But Jesus, who is my enemy?

So this is today’s sermon.

• Who are not our enemies?
• Who are our enemies?
• And what is one way that love looks like? Not the only way, not the last way, but maybe the first way.

So who are not our enemies?

This is the briefest part. The people who hold us accountable when we need to grow or change are not our enemies.

Let me tell you an embarrassing story I’ve never shared with you before.

I got a college education at a school that was majority Jewish. They were interesting, mostly positive years of my life. I met my future spouse Grace there, that has worked out astoundingly well, for me at least. (Mixed bag for her.) Really sexy meet-up story, we were assigned to lead a Bible study together in our tiny little Christian student group.

The sparks didn’t fly at first, but the friendship did, and sparks followed eventually.

Anyway, though, in that tiny little Christian student group on a majority Jewish campus, founded in 1948, just after the attempted extermination of the Jewish people at the hands of baptized Christians. In this context, one year our leadership team wanted to put pamphlets for our Christian student group in every single student’s mailbox, to flier the whole school. And we, or at least I, was so offended when the administration did not grant us that permission. Like how dare they crack down on us like this?

I thought that the school leadership was discriminating against us, the Christian minority, and that made them the enemy.

I thought it was my first experience of persecution for my faith. When actually it was my first experience of a persecution complex.

Yeah, inventing enemies when they weren’t there. This can happen with religious people unfortunately. When other people don’t go along with our bad behavior, we can think they’re our enemies when really they’re just being reasonable. Or maybe they are providing a boundary for our bad behavior or accountability or consequence for our need to grow.

So this is not what it means to have an enemy. This is the world inviting us to change.

But who are our enemies?

I want to acknowledge that the naivete I grew up with around enemies is not everyone’s story. Some of you know exactly who your enemies are.

I live with a woman of color as my partner.

She knows in her body (in a way I don’t) what it’s like for people to stand against her, to seek to diminish her and do her harm. Some of us have had lived experience where our enemies have made themselves quite clear.

It’s easy to wonder if you have enemies when your social location is privileged or protected, where you don’t experience people out to do you harm very often.

But even for those of us who have clarity about who in the world is not our for our good, we too may have been raised with the obligation to be nice to everyone, not to name someone as an enemy, which seems aggressive maybe. Or we may know who are enemies are but have no idea what to do about them.

In preparation for this series, I thought about some of my evolution over the past 35 years that I’ve been following Jesus. And I’ve also read the marvelous book by Melissa Floreer-Bixler, How to Have an Enemy.

Here are just a few things I learned about who our enemies are and why it’s helpful to name them as such.

Our enemies are the people and the systems who harm us.

I am a victim, a survivor, of childhood sexual abuse. I did a lot of work on this in my late teens, my 20’s, my 30’s, but it took until the #metoo movement (which to be clear, was not at all about me), but it took until that movement, which started in my 40’s, for me to really find or let out the anger in me to the one who did me harm.

An abuser is your enemy, worthy of your protective, righteous anger. And naming them as your enemy doesn’t shut down healing, it allows for the kind of clarity of what’s going on that can be part of enabling healing.

Let me go somewhere else with this that is for most of us very different and also kind of awkward but I think important.

Those of us who are parents, we mostly do the best we can. But we know if we’re honest that we have all kinds of limits.

Same with our parents. Our folks mostly did the best they could. But we can only pass on what we have. We can only give what we’ve been given. And so at one point in adulthood, I came to realize that sometimes my parents have been my enemy. Not willfully, intentionally, but in the places they have been a source of harm, there is at least an enemy dynamic in that relationship.

Now it’s awkward to call your parents your enemy. And maybe for most of us, that’s not a thing we ever need to say to our parents. Maybe that’s not what love looks like. But again, naming this enemy dynamic when we find it, even in our most intimate relationships, can be clarifying. It can just be truthful, and the truth Jesus says, will set us free.

Enemies aren’t just personal, though, and they aren’t just about us.

Our enemies are the people and the systems who harm who and what we love.

Cancel my favorite TV show or my favorite candy bar and watch out, you’re my enemy. I kid, but seriously, experiencing the enemy nature harming who and what we love is a growth in love and solidarity.

There’s been no war on straight white Christian men in my life, where I live. Maybe some people have alleged that, but I don’t see any harm where I live to the bodies or the rights of my social identities.

But I have over my adult life come to start to experience as enemies the people and the system who harm women, who harm people of color, who harm queer people. And it’s not because I suddenly got more altruistic or protective. It’s because of my love for the people in my life, in my inner circles, with these social identities that have often been under attack. It’s a growth in love and maturity to experience other people’s enemies as mine.

And this is not about demonizing or dehumanizing these people and systems, it’s again just about the clarity and freedom of telling the truth. Do harm to who and what I love, and you are my enemy.

Sometimes, we can even embrace Jesus’ call to love God enough that we can experience the people and systems who harm what God loves as our enemy.

The system Jesus most called an enemy was this force he called Mammon – the existential, spiritual impact of money, of wealth. Jesus was colonized, oppressed, crucified by the Roman empire. He knew what it meant to have enemies. But he spoke his harshest words really for the dehumanizing power of wealth, what he personified as Mammon. He says you can only have one god, you can only love one god. And then he says, so you can’t love God and wealth, or mammon.

Saying two things at once. Money, wealth, is a god. We fear it, we long for it, we think it protects us and makes us secure. It has a lot of power in the world. It’s a god. But it’s also an enemy. Chasing it, longing for it, hoarding it does harm to our souls and tends to make us neglect or do harm to others. So wealth is an enemy.

Even parts of ourselves harm what God loves. We have parts of ourselves that are resentful, even hateful, that diminish our loves for others and so harm what God loves. We have parts of ourselves that crave convenience and are hasty and don’t do what our indigenous siblings exhort us to do, which is think of everything with the impact on seven generations to come, so we harm the earth and we harm our descendants, making us the enemy of what God loves.

We have parts of ourselves that are compulsive, that draw us toward addiction, that resist our own belovedness and belonging, and so we lessen our own joy and freedom, harming ourselves, whom God loves so much. So we are our own enemies too.

I think this clarity about the enemies that abound is important. And it’s important because it invites us to wonder: how do we engage? What do we do with all these enemies? What does love look like? (And what does it not look like?)

Well, we’ve got four more weeks, so let’s just start. Not the final word on how we love our enemies, but maybe the first word, a place to start.

Jesus says love your enemies and pray for those who harass you. Pray for them. And when we pray for our enemies, there are two ways we can pray. We can curse them, and we can bless them. I actually strongly recommend we do both. Yeah, really, cursing and blessing prayers.

The Bible’s prayer book, called the psalms, actually mostly curses our enemies.

Here’s a sample:

Psalm 104: 33-35 (Common English Bible)

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;

I will sing praises to my God while I’m still alive.

34 Let my praise be pleasing to him;

I’m rejoicing in the Lord!

35 Let sinners be wiped clean from the earth;

let the wicked be no more.

But let my whole being bless the Lord!

Praise the Lord!

Not subtle. Wipe them out, God. That their bodies and even the memory of them be no more.

There’s plenty more where this comes from. In the psalms of lament, here are some of the things we get to pray for our enemies:

for a rain of sulfur upon them (old school, Psalm 11),

for blindness and genital pain (vivid, Psalm 69),

for the amputation of their tongues and lips (super specific, Psalm 12),

even that

their clothing be replaced by “shame and dishonor”,

whatever that fashion line looks like (Psalm 109).

So have it, friends. Ask God to do all kinds of nasty stuff to your enemies. I’m serious.

Why? Well, I can think of at least three good reasons.

1. This gives us a moral clarity about the evil in the people and systems we experience doing harm. We tell the truth to ourselves and to God that this is not OK, that this has got to change.
2. It’s empowering to us. We will often never get power over our enemies in this life. And even if we do, Jesus wants us to use that for their good, not their harm. We’ll get back to this. So to pray this way helps us express the terror, the danger, and the trauma our enemies evoke. It helps us not shove this down but give it voice. Sometimes, anger is better than sadness, because it goes somewhere other than staying inside and festering.
3. We’re giving this voice to God. We’re not cursing our enemies to their face. We’re not enacting vengeance. We are placing our real and understandable desire for vengeance in God’s hands, not ours. And by doing this, we are getting it out of ourselves and we are practicing faith in a holy and just God to handle things better than we could.

So the cursing prayers have a purpose.

But hopefully, they’re not where we step. Because Jesus also wants us to dare to pray prayers of blessing as well.

He’s like:

send good your enemies’ way.

It’s easy to love those who love us. It is holy, it is complete, it is God-like to love those who do not love us. And we can do this in our prayers.

We can say,

Loving God, please do good to my enemy. Help them be satisfied with you God, and what you have given them, that they may be healed.

So whether I’m praying for an enemy out there in the world – a person or a system doing harm do people I love, or whether I’m praying for an enemy close at hand (like a person in my life who claims to love me but has a side of them that does me harm) or whether I’m even praying for a part of myself that keeps doing me or someone else harm, I can pray curses.

I can say,

God, destroy this person or this part of this person. Let death-dealing weather or genital pain or dishonorable fashion mess up their game for a while.

And then I can also pray blessing. Like,

loving God, help this person know you as a kind and generous parent. Help them find satisfaction and healing in you. May they be grounded, secure, beloved, healed enough to stop doing harm any more.

And this is actually where our cursing and our blessing can become united in love.

The book I mentioned, How to Have an Enemy, retells a story from the talmud where a second century rabbi was facing criminals in his community’s neighborhood, wreaking all kinds of havoc. This famous rabbi was drawn to the cursing psalm we read today.

But instead of praying that “the wicked be no more”, he prayed that these criminals should repent, and there will be no more wicked people in the neighborhood.

He prayed for them and they repented. They stopped the thieving and violence, and so indeed wickedness was no more.

Jesus’ call to love our enemies is not a call to be nice. It is not a call to fantasy, to pretend that the world as it is lives in harmony, sisters and brothers, brothers and sisters.

Jesus’ call to love our enemies is a call first to notice them. They are real among us and within us. And it is a call to long for, to pray for, and to participate in making a world where our enemies are no more, where all people and all systems acknowledge and respect the beloved belonging of all humans and all creation.

Nothing less than this is the will of God for us all in Christ.

More next week. For now, let’s pray.

The post How To Have An Enemy (And What To Do Next!) appeared first on Reservoir Church.

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So, this winter, I’ve watched a couple of dystopian TV shows. They’ve felt a little like documentaries to me, just more interesting. Like, here’s one crazy, but not entirely unbelievable, version of our future.

One of them is called The Last of Us. It imagines a world that’s been destabilized by pandemic – it’s fungal, not viral, and it’s far more devastating than covid. It doesn’t just make you sick when you get it, it turns you into a zombie. And in The Last of Us, the small bands of remaining uninfected humans are with their fear and grit, trying to find ways to survive.

I’m not necessarily recommending the show – it’s really scary and grim. But what I find compelling is that despite all that, life keeps finding a way. The Last of Us universe is a greener world than we know, as grasses, moss, and trees reclaim our urban ruins. And unlikely friendships are forged. Old griefs try to slowly heal. People fall in love when they didn’t think that was possible anymore. New creation keeps growing up out of the dirt.

At the heart of the whole show is this human vessel of new creation, a teenage girl that just might hold the hope of human healing and new life. She too has been infected by this zombie-making fungus, but unlike any other known human, she has survived. And people hope that her body might hold the key to humanity’s salvation.

There’s this one episode where Ellie – that’s her name – has made a sweet friendship with a kind of surrogate little brother she’s met. Only, he gets infected too. He knows, we know, this is the end. But not Ellie. She’s like: hold on, I can save you.

She thinks just a little bit of her blood, entering her friend’s body, can infuse him with her immunity, make him whole. And I’m on the edge of my chair, like: come on, Ellie, and your blood of salvation. Let it work.

But of course it doesn’t, and I’m about as devastated as I can get from a TV show. Why do I care so much?

I care because in a world where things fall apart, in lives that have had many reasons to shed tears, there are so many places where I long for things to be made new.

And I care so much because Ellie reminds me of Jesus, and I hope that there’s still something in the story and spirit of Jesus that can help save us all.

Friends, Easter has room for us however we got here today. Easter has room for all our fear and grief and grit. On Easter, we remember a day that began with tears and terror, with hopes unfulfilled and dreams dashed. Today’s Bible text we’ll read takes place by a tomb, where the human some thought make all things new was buried.

And yet Easter insists upon resurrection, that where death has increased, life can abound yet more and more. Easter says that the risen Jesus is among us still as a gardener, tending to the seeds and shoots of new life among us, daring us to cultivate them in hope.

On Easter, amidst all the grief and wounds and scars and fear, the Spirit of Jesus comes to us still, asking us:

Why are you crying? What are you looking for?

And calling us by name, saying friend, all can be made new. Drawing us toward the peace of hoping, believing that it’s true.

Let’s read this Easter text from the gospel of John, and let’s talk about its new creation theology of resurrection, and how we can lean into it in our times.

John 20:11-21 (Common English Bible)

11 Mary stood outside near the tomb, crying. As she cried, she bent down to look into the tomb.

12 She saw two angels dressed in white, seated where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot.

13 The angels asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

She replied, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.”

14 As soon as she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t know it was Jesus.

15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she replied, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabbouni” (which means Teacher).

17 Jesus said to her, “Don’t hold on to me, for I haven’t yet gone up to my Father. Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

18 Mary Magdalene left and announced to the disciples, “I’ve seen the Lord.” Then she told them what he said to her.

19 It was still the first day of the week. That evening, while the disciples were behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.”

20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. When the disciples saw the Lord, they were filled with joy.

21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.”

So there is a lot here. We could talk about anti-semitism. This line that gets repeated in John, “the Jewish authorities” has for centuries fed violent Christian anti-semitism.

But Jesus and the great majority of other people in the gospels are all Jews. There are rivalries and conflicts among the people, they get worse and worse over the years. But anyone who calls themselves a Christian owes their faith, their Bible, their Jesus to the Jewish people. So Christian anti-semitism is an affront to one’s past and an offense to God. And beyond that, hating on other faiths out of insecure anxiety about the truth or supremacy of our own is something we’ve all got to grow out of as a people, isn’t it?

We could talk about hopelessness. Jesus’ disciples are in hiding. One of their friends has ended his life in despair. The rest have watched the Roman state execute their teacher, their friend. Now they think that leaders among their own people are coming for them. And Mary, another friend of Jesus, out here, working through her own grief, just looking for a grave to tend. It’s beautiful in its own way, but it’s heart-breaking too.

We could talk about the tenderness. Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus. Post-resurrection, no one does. But Jesus doesn’t give her a hard time. In fact, Isn’t it like Jesus to ask her questions, to be curious and draw her out? The tears of grief, the stunned confusion, the cry of relief – my teacher – and then when she recognizes her friend, the embrace. It’s all so tender.

We could talk about the slow spread of hope. If I was crucified by my powerful enemies and then if I came back to life and got another chance, I’d want a big and bold vindication. I’d want to come after somebody. But Jesus seems delighted for vindication to happen differently – person to person encounters where faith births hope out of the ashes of despair. It’s more humane, it’s what love looks like.

So we could talk about a lot. But I want to focus on what seems like a little thing, the little mistaken identity moment when Mary thinks Jesus is the tomb’s gardener.

“Thinking he was the gardener….” It’s a funny little moment, but I think it’s not so much a mistake as a clue. It’s a clue to the story John wants to tell about Jesus and new creation.

From the beginning of the gospel of John, he’s been telling us that Jesus is here for just this, to renew all creation.

The first chapter of John is a remix of the Bible’s creation story. It starts with the same words,

“In the beginning…”

In the creation story, we read that amidst a watery chaos, God spoke order and beauty and life into being. John tells us that in Jesus, this Word of God has become flesh. The invisible God materializes as a human being, the poor son of a carpenter on the Eastern edge of a mighty empire.

And John says this same person is light and truth and grace. Jesus is a human life giving expression to all the creative goodness of God.

And then throughout John, we see Jesus doing these oddly provocative and beautiful things John calls signs. They’re rooted in Jesus’ Jewish tradition – stuff about wine and shepherds and bread from heaven and new life made out of the muddy dirt. But in each sign what’s happening is that God is empowering Jesus to make new creation possible. To say and do things that transform our ordinary, earthy experience for the good.

And it all comes to a climax in these final two chapters of resurrection. Jesus appears as a gardener, tending to the birth and growth of peace and joy and possibility in his friends, encouraging them to do the same throughout creation. To make the whole earth green with hope and love and life.

Pastor Ivy gave this great sermon earlier this year on this same text. She taught us a word drawn from the First Nations Potawatomi people, the word puhpowee. It’s a word for the power that makes mushrooms burst forth from the ground. It’s a word for “the unseen energies that animate everything.” It’s qi. It’s spirit. Life force.

Mary discovers, as Ivy taught us, that God’s puhpowee is at work in Jesus now, who has sprung to life from his tomb. And as Jesus commissions his friends to peace amidst distress, and to love and feed others on his behalf, Jesus says

this force can be in you as well.

He breathes his Spirit onto his people, shares his puhpowee force with us all so that we too can live resurrection life.

Friends, we are alive in a moment when we could use the vitality and peace of God in us, aren’t we? Where would we love to see this greening, this renewal, of creation?

The Boston Globe published a piece a couple weeks back around the biggest fears of students on area college campuses. And they are serious, serious stuff our young adults are wondering about.

Stuff like:

• Can we afford to live?
• Is racism getting worse?
• Will A.I. make us irrelevant?
• Can I find work that has real purpose?
• Is there enough help for all our anxiety and depression?
• Sex and dating is a hot mess right now, isn’t it?
• And will climate change ruin everything, for all of us?

Heavy questions, aren’t they? I expect you could add more of your own.

• Is a hopeful disposition about life reasonable?
• Is God still making creation new or not?
• What can grow from all the ashes of our age?

Everything, Jesus says. Everything.

On the way into Jerusalem, just a few days before his death, Jesus tells his own little puhpowee eco-story. He says:

I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

This is the way of wheat. Seeds don’t bear fruit unless they are buried in the ground, shed their coat, and then in a miracle of biochemistry… puhpowee, burst forth as something new.

It’s the story of Jesus’ resurrection life. Betrayed, arrested, tortured, humiliated, terrorized, crucified, yet he is risen – scarred but very much alive, and bringing delight and peace, restoration and purpose in every one of his encounters.

It has also been our experience and certainly the experience of our ancestors – those in our own lineage and our ancestors in the Way of Jesus as well. We have hit the end of our rope, absolutely run out of resources or next steps, rock bottom all around, and life has found us.

Maybe it hasn’t happened to you recently. But you’re here and alive because it happened for your ancestors, and the Way of Jesus persists 2,000 years later because again and again, those that came before us in the faith have found the dying but risen Jesus come through for them.

I’ve been thinking lately about one of the times this happened for me. It was one of the saddest and loneliest times of my life. I was 14 years old. I had very few friends. I was sitting with some significant trauma that had come my way but that I hadn’t managed to tell a single soul.

I was kind of brilliant but I was bombing my high school classes, not doing any of the work. I was sad and scared and no one knew it.

But one day, in this high school chorus I was in, with like a hundred other kids in my school, the choir director called on me to lead the little solo that was part of our warm ups. How did she do this? Get high school kids to sing on the spot solos in front of nearly a hundred of their peers?

I have no idea, but you didn’t say no to Ms. Sunny Prior, you just did it. So I sang.

Alleluia.

I was so nervous, and I know a lot of people speed things up when they’re nervous, but I slowed way down.

Alleluia.

I was almost done. People were repeating after me. One more.

Alleluia.

And then silence. Ms. Prior started getting this energy in her face, everyone was looking at her now, and she burst out –

that Steven Watson, listen to that boy sing!

I am sure my face lit up red in embarrassment. But it meant the world to me.

She saw me and called out what I didn’t know was there in me. I auditioned for a second choir with her the next year. And then I joined a third and fourth choir, higher and higher levels, and tried out and got the lead in the school musical.

On the one hand, extracurricular activity – who cares? But it was much more than that. I was getting attention for this thing I enjoyed and was good at, and making friends and feeling more confident and connected. And these then ended up being the same years that I started to find a more personally meaningful faith in God.

In ways I can’t explain, that was connected to the singing too. I wouldn’t have had any of these high-faluting words for it at the time, but it was like I was finding hope, faith that there was beauty, that there was goodness, that Creator God and loving Jesus hadn’t passed me by.

Sunny Prior was part of saving me.

It was a puhpowee, resurrection moment in my story – life bursting forth out of death. It saved me.

In John, the resurrection means that the new creation work of Jesus continues. It means that the Spirit of God we come to know through Jesus can breathe resurrection power into our lives and times still. It means that the Spirit of Jesus is still gardening among us, inviting us to welcome new life and partner with God in making it so.

That’s my story. That’s the story of our resurrection faith. And that’s what I’m counting on still.

Friends, this Easter season, I want to encourage you to look out for signs of resurrection, and I want to encourage you to get out a hoe and start gardening.

Here’s what I mean.

Look for signs of resurrection.

The other week, I was telling my pastor about what most discourages me. And I talked, my grief and anger was coming through. Like Mary:

they have taken my Lord – where is he?

I was going over my disappointments, asking:

what is happening here? Why isn’t God coming through?

And my pastor listened and talked with me, but eventually he said:

can I share a perspective?

And I said,

of course.

And he said:

actually, I think what you’re seeing is resurrection.

And he pointed out that in these people and areas where I felt God’s absence, I was actually seeing more signs of life than were true a year ago, significantly more. I just was frustrated by how much more I wanted. I was frustrated by the slow spread of hope.

And he reminded me: what’s one thing we know about the risen Jesus? It’s that he rose with scars. He shows his friends his wounded, healing, still scarred hands and side.

And isn’t all resurrection like that, he suggested. New life bursts forth – a gift from God – but the scars of our wounds remain.

And that has changed me. It’s given me a new set of lenses I can put on when I look at the death-scarred discouragements of my own life or our larger world.

• With these lenses of resurrection faith, I can ask, where is God making new life possible?
• Where are the beginnings of resurrection, even if it’s marked by scars?

It’s encouraged me to look for signs of resurrection, look for possibilities of new creation life everywhere, even in the bleakest places.

Because as Ilio Delio says, resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future,but it is the power of the new being to create life out of death, here and now, today and tomorrow.

Friends, in your greatest discouragements and disappointments, don’t try to put a happy face on things. Be real with yourself and be real with God. But do ask… are there seeds or even first shoots of resurrection here. Where are the signs of new life?

You’ll usually be able to see them. If you can’t, friends can help you. But it will make faith real to you – to hope and believe and bear witness to new life in all the ashiest places of death.

So join Mary in looking for signs of resurrection. And then also, join the risen Christ, and get out a hoe and start tending to the renewal of creation yourself.

This is where our guest speaker Randy Woodley left us a few weeks back. He’s like, you want to learn from indigenous wisdom, you want a more holistic faith, you should garden.

So maybe that’s it. Plan a tree. Grow some tomatoes. Or maybe it’s more too.

You’ll notice Mary gave Jesus a big embrace, and then Jesus was like:

don’t cling to me, go tell the rest of the friends too. Be a recipient, but also be an agent of new life.

Bear witness to the resurrection you’ve experienced. Go tell the story.

Ilio Delio again:

We who say “yes” to the dying and rising of Jesus Christ say “yes” to our earth, our lives as the stuff out of which the New Creation can emerge.

You go be the gardener too. There’s a cynical, pessimistic world that needs some unguarded, unmeasured, uncynical love, hope, and encouragement. Each of you is unique as a child of God – unique gifts, unique opportunities, unique calls. But each of you needs to let your light shine. Love deep, sew wide, encourage big!

And just you wait and see what God grows through that.

Now is the moment of resurrection. Now is the beginning of a new earth. Live by the power of love alone. Act as if you were now free. Begin to trust in this freedom to do new things. Because Christ is risen, and God is making all things new.

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Good morning! I’m Ivy.

Today is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, the last week of Lent.

Palm Sunday commemorates the entrance of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem, where crowds laid the road with cloth and leafy palms and waved them in excitement and praise for the king they were waiting for – one who would ride in on a donkey. It’s an ancient story, where “Hosannas” filled the air. Hosannas as cheers, of prayers, of pleas and of protest – and it is a present day story, where we are invited today to wonder afresh – what gives shape to our “Hosannas?”

I have a friend who regularly checks in on me. At any point in the day – they send a two-word text that says, “Vibe check.” It’s an invitation for me to pause for a second, and think about how I’m feeling… how the day’s going… a true pulse on where I’m at… it often feels like a pretty sacred exchange.

The vibe of the Palm Sunday we read in scripture (and we will in just a moment), is often regarded by many of us as celebratory – a scene where audible joy and jubilant energy is manifested by a hopeful crowd.

And we can feel that alive in us today too – how it feels to hope for something for a long time and finally see it come into view. This crowd has been waiting for a Savior, one who could make their hopes and longings – their history and lived experience of oppression – into a new story. To help them believe that a different world, a new world was finally possible – and it comes into view, as Jesus enters those gates of Jerusalem.

Except an actual vibe check of this crowd, would likely reveal more. Palm Sunday while it is the cusp of joy and hope – is also the cusp of watching the world as they knew it crumble.

And even as the cheers of “Hosanna! Hosanna in the Highest” reached a fever pitch in the crowd – they are quickly eclipsed by the threat of the Roman Empire.

Palm Sunday holds more than excited palm waving…it is the story of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples, of betrayal, denial – of threat, his arrest, and violence/ crucifixion. Palm Sunday, with all the excitement and hope, leads directly to Good Friday. And that is part of our story too – and the ongoing story of our faith.

A faith that is riddled with hopes and threats – and hopes and threats – in our everyday lives.

This morning we’ll read this story in scripture and consider what it is we hope for these days? How it is we might live our way into this ancient cry, “Hosanna!” with integrity – with an energy that flips what threatens our hope – into a triumphant story where the threat of hope – keeps us moving along this road of life with Jesus.

Prayer:We praise you Jesus. We bless you – for being the One who comes among us – and is still coming. For the one who walks down our streets and enters our neighborhoods – for the one who disrupts the thoughts that threaten our hope – for the one who helps us disrupt the real forces and powers that threaten our hope. This morning hear our prayers – the ones that are beyond words – the prayers that we are hoarse from shouting – -the prayers that are fresh and the ones that feel ancient. Thank you for being among – between and in us. Amen.

SCRIPTURE | Matthew 21:1-11 (Common English Bible)

Let’s read the story of Palm Sunday together – we’ll read Matthew’s version in Chapter 21:

“When they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus gave two disciples a task. He said to them, “Go into the village over there. As soon as you enter, you will find a donkey tied up and a colt with it. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that their master needs them.” He sent them off right away. Now this happened to fulfill what the prophet said, Say to Daughter Zion, “Look, your king is coming to you, humble and riding on a donkey, and on a colt the donkey’s offspring.” The disciples went and did just as Jesus had ordered them. They brought the donkey and the colt and laid their clothes on them. Then he sat on them.

Now a large crowd spread their clothes on the road. Others cut palm branches off the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds in front of him and behind him shouted,
“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” And when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up. “Who is this?” they asked. The crowds answered, “It’s the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Like so much of scripture – there is scripture within scripture here. Right in the middle of this story we have a reference to the Old Testament – to the words of the prophet Zechariah 9:9… who predicts this moment – saying,

“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion. Sing aloud, Daughter Jerusalem. Look, your king is coming to you, humble and riding on a donkey …”

And many of those gathered in the crowd likely knew this prophecy. Because the setting here is Passover. And upwards of 200,000 people from all over Athens and Egypt, Babylon, Damascus and Galilee – join Jesus and his followers in Jerusalem to observe and celebrate this most important Jewish holiday. Passover celebrates the exodus from slavery in Egypt – it is a festival of freedom. Freedom that God intended for everyone… and one they are still longing for.

At this time the Jewish people were under the brutal empire of Rome.

“They were a colony; a subject people – living in a new kind of servitude, a new kind of bondage. Now, not in Egypt, but in their own land.” (Bishop Michael Curry)

So while Rome allows the Jewish pilgrims to gather for the Passover festival – any real action, any real resistance that would push against that power of Rome – call out the oppression – would not be tolerated. And just to make sure that is communicated – that complete loyalty and submission is obeyed – they send Pontius Pilate and Roman agents into the city with a full entourage – soldiers, horses, calvary, weapons. The Roman Empire puffing out its chest, making its greatness, its power shown through intimidation and threat.

Jesus enters Jerusalem with a rag-tag bunch, no cavalry – on a donkey – a procession of what many would regard as the “powerless” and the “explicitly vulnerable.” Where strength and power are demonstrated through subversive action, humility, nonviolence, and hope. And Jesus invites those in the crowd – some of whom had witnessed his recent healing miracles (and some who hadn’t), some who still hoped for a savior (and some who couldn’t), some who knew who this man on a donkey was (and most who didn’t) but nevertheless Jesus invites them ALL to find their way into this song from exactly where they are at, “Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!”

Jesus’ entrance – riding in on a donkey doesn’t just offer a parallel picture of what a “king” or a “savior” or a “hero” could be – it is a move to counter everything – the common expressions of authority and intimidation of the emperor’s norm. (enfleshed.org)

Historians tell us that it is likely that, Pilate entered the city from the west and Jesus entered the city from the east.

A meeting of sorts – a meeting where the power of authoritative threat and the power of indelible hope face off.

Now here’s the thing – the threats for the Jewish people are real… not just empty intimidation. Ever since the time of exile – the Jewish people have – for most of that time – suffered under some sort of foreign power. Just a few decades earlier the Romans crushed an attempted rebellion of the people – where 2,000 of those suspected in the resistance movement were crucified. Their lives have been impacted by fear and violence for a long time.

And yet the crowds watch as the words of Zechariah unfold in their streets, and the hope of their spiritual ancestors rises, the cries of “Hosanna!” swell. These voices echoing a proclamation of trust in a different type of power, a different type of LORD and King.

And it’s a gritty – graspy- sort of hope. One that recalls God’s great works – of manna appearing in the wilderness, of the Red Sea parting …and the struggle, death and oppression – it’s a holy remembrance – one that forms an active, courageous cry of “Hosanna” – a resolute present day cry that protests injustice.

And the Roman powers feel this … they are threatened.

Many in the crowds hold on to a faith that is not run by militaristic conquering authority – but on the power of justice – the power of collective hope that has formed over anguish and centuries – through the bones of their ancestors – that sticks to their spirits as they stand on that dusty road to Jerusalem.

And everything they do – from raising their palms to shouting “hosanna!” are subversive acts and messages to the empire. A message of hope that threatens and puts Rome on the alert – as much as Rome had hoped to do with their war horses.

INDIGO STORY

It’s why celebrating Palm Sunday is worth it – even when we know how Holy week plays out.

It’s why harkening back to our spiritual ancestors matters. Because sometimes we need to re-tell a story, even re-enact a story of our history that reminds us – and tells us again – of how good and faithful God has been – a source of life-giving hope – even when it isn’t realized in our story yet.

Vernee Wilkinson was up here last week leading us in a participatory service – along with Reverend Laura Everett – that centered around the plant, indigo. Indigo, the source of blue dye that you recognize in your jeans. And she shared that as a descendant of enslaved people – her ancestors were likely forced to plant, tend and harvest the cash crop of indigo.

Their lives likely bought and sold with indigo. Lives that were threatened and terrorized. And yet these ancestors gathered together for hope, for the promise of liberation – they sang songs together – they cried out “Hosanna” in their own ways for a freedom that is still sought – and fought for today. And today, Vernee turns to indigo for healing, to make new things as a prayer of protest. – Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!” – To suggest that we, collectively, can reclaim, redeem, make reparations – return Indigo to its healing properties, honor its potent artistic expression and WORK TO free it from a history of violence and oppression.

The leaves of the indigo plant are dried, crushed and fermented – placed in a big vat of liquid-y solution that becomes a live – living thing. It speaks of a history and story full of threats and violence – and – hope/beauty and freedom.

PALMS

The palms that were laid in the streets and waved in the air, by the crowd that surrounded Jesus spoke of the same. Before Roman occupation – there was a time when the Jewish people had been free and self-governed – and they had their own currency. On their largest coin – a palm branch was prominently displayed – a symbol of Jewish rebellion.

The choice to cut palm branches and lay them ahead of Jesus was an act of defiance and a message to the Roman authorities. “We want to be free – we want liberty.” And they look to Jesus – Jesus who learned early

“how to resist an unjust system. His entire life plays out in the shadow of empire. All his teaching and storytelling, his healing and preaching, his praying and miracle working – all of it takes place under that same shadow of the occupying power of Rome. (Tim Hart – Anderson)

And so they think – maybe this Jesus can help us, can save us. The scene that day in Jerusalem is not particularly religious. The palm-waving is not part of a worship service – but a welcome for a hoped-for liberator that is meant to stand up to the dehumanizing power of empire and privilege.

HOSANNA

And so they shout “HOSANNA! HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST” as they wave palms, a freedom song. They do not recite the Roman pledge of allegiance which was, “Caesar is Lord” – but instead say Jesus is Lord – “Hosanna”! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! They hail a new king.

A subversive action.

The word “Hosanna,” is not only a cheer – or only an expression of adoration. It is a political and religious word – made up of two Hebrew words: hōša῾and nā. Hōša means “help us, save us, deliver us,” and nā which means “we pray” or “now!” “please!” (Tim Suttle, www.patheos.com).

They remember this word “Hosanna” – from their ancestors which we can read in Psalm 118 where they say,

“Lord, please save us! Lord, please let us succeed!”

Words that the pilgrims would sing as they came into Jerusalem, and as Jews would recite on the Passover holiday. And their hope hung that day, on those words as they walked into Jerusalem – as a ritual of faith – a hope woven into their story – unfolding as a direct challenge to Roman authority.

HOSANNA is a risky word.

• A vulnerable cry.
• An exhausted plea.
• A protest prayer.

An ancient word – a modern word – a word that bridges and connects us to a cloud of witnesses, a company of saints, lovers of God and lovers of people. All connected to the life-giving source.

It’s how the past becomes present on Palm Sunday – and our ancestors’ words, our own. (Enfleshed.org)

…… and how they still hold an urgency to them.

This crowd is shouting,

“Save us! from Roman occupation, economic struggle, hunger, poverty.. And do it now.”

It’s desperate, it’s real, it’s the vibe of this crowd.

And it’s our vibe today.

We cry –

“Save us! Oh God! Please! We long for freedom from all that destroys life.

God hear our cry.”

And help us hear the cries of others.

THIS WEEK we had another mass school shooting – firearms, now the leading cause of death among children.

Trans rights are threatened.

Women’s rights are threatened.

Affordable housing & affordable healthcare is threatened.*SO. MUCH. LIFE. IS. THREATENED.*

We are still on the road to Jerusalem today my friends.

So much to right. So many crowds to push through.

So many of us are anxiety-filled, stressed, tired. . . crest-fallen…

Held in the bondage of poverty, racism, misogyny, corruption.

And we fumble to gather our words into a “prayer” – our emotions pour out over the top of the bitter cup of sorrow… it’s too much … it’s too much to swallow…. Alone.

Jesus as he entered Jerusalem wept over the city –

he knew he would not immediately fulfill the hopes of these people, and violence would ensue. (Luke 19:41)

We too walk along the road as much as we fall along the road, and we believe and shout in adoration – as much as we weep and grieve in disbelief. Hope can feel futile – foolish even.

The interesting thing about indigo is how that rich blue color comes to be. It is all about how many times you return to that big – live – fermenting dye vat. How many times you return to dip your cloth into the mix of sugars, bacteria, and plant leaves – is what deepens and enriches the color.

This is the invitation of Jesus on that Jerusalem road,

“Keep returning to the source – it’s where you will be strengthened.”

It might not look like you thought it would… but keep reaching to God, your ancestors, one another … there we can find a vat of love – of courage – of vision – that strengthens and multiplies our capacity to hope in the face of threat.

Last Sunday many of us folded our prayers into these indigo dyed cloths. ((Hopefully if you were here last week – you were able to grab yours on the way in this morning.)) These prayers were left to rest – to breathe this week – to deepen in our spirits – as they were laid in the company of one another’s prayers.

It was in preparation for us today – for the Hosanna’s we will shape as a community, the body of Christ together. Because as much as “Hosanna! – help us“ is a cry to God … it is also a cry to one another.

“I need your help, we need each other’s help – to keep walking this well-worn road of life – to fix our gaze upon Jesus and figure out what our Hosanna’s even mean.”

This is how the song of collective hope is sung.

Standing alongside one another – lifting each other up when we can’t see Jesus at all in our days. Sending one another vibe check texts – dipping ourselves elbow-deep in the ferment of God’s love and promise of freedom … So that we can cut through the empires of despair – of oppressive lies…. So we can change the world we live in. And believe that this road to Jerusalem isn’t a forever road to Good Friday – but one that leads to resurrection.

‘A resurrection that releases unchecked hope into our world which is dying for it.’ (THA)

In a few minutes we will sing the song “Hosanna,” together. And however you find your way into that word this morning – whether it’s out of defiant joy, or a hoarse whisper… know that we are naming – above all else – what we love in common – Jesus. A God who has saved. Will save. And does save us today. Reminding one another that Jesus will forever be riding into our lives in the most unexpected ways – and we are here to help each other notice as best we can along the journey. The poet, Ross Gay says

noticing what we love in common is a practice of survival.

It’s how generations that have gone before us – have survived.
Pleading, singing, praying, shouting – together- “Hosanna – Hosanna in the highest.”

It’s how the generations that will come after us – will survive.

Pleading, singing, praying, shouting -together- “Hosanna – Hosanna in the highest.”

And it’s how today on this Palm Sunday, we form our Hosanna’s – with pleading, singing, praying and shouting – together… so that our hopes will survive. We know things are not resolved, and far from fixed… we know the days ahead in our holy weeks still hold more work, more sadness, more threats…

But today – we rest and we breathe – we come alongside one another – with the Spirit of God, with our ancestors and we strengthen.

And we wave our palms today – our indigo cloths – our hopes.

We cry, “Hosanna, Save us!” with remembrance that the God we cry out to lives within all of us. And that when “Hosanna, Save Us” – departs our lips – it is a calling of truth to power to the imperialistic forces in our day. And it is a call to the power of hope. The power to right injustices – to steady our quaking ground – to revive us again…a power that is not commanded from a king on HIGH – but one that is altogether mighty, as it rises up from deep within us – as we gather here right now – and in the streets of our neighborhood, our city – our schools – our workplaces… our abiding places and our in between places. Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!

VIBE CHECK: Where are you? Where is Jesus? Where is your hope?

Prayer: Today God – we offer our “Hosanna’s” just as they are. We ask you to break open our hearts for what breaks yours in this world. To revive in us the imagination, strength, courage, to believe that your steadfast love does endure forever. .that it isn’t foolish to hope . . remind us how much we need it. Remind us how much we need you. Amen.

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Indigo’s presence in America – like so much of our history – was carried on the back of enslaved people. Historically a crash crop on plantations, indigo was weaponized as a form of lucrative economic benefit for slave owners. This service is an invitation into the promise that God makes all things new, into redeeming the beauty of indigo, its artistic expression, and healing potential.

Use this handout (featuring the wisdom of Rev. Laura Everett and Reservoir member, Vernee Wilkinson) as an invitation into our history, the dyeing process and the power of the plant, indigo.

The post Indigo Service: All Things New appeared first on Reservoir Church.

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Thank you for the good and holy word, Rose J. Percy. May slowness be treasured here. We’ll continue exploring this invitation, “May slowness be treasured here” in the sermon today.

I’m Cate Nelson (she/her) and so glad to be with you today. Greetings from Philadelphia! Reservoir Church is such a special place to me – thank you for having me, and thanks to Pastor Ivy and the team for inviting me!

I’m grateful to be joining you all in this season of Lent at Reservoir Church. The focus of this year’s season is “Earth,” and exploring what we call ecotheology—a way to understand the interdependence of all things on earth, and to look at Jesus’ words and teaching through his value and love of the earth.

Let’s begin today with two scripture readings from the “Seeds” chapter in this year’s Lent Guide, Earth.

From MARK 4:26-29

Then Jesus said, “This is what God’s kingdom is like. It’s as though someone scatters seed on the ground, then sleeps and wakes night and day. The seed sprouts and grows, but the farmer doesn’t know how. The earth produces crops all by itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full head of grain. Whenever the crop is ready, the farmer goes out to cut the grain because it’s harvest time.”

The kin-dom of God that Jesus talks about is one that connects the slowness of the earth to bringing forth fruit.

“This is what God’s kin-dom is like,”

Jesus says. Seeds are scattered to the ground. The earth moves through the slow time of days, nights, a stalk, a head, the full head of grain. Jesus treasures the time it takes between the labor of planting and harvesting, the work of dirt and water and sun to bring forth a stalk and a full head of grain. Jesus naming this treasured slowness of the earth and time as central to his understanding of the goodness of God made visible in and with the world.

We go on to read MATTHEW 13:24-30

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like someone who planted good seed in his field. While people were sleeping, an enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat and went away. When the stalks sprouted and bore grain, then the weeds also appeared.”

The folks who work in the field are concerned about this, and ask if they should pull up the small weeds that are sprouting alongside the grain sprouts.

“But the landowner said, ‘No, because if you gather the weeds, you’ll pull up the wheat along with them. Let both grow side by side until the harvest…’”

Jesus is pointing towards the slow work of the earth to make clear what is fruit and what is weed, and the time and the patience to let roots take hold. Seeds take time to become strong enough to become fruit to harvest – and to separate from the weeds that grow up alongside them. Sometimes slowness needs to be treasured to let things grow up to what they need to be, to be mature enough for harvest, or to discern (divide) the good fruit from the weeds. Jesus treasures that this is how the earth bears fruit – slowly, with time and discernment.

The thing about treasuring slowness, though, is that it sits in a tension – that we actually often despise slowness, and we despise the earth for being slow.

This week, the UN put out yet another alarming report about our earth and climate change. Unless industrialized nations cut emissions of greenhouse gasses in half over the next decade, and eliminate the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2050, the earth’s temperature will increase to a critical degree such that climate disasters, crop failures, and species extinction will become increasingly the norm.

* https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/climate/global-warming-ipcc-earth.html

We have seven years folks, seven years, to slow down our collective reliance on fossil fuels. We humans have despised slowness, and dishonored the rhythm of regeneration of the earth’s natural resources. We have enacted this fast, frenetic extraction and consumption that allows our lives to continue moving fast. (examples: fast food, packaging, amazon, heat, etc.) It will take a willingness to embrace a slow earth – rather than demand the earth keep pace with our frantic pace of extraction – to push against the capitalist and supremacy structures that teach us to despise the earth and its luscious slowness.

How can we treasure slow earth? I love what Rose says in her poem:

We can choose the journey of gestation, to witness the miracle of being whole that only seeds, dirt, and water know. -Rose Percy

We can choose the journey of gestation.

We can consume less. We can move at the pace of the earth, putting our feet along an outdoor path or using our hands to grow food. But really, there is a collective world we need to enact together. For our local, national, and global policies and social practices to reduce our use and dependence on fossil fuels. No amount of individual practice or commitment can respond to climate change.

We need to be a Beloved Community, and find ourselves in communities that share resources such that we don’t need to irresponsibly pull them from the earth. To treasure the earth is to treasure slowness – and we see how Jesus treasured slowness in his love, care for, and understanding of the earth. May a slow earth of seeds and grain be treasured here, that we might witness the miracle of being whole.

Jesus’ words about seeds also relate to time. The slow time it takes for seeds to grow and bear fruit. So let’s talk about treasuring slow time.

To treasure slowness is to practice treasuring slow time. Time itself is neutral – in the sense the sun rises and the sun sets, giving cadence to the rhythms of the earth and all living things. Time is also political, as it has been given days and weeks and hours and seconds to govern our sense of living. While time as a baseline is neutral, our experience of time and how we use it is not – it is marked and it is measured.

I share a sense of many of us here in the modern and postmodern age that time moves really fast. The default is that there are a lot of demands on our time, there is a lot of activity in our lives, to move quickly from one thing to the next – and part of this that we experience here in the US is the demands of a capitalist system that requires production and productivity. I call this fast time. Living in the frantic, urgent, rapid pace of everything that needs to be done.

And yet the invitation from Jesus, from Rose’s poem, from the wise sages of our world is to treasure slow time. And by slow time, I mean when we can live with room, and space, and cease from our frantic and rushed relationship with time.

One way slow time has been practiced over the centuries is through Sabbath. Sabbath, or what our Jewish siblings call Shabbat, is perhaps the most time-honored “time” practice in our faith tradition. In the Hebrew Bible, YWHW commands and commands to us a practice of keeping Sabbath – six days to labor, and a seventh day for all humans to cease from labor, to rest, to connect with others, to worship God together and to celebrate the goodness of life.

We read in EXODUS 20:8-11

8 Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy.

9 Six days you may work and do all your tasks,

10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Do not do any work on it—not you, your children, your servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with you.

11 Because the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day. That is why the God blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

The entire community is called to Sabbath. This practice of marking a slower time is an interdependent practice. If someone is still working, it’s hard for everyone to rest. If everyone’s pace is fast, we feel pressure to keep up.

Writer Judith Shulevitz* reminds us that Sabbath was never meant to be experienced alone. It has always been understood as a communal, collective practice. She says that’s why any of our efforts to practice Sabbath—or really any form of slow time—by ourselves can be a very lonely effort. The call is to rest together, to worship together, to celebrate together. Shulevitz points out that Sabbath keeping would be a whole lot easier if the larger communities of our towns and cities practiced it too – if the options of activity were limited so that we might choose each other and choose rest.

*Judith Shulevitz’s wonderful book, “The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time.”

Slow time can happen beyond a practice of Sabbath. We can do it throughout our days and weeks. I find that playing with kids is a tender way to treasure slow time, as is time for prayer or meditation, a long meal shared with friends, or a gentle walk just for the sake of walking. Rose Percy says:

Lay slowly, you are treasured here: Take up compassion for your withering, you who make haste and cut corners, fold into rest for a day or two breaths…. -Rose J Percy

So even now, for two breaths, we can fold into slow time and rest.

I wonder where in your world – whether in your home with housemates or family, in your community group, or even here at Reservoir, there can be shared experiences of slow time—that center rest and joy. Matt Henderson is leading the final Pause Service of Lent not this Wednesday but next – Wednesday, April 5. That might be a place to enter into slow time with others.

It is the interdependence of a community and what it treasures that makes experiences of slow time sustainable over the long haul.

One place where I see Cambridge treasuring slow time is in the longstanding tradition of closing car traffic along Memorial Drive on Sunday mornings and afternoons (and in some recent years, Saturdays too!). This has been happening for 40 years! Cars are diverted to Storrow Drive, and from Gerry’s Landing to Western Ave., the slow, joyful movement of pedestrians, roller bladers, folks in wheelchairs, and kids in strollers and on bikes, and dogs on leash are given right of way.

It is a place where Cambridge celebrates slow time together, transforming a space marked by the fast time of commuting and running errands and hustling kids to activities and allows it to take a deep breath and become a place that honors slow time, valuing connection and play. Slow time is treasured here.

*Sara Hendren, a Cambridge based designer and academic, has a great article about this in the New York Times. What she called ‘designing for time’ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/opinion/cities-reopening-time.html