On Coaching, Parenting, and Holding Space So Others Can Fly: Learnings from Teresa of Ávila

Teresa of Ávila is the kind of mystic that can make you both misty and mad.  One page she pens words to her beloved Carmelite "daughters" about their value and worth, leaving me in a meditative puddle:

this true Lover never leaves [the willful soul], but goes with it everywhere and gives it life and being."  

The next page, the first woman honored as Doctor of the Church, elicits self-deprecating language as reminder that even the most sacred of saints were products of their times laden with patriarchal language and debilitating religiosity. 

I may have thrown the book across the room a time or two.

But I am so glad I continually pick the book up off the floor and read more of Teresa's pilgrimage through mystical mansions.  As someone who values both the practice of coaching and the wild world of parenting, I cannot think of a more beautiful litany than what she offered those under her tender care:

"It is a great advantage for us to be able to consult someone who knows us, so that we may learn to know ourselves. And it is a great encouragement to see that things which we thought impossible are possible to others, and how easily these others do them. It makes us feel that we may emulate their flights and venture to fly ourselves, as the young birds do when their parents teach them; they are not yet ready for great flights but they gradually learn to imitate their parents. This is a great advantage, as I know" (Interior Castle, 49).

In our own world, ripe with absurdity related to our worth and potential, Teresa reminds us of the timeless call to have space held for us to see what we may not be able to see for ourselves. This can be the most sacred of work- as the Spirit awakens us, through the compassionate curiosity of another, to our capacity for beauty and possibility in the most turbulent times. We are nudged and empowered to take flight when everything around us demands we ground ourselves in cynicism, despair, and trauma-induced idleness.

This is the empathetic work of coach and parent. It is the gift and call of each of us as young and old(er) birds, to consult and be consoled so to learn ourselves best and love others just as well.

This is a great advantage Teresa Ávila invites us all to know.

----

Here is the quote adapted into a litany for whatever purposes meaningful to you; 

maybe a personal meditation or call and response.

One: It is a great advantage for us to be able to consult someone who knows us,

Many: so that we may learn to know ourselves.

One:  It is a great encouragement to see that things which we thought impossible are possible to others, how easily these others do them...so it seems.

Many: It makes us feel that we may emulate their flights and venture to fly ourselves, as the young birds do when their parents teach them;

One: They are not yet ready, we are not ready, for great flights

Many: yet, as they gradually learn to imitate their parents, so we learn to fly by watching others soar. 

One: This is a great advantage, as I know.

Many: This is a great advantage, yes, we know. 

Promise: AdventWord Day 1

This time of year is about traditions and rituals, rehearsing familiar practices that remind us of all we love and who we love.

This time last year, those traditions were cruelly and terrifyingly disrupted, as isolation lingered longer than ever imagined. So we wrote little notes like this one after we put the tree topper away. More than a reminder of whose turn it would be to place the star on our festive ficus, it was a prayer for something better to greet us when we hauled the decorations out after the world made a full cyclical ritual around the sun.

Yet, masks we still wear and Covid still hovers over this holy season like a new traumatic tradition. And the promise of “God with us,” which centers the stories we recite these next four weeks, can feel both distant and broken still. So the waiting of #Advent once again is trivial and tired.

But it’s what we have. It’s what those who first conjured up these stories, maybe even lived them, had. As poet Nadia Shihab Nye wrote, these stories keep us warm in the cold, when #promise and pain are familiar ritual.

Also, a year later, four of six in our house are vaccinated, with the other two ready to be poked by year end. That keeps me a bit warm, too. It’s somewhat promising. 

---

This annual discipline is spurred by the good people at AdventWord.

Loosening Our Grip: A Sermon on Mark 7:1-23

Greg Klimovitz · Loosen Grip Mark 7

Video of Sermon Here

“That’s not how the story goes,” I said to the Canadian pilgrim next to me as the doors to the tomb slammed shut. It was very early in the morning on the first day of the week after the Sabbath, just like the gospel story. On that day in 2019, I had ventured alone from my hotel in Jerusalem, through the Damascus gate, winded my way through the empty and narrow streets of Old City, and into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where tradition says the empty tomb of Jesus is located. The wait was too long the day before and I was looking for a different ending to my ten-day pilgrimage. After taking the Eucharist in front of the open tomb, I was third in line when an ecumenical argument broke out between two priests responsible for their tradition’s worship on opposite sides of the sepulcher. Whatever the dispute, one priest presumed it was enough to shutdown visitation. My fellow traveler leaned over to me, “Did we just get barred from Jesus’ tomb?” This marked the end of my Jerusalem journey. Despite the disappointment, I logged the homiletical illustration and kept walking. But I did not forget. 
 
I did not forget what happened when tradition and the things of worship become so front and center, idolized even, that they shut out those who longed merely for a glimpse into the sacred possibility that death is not the end. I did not forget what it felt like to be on the outside, not even permitted simply to look inside. I did not forget this was the witness of multiple church traditions on the same grounds where the one who called us to a radically inclusive love rose from the dead and rolled away the same stone these priests now put back. 
 
I hope I never forget what happens when we abandon the commandment to love and extend welcome in favor of a tight grip on human tradition.  I believe this morning's gospel story will help me- all of us- to remember to loosen our grip so we can receive and extend God's grace. After all, we cannot hold hands with clenched fists.
 
This morning's lectionary is somewhat challenging, as it warrants some familiarity with the context of first century Palestinian Jewish life and Temple practices in the shadow of an oppressive Roman empire. But the story is also playfully written. Mark 7 is a beautiful illustrative spiral that moves from a small center of characters to a larger crowd and then back to a smaller center again. Mark offers a literary pulse that reminds us of the expansive love found in Jesus’ newly organized community. 
 
We begin with the small center of Pharisees and scribes, those who held fast to the Torah and others charged with drafting legal documents related to who could be granted access into the most sacred of Temple practices.  Mark says "they noticed" that Jesus' disciples were eating with unclean hands. The Greek here is κοιναῖς (koinais), the same word can be translated not only as defiled, but also common. It's the same word used for the type of Greek in which Mark writes his gospel. Koinonia Greek. Common Greek. Street Greek. The Pharisees and scribes are concerned because those who follow Jesus are not doing their religious tradition and liturgical practices right- not washing up before worship. They are, in the minds of the institutional leaders, flippant and irreverent in their common approach. The disciples are then given the same kind of side eye some may give millennials and teenagers for texting or Instagramming in church without realizing they just may be participating in worship in their own and more common way- possibly capturing an image of the sanctuary that catches the light just right and pairing it with a quote from the preacher. NOW is your moment🙂

 
"Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders," they ask the Teacher, "but eat with common hands?" It's in that moment I imagine Jesus finding a rock, hiking up his robe with traditional prayer tassels just visible beneath the fringe, and taking a seat as familiar to ancient students in the presence of a teacher.  Jesus then quotes Isaiah, whose writings called to mind how a time of exile when these traditions affirmed a belonging to God and need to care for a the marginalized as they lived in captivity. Jesus follows with maybe the most potent verse of the whole Markan passage, "You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition." It's as if Jesus was saying, "Remember- love is law. The rest hold loosely." And if they were not taken back in that moment, Jesus leans forward and calls out the collusive practice of Corban- an ancient religious and economic tradition and legal loophole to defer assets to the Temple instead of to their family. The economic practice is so obscure and debated among scholars that this section of the lectionary splices it out altogether.  Yet it is important- the same critics of Jesus' common and ordinary disciples are the ones who use the Torah to evade responsibility to even their parents and elders, the economically vulnerable, and give it to the religious institution instead. Their grip is so tight on preserving tradition that they miss its foundational goal- to create rhythms of mutual care and welcome in a world dominated by narratives of violence, power, and exploitation. Your tradition is void of God, Jesus tells them. 
 
This first small pulse of Mark's narrative is followed by Jesus' call to the crowds, quite possibly a mixture of Jewish and Gentile people. The heartbeat is louder here, although shorter in address, "Listen to me, all of you, nothing from the outside makes you unclean by going in. What comes out is what can pollute a person." Listen to me, Jesus says, in contrast to these scribes and Pharisees and their marginalizing obsession with now exclusionary traditions. My way includes the common folk like you. You can participate. Here you can find belonging without knowing the words or rituals and other religious insider speak. You can feel the relief. Maybe you, I hope, have experienced it before, a moment of intense and uncommon welcome when you needed it most. 
 
The story then pulsates once more, as Mark tells us Jesus leaves the crowd and takes the conversation inside the house. Here things get real fast, much like when I call a family meeting when my kids just don't seem to get the messaging of our family motto- "don't be a jerk"- or more pastorally every morning before school, "you are loved to love."
 
Inside the house, which is another subtle reference to Temple throughout Mark (think of the hole in the roof of a house where two friends lower a paralytic to the feet of Jesus speaking once again to the scribes), Jesus declares all foods clean and calls for reformed hearts that cease all forms of greed, exploitation, slander, and anything that mirrors exclusion- to include beloved traditions and worship practices once held so very dear and sacred. Again, love is- and always has been- the goal of the law. 

Friends, I could continue to nerd out on the context of this lectionary gospel and its beautiful heartbeat and potent pulse that speaks into our times as much as theirs. But I offer you just one more. If you opened your Bibles, you would notice the NRSV jumps from versus 15 to 17. Yes, sixteen is missing. It is believed that ancient manuscripts were not consistent. What did the questionable line say? "Let anyone with ears listen." 
 
I wonder if readers and interpreters throughout history recognized the importance of this text and wanted to underscore the riddle's central role in our call as disciples. It is Jesus' call to listen and hear the widest of welcome yet. And I wonder, was the Syrophoenican woman, who shows up in next week's lectionary, one who had such listening ears. A Gentile woman, unfamiliar with Jewish traditions, brings her demon-possessed daughter to Jesus. She confronts the Messiah’s own practice of welcome and dares Jesus to extend her daughter the same favor he  has to the insider Jewish people. And Jesus is moved to empathy and exorcism. This one of my favorite stories. Have fun next week, O preacher.
 
Faithful of Morrisville, do you have the ears to listen to the pulse of Scripture's proclamation to each of us, a pulse that moves our circles of welcome wider and wider, even beyond the limits of our traditions and sacred practices? Do you hear Jesus' unconventional call that breaks through barriers of who is considered in and not content with anyone being left out? Do you hear Christ's call to loosen our grip on what once was and “how we used to do things” so we can grab ahold of what is becoming, as terrifyingly unfamiliar it may be? 
 
I read a great article this past week by Christina Colón, titled, "What Is Church Now?" 

"If the pandemic showed us anything, it's that people can worship from anywhere, in anything, with anything- even apple juice and Ritz crackers. Why should the future church not be the same? As we reemerge, pastors [and congregations] face a moment... to ' practice that resurrection,' to find innovative and impactful ways to be the church in their communities. We can lament and grieve what was lost...'But can we also make room for something new?'"

There has been so much trauma over the course of these last two years. I am with you in what feels like endless and unresolved grief felt in our congregations. It is real and must be recognized. I also believe new openings in our communal practices and liturgical traditions have been cut so our worship is starting to feel more common. Sure, complicated. Unconventional, without question. Exhausting and sometimes frustrating, with the tensions between virtual, in-person, or hybrid gatherings over zoom, no doubt. But I do believe, we are seeing a new awakening in terms of what matters when it comes to our worship and work and witness as the people of God. I believe the pandemic has not been completely wasted when we have loosened our grip on what counts for the church and embrace fresh possibilities to make who we are and what we do more accessible than ever to those who have for too long been on the outside looking in. We also have an opportunity to be so commonly compassionate in a time when every day we learn of yet another natural disaster, manifestation of racism or xenophobia, thousands of God’s beloved fleeing their homes looking for refuge after a twenty-year war, food insecurity in our own neighborhoods and cities, or the perpetual rise of covid variants that can be minimized by the common practice of mask wearing and vaccinations. I guess what I am saying, are we willing to look towards what we consider the purpose of our traditions and the pulse of our practices? What might we need to hold loosely? 
 
As your Associate Presbyter in this Presbytery, every time I have felt wearied and wondered if what we do has any meaning anymore, I learn of another way the Spirit has moved through the faithful with ears who have heard and responded to Christ's call. I preached in a church where a ZOOM screen was set up next to the table for Eucharist to make space for both on-line and in-person, masked worshippers. As I looked out there was a visitor who was there for the first time just because she was looking for a church still doing communion safely to remind her of Christ's love that extends from her home country of India all the way to the suburbs of Philly. During the prayers of the people, a virtual participant shared their 25th anniversary of sobriety. Don't even get me started on how I well up every time I see a child lift a cup of juice and piece of bagel in front of their computer, participating in the sacrament in a way previously considered taboo in a sanctuary. 

I have seen ministries in southwest Philly transform their parking lots, no longer being used as much given their virtual worship, into lush gardens of fresh produce. In a part of the city where access to nutrition is so limited and sparse, they have an abundance and give it out freely. Another congregation continues to furnish their unoccupied manse to house the influx of refugee families whenever the city alerts them of a need. Then, this past week, we distributed our second wave of Covenant Fund Grant dollars to partnerships with hospitality networks, new forms of Christian education for children, coffee houses and ministries to young adults with various disabilities, collaboratives to provide programs to senior adults who have felt isolated for so very long, and opportunities for churches to extend community and welcome to LGBTQIA+ students at the University of Pennsylvania. Friends, this is what happens when disciples of Jesus throughout your presbytery loosen their grip on what once was and remain open to fresh practices of the resurrection. And it is happening in this Bucks County Congregation, too. Do you have the eyes to see and ears to hear this common welcome that is as much for you as it is for your neighbors near and far? 
 
Before we close, let's go back to Jerusalem where Wajeeh Nuseibeh sits at the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Wajeeh is a Palestinian Muslim whose family has held the key to this ancient Christian church for centuries. Why? Christians fought so much over their traditions and practices that they had to give the key to an "outsider" so the place of Christ's tomb would not become a perpetual battle ground. So every day for 500 years, members of his family have climbed a tall ladder with an ancient key in his grip to unlock the towering doors for pilgrims, patrons, and priests alike. I'll never forget shaking his aged hand and sharing my words of gratitude to this practitioner of God's common grace. Wajeeh Nuseibeh's family has modeled welcome and love when the church lost its way, prioritizing tradition over God's universal commandment to love. What about me? What about you? What about each of us? May our eyes and ears be opened afresh to Christ's greatest commandment to love God and neighbor as ourselves. May we hold traditions, even those most beloved that once served a sacred purpose, loose enough so we can grasp keys able to create new openings for God’s gracious welcome. In so doing, we just may honor tradition best. Amen. 

New Olive Tree Ink and the Color of Peace: Another Tattoo for the Rev

“We believe in justice. One day we will see the Son of Justice rise again.”

I’ll never forget hearing these words from Daoud Nassar, a Palestinian Christian whose family lives in the West Bank on an olive tree farm called Tent of Nations. After sharing stories of peaceful resistance in the midst of occupation and terror, including one about Jewish partners who helped replant over 250 trees after they were burned down as an act of Israeli intimidation, our group of pilgrims was invited to purchase one of our own in solidarity.

So I sponsored two. 

And the olive tree, for me, became a favorite symbol of resilience and resurrection, courage and care, hope and redemptive love.  

Olive trees can grow in uncommonly dry spaces and are known for their longevity of life, some say these trees never die but are eternally reborn out of the same root systems. Olive trees are the first named arbors in Scripture, whose leaves were plucked by the dove as symbol of new life after the flood. Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish writes, “The Olive Tree is the color of peace, if peace needed a color,” calling to mind the interfaith stories past and present that have leaned on the witness of these trees as they resist violence and pursue a better way.  Olive trees are also responsible for one of the most vital harvests in the Mediterranean, olive oil, made from a process of repeated pressing that is sacred imagery across faith traditions and an invitation to endure the struggle. Olive trees in Gethsemene, meaning “oil press,” even served as sanctuary as Jesus prayed with persistence and his disciples slept on assignment, only for the Messiah to call them thrice to “keep awake” and remain vigilant. γρηγορεῖτε (gregorēite) in Greek; my name thrice spoken among the olive trees where I pilgrimaged in 2019.

Now, every time I look down at my right arm, thanks to @billyhaines, I see not only my invitational name, but also the stubborn yet beautiful tree whose fruit will be pressed but not overcome. I will remember a rootedness that endures forever and nudges us to color the world justly and peacefully as we wait for the Son to rise again. We certainly need all of this and more in these pressing days. 

Shake It Off? Rejecting Anti-Welcome and Moving Towards Liberation

Greg Klimovitz · Shake It Off: Sermon on Mark 6:1-13

A sermon delivered on July 4, 2011

"Just shake it off."  I remember hearing these words often as a kid. And it was before Taylor Swift was born...literally. I was an avid baseball player from the time I was four through my freshman year of college. Predominantly a catcher, I was prone to getting hit by a foul ball, wild pitch, or a hitter’s looping backswing. I have many scars and sore joints from those sixteen years.

But where did this phrase come from? Do we believe the movement of "shaking it off" can distribute blood flow and reduce swelling? Does shaking it off ease pain? Or is shaking it off yet another way we teach young people, especially boys, to suppress their emotional responses and just move on without showing that something truly hurts and a wound has been inflicted?

 

Just shake it off. As a little league coach these days, I have committed not to use this phrase with kids, whose bodies and brains and minds and emotions are changing as designed. Suppressing natural and healthy reactions to pain is not my MO on or off the field. Sometimes there are injuries to the body and spirit that cannot simply be shaken off. 

And they shouldn't be. 

God knows, for real, the many traumas endured these last eighteen months, whether the pandemic or the endless social ills, cannot merely be shaken off. The pain experienced is a signal that something is not right and aid and relief is needed. To say shake it off in the American cliched verbiage only buries hurt, leads to neglect, and delays healing. Shaking it off is not equivalent to resilience; it can be damaging denial.

 

So why does Jesus go there? Shake it off, Jesus? Surely the Messiah had more compassion, empathy, and concern for those wounded by others and the oppressive systems of the day. But before we lean in, let's pray.

 

We come to today's text and Jesus gives the disciples a packing list.  How I wish this was all I needed to bring whenever loading up our four children into our minivan and traveling even for a single night at the grandparents. 

Staff. Sandals. Clothes on your back. 

No iPads, device chargers, stuffed animals, or pillows. Not a single suitcase. It is simple, quick, and warrants a dependency on the community care provided by those soon visited.  It prevents being burdened by too much stuff and assumes welcome and having enough at destination. A parent can dream, right? But, is there more to Mark's incorporation of this Messianic and Apostolic packing list than merely the reduction of stuff so the hatchback will close and whoever is riding passenger can actually put their feet on the floor? If you are familiar with Mark, you know that there is always something more.  

 

Mark 6 is right on the heals of two significant stories interwoven together: Jesus' healing of a woman plagued by hemorrhage for 12 years and a 12 year-old girl resurrected from the dead. But this all happened in a neighboring town.  Mark 6 begins in Jesus' village and among Jesus' people of Nazareth. They have known him since he was a boy...and they liked him...until now. Jesus is in the local synagogue, where he grew up and studied under local rabbis, and on the sabbath.  In this sacred space on a sacred day they take offense to his teachings.  We know why, too.  Jesus is breaking sabbath, his disciples are not fasting, he is touching the untouchables, and welcoming the unclean.  Jesus is traveling back and forth across the sea (hold that reference), casting out demons and sending them into swine in Gentile land.  Even more, Jesus has a following of fishermen, tax collectors, and sinners called disciples.  Jesus has spent much of his young life shaking off convention to make room for those often excluded from sacred centers and, ultimately, pushed out of Nazareth as a "prophet without honor" as an echo of Ezekiel 2. So Jesus shakes off their anti-welcome and heads elsewhere to come alongside others shaken off and dishonored by religious and political communities alike.

 

But that is only the beginning. Packing lists. Take nothing with you except your staff.  No bread. No bag. No money. Staff. Sandals. Clothes on your back. Twelve of them, sent out with little to nothing to take with them. Twelve of them with a packing list of immediacy. If you have the eyes to see and ears to hear, you will notice Mark's echo of Exodus.  Remember the mountain? Remember the sea?  Remember the wandering in wilderness before entering strange lands? Remember the 12 tribes? And it began with a newly liberated Hebrew people with a rather short packing list, eating unleavened bread with staff in hand, sandals on their feet, ready to pick up and go at a moments notice as they leave captivity and venture towards freedom, "This is how you shall eat [the Passover lamb]: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly” (Exodus 12:1). Is Jesus provoking a new exodus?  Is Jesus calling out a new people of God to pursue liberation in a new land, to shake off the manifestations of Egypt and anti-welcome in their time and place?  YES.

 

Jesus calls and sends out his disciples, again an echo of Ezekiel, into the neighborhoods of Israel that had rebelled from God’s story of liberation, to cast out demons and heal the sick not to prove divine status but to send away old lines of exclusion and draw the circle wider...as wide as the infinite love of God.  And if they and their new way of being in the world are not received well among a rebellious people, shake your sandals and leave that place in the same sort of prophetic dust that covered Pharaoh's chariots as they crossed the sea and towards a new life of freedom.

 

Jesus' hometown in dust?  Sacred space, place, and rituals in dust? Tradition and law in dust? Conventional wisdom and all you once believed to be true in dust? If it holds people captive...yes. If it wreaks of Egypt and Pharaoh...yes. The Jesus movement and those who follow the Way, are to be all about exodus. Everything else is dust. And if we pay attention to the parables of Jesus throughout the gospels, they are all about dusting off from Pharaoh's empire in temple and town. It is shaking off the shackles of captivity and anti-welcome.  So, yes, Jesus said, "shake it off," as in be liberated from oppression and rejection and find renewed belonging in the kindom of God, where we hold all things in common and all people called beloved.  

 

Still, what does this all have to say to us in our time and our place? I believe, in essence, it hinges on discipleship. Are we as individuals and communities of faith, even on “sacred” national days of supposed independence, willing to shake off the dust of anti-welcome and long-histories of oppression and move into real and localized expressions of inclusion and concern for the common good?

 

To shake off oppression, injustice, and isolation from community.

To shake off economic systems that perpetuate poverty and homelessness.

To shake off prison systems bent on racial biases and propped up by corporations.

To shake off unclean spirits of violence and the idolatry of weapons and war.

To shake off narratives of acquisition and never having enough.

To shake off white supremacy, homophobia, racism, and the characterizing of Indigenous peoples.

To shake off ableism and ways society excludes people of various physical, social, and mental abilities.

To shake off all that exploits creation and the earth God so loves and calls good.

To shake off myths of achievement that teach our children what matters most is climbing to the top.

To shake off toxic relationships and those bent on bullying behaviors.

To shake off resentment and hatred that only poison our mind, body, spirit, families, and neighborhoods.

To shake off anything that infringes on the foundational truth that each person is a beloved child of God and beautiful reflection of the Divine. To shake off pre-pandemic patterns of existence as individuals and communities that were never healthy and whole.

 

As Octavius Catto, 19th Century African-American martyred civil rights activist, child of a Philly Presbyterian minister, and one of the greatest baseball players of his era, once said as he shook off anti-welcome in his day and pressed for a more just world, “There must come a change which shall force upon this nation that course which providence seems wisely to be directing for the mutual benefit of peoples.”

 

Friends, as disciples of Jesus gathered and scattered, we have been sent by Jesus to liberate and heal in strange places and in unconventional ways. There are sure to be detractors and fair amounts of rejection along the way.  It will be uncomfortable and require dependency on more than your own efforts. So pack lightly and when tempted to quit or return to the privileged norms of Pharaoh's empire, shake it off. Shake it off not as a means to dismiss pain or suppress hurt, but to be released of the power anti-welcome may have over you, your neighbor, and the divine belovedness you both bear, which can never be shaken off. Yes, shake off the dust of this not-love, leave Pharaoh's chariots behind, and move towards a new kind of exodus found in the gospel of justice, peace, and joyful welcome in Spirit-filled community.

O how I love how churches in Greater Philadelphia and beyond have lived into this exodus-laced change and worked to shake of the dust of anti-welcome through collective work and witness: gardens cultivated to provide nutrition alongside neighbors in Chester to shake off food apartheid in that city; collaborations with local networks formed to extend inclusive coffeehouses for youth and adults of various ability levels to shake of the ableism in Delaware County and beyond; kitchens have been flipped into food pantries for those battling hunger and poverty; grants secured to construct tiny homes for those vulnerable to housing insecurity; Clergy have linked arms in protests and marches and committed to courageous conversations on anti-racism in both their communities and congregations and presbyteries; Pride festivals sponsored and hosted in parking lots; after-school programs offered in the midst of a pandemic so children do not fall too far beyond and yet stay safe; faith communities have continued to adapt mediums for worship and fellowship gatherings, leveraging digital platforms and technologies to shake off the isolation so many have felt in the midst of this pandemic. The list goes on as we live into what it means to be a Matthew 25 people.

 

My kids and I recently have found a new love in the music of Jon Batiste, jazz musician who wrote the score for Disney's Soul and the band leader for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. On his latest album, We Are, Batiste has a song, “Freedom,” appropriate for today's text and the recent national holidays of Juneteenth and July 4^th : 

When I move my body just like this

I don't know why but I feel like freedom (freedom)

I hear a song that takes me back

And I let go with so much freedom (freedom)

Free to live (how I wanna live)

I'm gon' get (what I'm gonna get)

'Cause it's my freedom (freedom)

The reason we get down, is to get back up

If someone's around, go on let them look

You can't stand still

This ain't no drill

More than cheap thrills 

 

Faithful friends, we have endured much as a people these last 18 months. We have also had our eyes and ears opened to so many cries for justice and deliverance from generations of anti-welcome. May we hear Jesus' call to shake off this dust as an invitation to reach back to that ancient song of freedom God's people have been singing throughout the ages and in empires past and present- including this one. This song invites all people to move their bodies, imaginations, and faith communities in such a way that lets go of shackling systems, stories, and old patterns of existence. No, we cannot stand still. This ain't no drill. We cannot stay the same. Discipleship demands we embrace redemptive change and move towards welcome and mutual care. So what needs to be shaken off in your life and in the church for this to happen?  What is weighing you down from hearing of your belovedness or leaning into proclaiming and extending it to others?  Let go and dance ‘cause it’s not only your liberation, but also that of your community and the world God so very much loves.

 

A Benediction in Poetry

  

shake it off

we tell young ones

send away the pain

subtly

dust yourself off

wipe away the tears

and press on

as an image of strength

as though unharmed

unfazed

by injury or trauma

but what if it hurts

what if the wound cannot be shaken

what if you are not ready to get up

to move on

maybe shaking it off is not resilience

maybe it is damaging denial

suppressing reality

burying emotions

neglecting what makes each of us

human

 

what if

 

yes, what if we do not have to shake off

the pain

but what caused it

to reject anti-welcome

to send away not-love

and linger longer in dreams

for something better

and move towards

in time

our time

a new reality altogether

May we do so in the name of the Creator, Savior, and Sustainer. Amen. 

When the Church Is No Longer the Preferred Place to Love One Another: Maundy Thursday

This is not a well-nuanced reflection; instead, they are raw questions in light of a recent article posted by NPR. What is below are my modest musings shared on Facebook and Instagram this past Maundy Thursday and now rest here as a reminder to continue to ponder where and how the Spirit is moving among us...and beyond us...and despite us...

Maybe it’s because people are finding other ways to love one another faithfully and courageously?

Maybe the church has stopped washing feet and chosen the path to perceived greatness instead?

Maybe it’s because we have no longer made the Table an open space?

Maybe it’s because we have lacked courage and willingness to risk for the cause of justice and liberation?

Maybe it’s because we don’t know how to forgive, only how to throw stones?

Maybe it’s because the little children do not feel welcome to come into our worship spaces?

Maybe it’s because people are finding the walls built by religious institutions are less preferable to the welcome found in spaces outside these traditions bent in self-preservation?

Maybe it’s because the history of violence and white supremacy are not only rooted in these institutions but also watered by them in our present era of oppression?

Maybe it’s because the last four years were propped up by those claiming Jesus as Lord when, in reality, mammon, power, and privilege were their deities of preference?

Maybe it’s because a new Pentecost is happening, which doesn’t refer to the digital revolution and zoom Bible studies, but the following of the Spirit into the diaspora and beyond what we consider church?

Maybe it’s having our eyes and ears opened to see and hear what Gcd is doing in the multi-cultural, inter-generational, non-binary, and interfaith witnesses of neighborly love and empathy outside the realms of patriarchal and heteronormative systems draped in faith language.

Maybe it’s because God’s goal is not for filled pews and pulpits and congregations but for a new world completely, where all are welcome, find belonging, have daily bread, are relieved of debts, have their human dignity validated, and wars are no more.

Maybe it’s because America is not the epicenter of these dreams?

Whatever it may be, I actually find hope in this survey. Maybe it’s because the truth is out and just maybe we will lean into the real cries and concerns, even apathies about religion, and all be better for it?

What’s your maybe?

On Serpents, Scepters, and Storied Remedies: Lent 4 and Numbers 21:4-9

The winged staff with two intertwined snakes, or caduceus, has been an icon in American medicine since 1902. The image is rooted in ancient Greek and Roman mythological stories of healing and resurrection. In the midst of the pandemic, we likely have become more familiar with an alternative, a lone snake wrapped around a single scepter. This adaptation has potential origin in Sunday’s lectionary from Numbers and serves as the central emblem of the likes of the World Health Organization. As we lean into the one-year “anniversary” of COVID-19, these medicinal symbols have transcended mere imagery; they are known by real names of doctors, nurses, scientists, researchers, and the great cloud of witnesses we call emergency and frontline workers. We may also know such saints as neighbor or aunt, spouse or child. They have been pillars of hope who have kept our eyes up and out as we look for liberation from our individual grief and healing from collective pain.

In Sunday’s Old Testament narrative, those who wandered the wilderness lost one of their own pillars. Aaron, their priestly comforter and interpreter of Moses’ works, had died. Their grief still raw, the people of Israel wondered if they would ever make it to the promised land or if they had been left for dead. Fleeing oppression in Egypt, they found themselves endlessly fighting new oppositions to their freedom. The deaths mounted and pleas for deliverance paralleled complaints against Moses and God, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness.”

This prayer likely mirrors our own from the last twelve months, which makes God’s initial response concerning. Instead of the divine compassion of Exodus 3, God sends poisonous serpents that bite the people (Numbers 21:6)? There is no simple interpretation of this text of terror. As empathetic theologian and minister, all I can fathom is those who first lived this narrative were looking for a source of their suffering in much the same ways we do. In their storied world, they embraced this narrative to endure the trauma: if God was the sender of the serpents, maybe this same God could provide the deliverance for their wearied bodies? So they prayed. Moses did, too. And God intervened, through Moses, with a bronze serpent wrapped around a pole, “and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live” (Numbers 21:9).

The circumstances of the perpetual Lent we have endured since last year leads us to look for redemptive truth in our own wilderness wanderings. In the abundance of grief, we are desperate for the healing, harmony, and liberation promised to us when we began our faith journey. Instead, we have been bit by the poisonous serpents and forced to mourn the death of yet another loved one or facilitate yet another (virtual) funeral. We lament as we notice the venomous fangs have punctured social, economic, political, and religious systems, some becoming aware of the wounds for the first time. These snakes inflict suffering on individuals and communities alike, manifested in pervasive poverty, school-to-prison pipelines, mass incarceration, racial biases and related violence against Black and Brown bodies, discriminatory wages, rise of white supremacy, and the complicity of those of us who have the privilege to opt in or out of the intersection of our faith and the real pain of our neighbors. COVID-19 has also unleashed a brood of snakes by way of inequitable access to testing, medical care, and vaccinations. In light of it all, we are increasingly overwhelmed, tired, and a fair share of complaints layer our prayers. One thing we know, contrary to the narrative of our ancient wandering siblings, God did not send these malicious creatures into our midst; we did. This is the hard confessional truth of Lent.

Nevertheless, God sends us remedy. In the person of Jesus, our caduceus has been raised on behalf of all who suffer and grieve, promising to resurrect life out of even the most despairing of human trauma. This same Jesus, then, raises us to embody cruciform remedies as Christ’s creative work in and for the world God so loves (Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:13-17). This is discipleship. This is what it frames our agency in the gospel and balming bravery in a world desperate for healing, hope, and movement towards a reconciled future. Vietnamese poet, mystic, and activist, Thich Nhat Hanh, says it beautifully:

They don’t publish
the good news.
The good news is published
by us…
Listen! You have the ears that can hear it.
Bow your head.
Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow
and preoccupation
and get free.
The latest good news
is that you can do it. (“The Good News”)

My kids have figured out Lent is longer than forty days- forty-six, to be exact. The liturgical season does not count Sundays. They are our break from confessional fasting and hallowed centering on the resurrection before us. Sundays are bronze serpents intertwined on the pole of our pilgrimage, which remind us God is with us and before us. As we continue the long Lenten road, may we create space to remember and celebrate the good work happening all around us. May we find remedy in this biting age through the witness of faithful people who rise up as publications of harmonious hope. May we look to these sacred sending stories as echoes of the latest good news- you can do it! Better said, in Jesus Christ, God has done it. By God’s grace, look and listen. Amen.

Then Became Now (Lent as Confessional Gratitude)

To lent is to remember
for a marked time not eternal

that our callow THEN has (like it or not)

shaped our more whole and

healthier NOW

so reach back, look back,

not in debilitating sorrow or shame

but confessional gratitude

that you did not stay the same

you became and become

by God's grace

so learn and love forward

Dust: Our Truest of Names

Last year on Ash Wednesday, I innocently wrote:

Friends, to be reminded of our earthen nature is sobering yet laced in hope. It binds us to the creation and one another. And just as all of us are dust and to dust all of us will return, God makes beautiful things out of dust...and carbon ink...and all of us. On this Ash Wednesday, remember your dusty, ashen self is so very loved and good. May this word carry you for the 40 Days of Lent, too.

I was only a few months removed from my first tattoo and a week or so away from my second. I was reflecting on the artist’s reminder that the ink is made of carbon, the same stuff we are, he shared. At the time of that post, I thought the art on my left tricep was a minor amount of discomfort for a lifelong, humanizing symbol of my fragility and finitude. It was therapeutic. I also thought Ash Wednesday 2020 was merely the beginning of a 40-day liturgical pilgrimage of confession and lament that culminated in Holy Week and Easter.

Then COVID. 

Lament is hardly a strong enough word. 

This year, the reminder of our origins in the dust of the earth needs very little repeating. The Lenten road ahead may be something we have already felt accustomed to for the last 12 months of isolated struggle. We have had more than enough reminders of death, dying, and the temporal nature of our earthly existence. The numbers do not lie. The statistics are haunting. The Lenten journey of 2020 has extended well past the liturgically prescribed forty-days and I want out, off, and some good old fashioned ordinary time with all the green paraments. 

A few ministry colleagues even wrote this may not be the year to linger in Lent. 

For some, maybe not.

Yet I recently read the words of poet, Thich Nhat Hanh, which unintentionally helped me find the sacred goodness in Ash Wednesday in such a time as this:

Please call me by my true names,

so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,

so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names

so I can wake up

and the door of my heart could be left open

the door of compassion.

                            (Call Me by My True Names)

Yes. Ash Wednesday is the regular calling of ourselves by our truest of names. 

Created. Dust. 

Ash Wednesday is when we gather our cries and laughter, joys and pain, together at once, in those clay bowls filled with the remnants of last year's palms. Ash Wednesday is when we remember that to be called by our common name, ash, is to be awakened to our collective humanity as the door to compassion opens wider still. We may actually need Ash Wednesday all the more in light of what feels like perpetual Lenten trauma. 

The second tattoo I received last year, gregorēite /γρηγορεῖτε, means stay awake, similar to Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem and the words of Christ (Mark 13). Little did I know then how much I would need this carbon reminder on my right forearm. Little did I know how much the dust of our humanity would rise up in the next 12 months, like those Sunday feast days that are respites from the Lenten fast, and open so many doors of compassion in the midst of the shared despair. 

I am not sure there has ever been a time in my life when to be called dust has felt so heavy and hard. I resist it.

I am not sure there has ever been a time in my life when I have needed to cling to this liturgical word any tighter. I need it.

Maybe that's because it is our truest of names. May this name lead us both to walk through and open wide the doors of compassion. 

"The LORD knows 

how we were made;

the LORD remembers 

that we are dust."

Psalm 103:14

The Word Made Speechless? Transfiguration Sunday and a Lesson from James Baldwin

I am not sure how I missed this the bagillion times previously I read the story of the Transfiguration.

“He [Jesus?] did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”  

(Mark 9:6)

Sure, maybe the "he" is referring to Peter. I have mostly heard it preached that way. Peter's question about house-building on the mountain framed in retrospect as one of those speaking-before-thinking moments par for the course for this disciple. The exegesis of this text may even favor that...it may.

But senus plenior* be damned. What if God-in-Flesh was speechless? What if the Word Incarnate was without words? What if Jesus was modeling presence before preaching, which we all could use a refresher course? What if this is why Jesus was the one to listen to, because the Way of the Christ was rooted not in truisms of power and more so in incarnations of love and grace? What if this is what made Jesus' words so powerful when they did come?

Sometimes fear warrants more than the language of our lips. Sometimes trauma transcends trite verbiage. Sometimes what we need is not found in statements and discourse, but is discovered in humble empathy and how we move compassionately in and through and for the world.

I think this is a large part of the message of the Transfiguration, transforming the focus of God’s people away from the traditions, doctrines, laws, and language of exclusion and illuminating the better way of love that leads through intentional actions of universal embrace. No, we cannot stay here in isolation, the story tells us. We must go down the mountain.

James Baldwin said it best when he wrote these words to his nephew, both who knew their fair share of terror and trauma, about his singular focus in life:

“For here you were, Big James, named for me- you were a big baby, I was not- here you were: to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever, to strengthen you against the loveless world.”  

                                                               (My Dungeon Shook)

On this Transfiguration Sunday, shared with Valentines Day, may we find ways to love others hard, at once, and forever. May we know this kind of love, found in Jesus the Christ, which is not limited to our words and envelops each of us. This love sometimes needs not to be spoken at all, but always calls to gracious and hospitable actions in a world both beautiful and cruel. So go on down that mountain...and remember the tone of your presence often matters more than your preaching.

---

*"Plain reading" of the text, which doesn't actually exist. The pronoun is ambiguous and leaves room for mystery. Don't fear it. Dwell in it.

Image above was taken on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The hill in the distant is the traditional location of the Transfiguration.