Post-election sermon

Today, I wanted to share (my best representation of) a sermon I had to give on November 10 at the women’s prison as part of a preaching class.

Half our students are women who live at the prison, half women enrolled at the divinity school. It has been an amazing experience to see how God's call to preach is at work in each of our lives...but that is a story for another day.

On November 9, I was alternating hour by hour between numbness and tears, and the prospect of speaking a word of God the next day, in this context, seemed almost impossible to me. At the eleventh hour, this word came to me by the Spirit and the love of my friends. I share it with you out of a sense that it’s still a relevant, though incomplete, word for our communal work and reflection in the coming days.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Today, I’m going to name that I’m standing here before you in grief and in heartbreak. There was an election this week and many are grieving. I don’t think I’ve seen an election in my lifetime where so many people were openly weeping. I have heard friends speak of fear for their own safety and the safety of their families, particularly immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people. I have heard friends speak of feelings of exclusion.

I also know this is not everyone reality this week, and may not be the reality of everyone sitting here. Some people in our nation today are feeling relieved, even joyful. Some feel that whatever the political realities may be, nothing much changes anyway for the sake of the oppressed. For example, it is true that our nation has been incarcerating beloved children of God and companies have been profiting from this captivity, and that really hasn’t changed over the past couple decades, no matter which party or person has been in power.

I name all this not to divide but because it’s the place in which the Word of God is encountering me today; it's the place from which I bring a testimony of God’s grace today. I hope that this will be a word for all of us, regardless of what is on each of our hearts.

//

John 13:1-5, 12-15, 34-35
Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from the world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him...

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, "Do you know what I have done for you? You call me Teacher and Lord--and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you...I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

What I find especially remarkable here about Jesus is that, though he knew catastrophe was upon him, though he knew that he was going to die very soon, thought he knew his own friend was going to betray him, he still acted as he did. He drew his own people close to him and loved them to the end.

This is remarkable because Jesus is like us in every respect, fully human. He couldn’t turn off his pain, or fear, or anger. And surely he felt all these. Pain, that this cross was the extent he would have to go to bring God’s love to the world. Fear, of that moment of abandonment coming on the cross. Anger, that his own friend—the one he loved so much taught so much, entrusted with his mission—could misunderstand so severely, and betray him. And yet, having loved his own in the world, he now loved them to the end.

I wonder if he cried as he let the water drip over their feet and wiped it tenderly away. I wonder if, as he scrubbed that dirt between Judas’ toes, he prayed for God to change his heart. I wonder if he was able to look any of them in the eye, knowing they’d soon leave him. Whatever he may have felt, he chose to love. He knew that is what we need, when we come to an end or to a time of testing—to keep serving, touching, loving fiercely, showing one another hospitality in hard times.

And then, he invited them to follow his example, to wash and serve and touch and love fiercely. Jesus says it’s a new commandment, but of course it’s not entirely new. From the earliest revelation of the Old Testament law, one of its cornerstones was to love your neighbor as yourself. Tonight, what’s new is that this love has been enacted before them, and not only in Jesus’ symbolic act of foot washing. Also in Jesus’ incarnation—embodying God for us, coming to be with us and to love us to the end. Also in Jesus’ impending death on the cross—living out the fullness of his love for them.

What he calls the disciples to do in this new commandment is to look to the love he has shown and simply love one another, care for one another.

Sometimes Christians forget to focus on this command, because it seems like love of a softer, easier kind. Jesus also called us to love our enemy. And some of us may be thinking about that now. Loving an enemy—loving one who voted differently, or one who said hateful things about women, perhaps—may seem impossible right now. Let’s hold this command lightly right now, though it is and will be so important in the coming days. Today, Jesus is asking us to love one another.

And then there’s the command to love our neighbor—to love the least of these among us. Some of us may be thinking of this, too. One of the things my husband and I have been particularly worried about for the future is that many of the immigrants in this country will be threatened. The first thing he said to me when we woke up yesterday morning and saw the news, was “We need to pray about what Jesus might call us to do in the next few years. If they start rounding people up, we might need to take someone in. We might need to love our neighbor in a risky way we haven’t done before.” This type of love, too, will be so important. The disciples later on would be called upon to go to jail and prison and be flogged and ridiculed for Jesus. But for today, let's give ourselves grace and time in figuring out what this kind of love will demand from us.

Of course, for some of us, these categories overlap. Loving our enemy may be loving a friend, as it was for Jesus, washing Judas’ feet. Loving the least of these in this time may overlap with loving one another, because surely there are those in our own communities right now who are scared or hurting.

But for a moment, today, let's focus particularly on Jesus command to love one another. Because loving our own community is not easy either, especially in a painful time. It would have been easy for Jesus to be angry and blame his disciples, as he approached his end. And when, two days later, Jesus’ body lay in the ground after a cataclysmic and traumatic 24 hours for the disciples, it would have been the most natural thing in the world for them to play the blame game, too. “Peter, you told those people you didn’t know him? You should’ve stood up for him!” “James, you ran away. You completely deserted him when he needed you!” “How could this even happen? Thomas, you shouldn’t have let us go back to Jerusalem! Why did you hop on board so quickly when he told us it was time to go back to Jerusalem. We could all still be together in Galilee now.”

But the nature of their community in the days following Jesus’ death suggests that they didn’t say these things. Even if they had, they would only each have been trying to cover their own guilty and fear, all the wouldas, couldas, and shouldas in their own minds. Instead, the day after Jesus died, they huddled together in the Upper Room to be with one another. I imagined they cried and told stories and prayed. They loved one another on that dark Saturday because that was what Jesus had commanded them to do. Because of Jesus, they knew the power of simple acts of kindness in dark days.

This is the love that we are called to today. I know, because I’ve been experiencing it. Yesterday, after I crawled out of bed on only a few fitful hours of sleep, tearful and exhausted into my day, I was given so many gifts of grace and hospitality and love. Someone brought donuts to class. Someone hugged me and cried. Someone dragged me to the chapel to pray when I didn’t know if I could. Some friends sat down and ate lunch and told stories. Other friends near and far reached out by phone or email or text. A teacher gave us a silence, and a chance to say simply what we were carrying with us.

The love I have been receiving from those around me has given me light and strength to share love in return, to call friends and family. And even, last night, to find great love in my heart for a person with whom I disagree deeply about this election.

I know that for all of us, no matter how we find ourselves today, there have been days and will be many days ahead where it will feel like an end, where we won’t know how to make sense of our world or step forward in faith. I hope that in these moments, we can learn from the example of Jesus who, at his own end, chose to show love and hospitality and grace to his friends.

The political is personal

I cried at least once a day for the first ten days after November 8.

There are a lot of reasons, and there is no single reason I can explain. But it’s been a month now, and its time for me to start writing stories again. Because stories are how I process the world, and goodness knows we need to process, and because stories will be so important in these months as we try to remember how to love one another.

This story is imperfect and selfish and true and has nothing to do with policy, really. And it’s not at all the most pressing reason to mourn, but it’s one that has somehow cut me deep in these weeks.

Photo by Walter A. Aue

On November 8, 2016, no matter how you spin it, this country chose as its next president an (alleged) sexual predator over a qualified (if polarizing) woman.

I could not have predicted the blow that that feels like to me as a woman.

During the campaign, I was more anti-Trump than pro-Hillary. And my chief concerns with Trump were about the effect his presidency could have on undocumented immigrants, refugees, Muslims, people of color, LGBTQ people, international relations, the environment, free speech…I could go on…

The point is, I didn’t feel a personal threat or affront as a white woman. And I didn’t feel a particular attachment to Hillary. It took me several days of sobbing to realize that my grief after the election was not only for all the anger and fear and pain for people I care about (and probably also some kind of illusion/idolatry I’ll explore later), but was also deeply personal.

In one of the more poignant moments of the debates, Hillary said, “Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. He goes after their dignity, their self worth, and I don't think there is a woman anywhere who doesn't know what that feels like.”

I felt that. I know that. But I didn’t know, until 3 am on November 9, what it feels like to see that a person who treats women in this way, in word and deed, is judged fit to be our president.

I didn’t know what it feels like to hear in a concession speech a reminder to girls that they are valuable and powerful—and to sense that it was a word that needed to be said, a word that could no longer be assumed. “To all the little girls watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful,” she said, and I sobbed.

When I was eleven years old I became the president of my elementary school’s student council. I was really into it—whether as a power trip or because I really cared about which Lisa Frank items we sold at the school store, I can’t say. My grandma bought me a gavel for Christmas with the words, “President Katie” engraved on it. I told everyone I was going to be the first woman president of the United States. “Hopefully,” my mom said, “that will happen before you’re old enough to be president.”

In mid-October, with Hillary’s double-digit lead in the polls, I recalled this moment and smiled. My mom was right! We would have a woman president before I turn thirty-five. But I’ll be thirty-five in 2021, and (barring the problematic and improbable #Michelle2020) now my mom looks so naïve. Now, it looks like we were not at all ready for a woman president, so not ready we chose him. (And oh, I know it’s more complicated than woman vs. man, but I do think sexism played more of a role than we realize in Hillary’s unpopularity).

When I think of the convention center Hillary chose on election night for its glass ceiling, I understand why she couldn’t bear to speak that night in that space. I would’ve wanted to smash it.

//

But it goes beyond this, too. It turns out that I developed a fondness for Hillary, a personal sympathy far beyond my initial skepticism of her candidacy. Because when I think of a qualified woman being rebuffed for a job, when I think of how hard it is to be a woman in her career field, I think also of my own journey.

My church taught me that women cannot be pastors, and I think I believed it, or at least I let it seep into me, enough that I was 24 before I realized I might have a calling in the church.

I still love the church that raised me. They are loving and radically welcoming of immigrants and dedicated to the arts and marvelously anti-Trumpian and all the things you might not expect of a church that taught me women can’t preach. (Things are never what we expect, are they?)

In July, I happened to visit on the day that a peer of mine had been invited back to preach. He was being ordained that afternoon in our very church. And as he began to speak, at the same moment I felt excited that he was stepping into the path of his calling—I was overcome by a dull sadness.

Because I will never be invited to preach in that church.

Perhaps some of those church members will one day come to a church where I preach, and perhaps they will pray for my ministry, and surely there will always be hugs and love and encouragement for me in that place. But the church that first gave me a space to use my gifts in God’s service—a sanctuary in which to sing my first solo, a microphone to share my testimony of faith, a pulpit to write my first sermon, which was okay because it was a skit for youth Sunday—will not invite me back into that space.

The truth is, the hurt I feel from all of this isn’t strong or permanent; it comes in waves. It happened to be magnified on that day. But I left the church at 23, before I wanted to be a pastor. I never butted my head up against their (rather opaque) glass ceiling. I never tried to change their minds. It would hurt more if I had.

//

When I visit this church, I’ve never quite been sure how to talk with people about my career. I mention the places where I have been interning or the classes I’m taking, and most people are deeply supportive and interested. But still every word I speak feels to me too political, confrontational. By being who I have been called to be, I am an affront their system. So sometimes I talk about the community service program I started, and don’t emphasize the controversial parts like preaching. And when asked if I’m hoping to work with youth or be a chaplain I try to shake my head gently and explain that no, I want to be a pastor.

That Sunday my friend was preaching, the district president (our version of a bishop) was in attendance, and someone introduced me to him. He seemed apologetic about the place of women in our church. “Our denomination has lost a lot of very talented women to other churches,” he said sympathetically. In usual form, I smiled and shifted the topic to keep things non-controversial.

In this post-election, time, though, I want to engage more honestly, vulnerably, and fully in places like this. I wish I’d said, directly and gently to him, “Yes, you have lost us.” I wish I’d said, “It’s painful to me to hear my friend preach here this morning and know I’ll never be able to do that.” It probably would have been good for him to hear.

There will be many times when it is important to speak in the days ahead. And I know myself enough to know I’ll need a lot of fierce prayer to stay patient and keep telling stories. But after Hillary, after the tenacity of that glass ceiling, after the startling toleration in this season for violence and words against women, I’m no longer going to be sheepish--anywhere--about the political overtones of my calling or my identity or my beliefs or my story or the Jesus I believe in. 

It’s more dangerous to be quiet.

When we need everyone at the table

Imagine you are part of a movement to dismantle mass incarceration, in part through changing the prison-industrial system by which profits are made when more people are in jail. Imagine that representatives of this very prison-industrial system seek to join your cause. Will you let them stay?

Imagine you are part a community which wants to build supportive relationships across divisions of race and class. You want everybody to have a place in your community, a place to share their experiences and feelings. Imagine someone comes into your space spouting divisions of race and class. Will you let them stay?

*

About 10 folks in my organization, as a creative protest measure, bought one share each in the largest for-profit prison company in the US. Being shareholders, they attend the shareholder meeting every year to advocate for better ways, different profit incentives, various reforms. There may not be any visible results yet, but they are witnessing to a different way.

Meanwhile, some of the board members of the prison company have taken an interest in the efforts of my organization, the way they seek to support folks coming home from prison. They have taken an interest in our support groups, and our house for guys who've been recently incarcerated, and the jobs and education programs to which we are connected. They have given donations. They have come to visit. One may speak at our fundraiser.

The director of our organization acknowledged the dissonance. "Yes, it's goofy," she said. "It's an uncomfortable reality. When they first started giving us money, we weren't sure what to do. But then we thought if we didn't want to accept dirty money, whose money could we accept?

"Besides," she added, "we believe we need everyone at the table."

Yes. We can only break down systems of injustice if everyone is on board. Everyone. And that means that we have to be willing to engage with folks who disagree with us, who threaten our cause, with whom our relationship is complicated or goofy.

Because it's relationships and transformed hearts that we're after--not just new laws that leave old walls and divisions in place.

*

Photo by Jim Champion

In my internship, we have meetings called "Freedom Circles," which are dangerous things. Like an AA meeting or a summer camp sharing circle, the meetings start off with this week's leader reading or reflecting on a particular topic, and then there are 45 minutes before us in which anyone may speak. Which is the beauty, and the danger.

Because everyone is welcome at the table, and everyone has a voice.

Last week "everyone" included someone who was frustrated, someone who was angry, someone who was lonely, someone who felt wronged by the group. There we were, all of us broken together in the room, and the time was open before us, free for the seizing.

Several people shared, some speaking with candor and honesty, some with anger and walls, some with repetitive phrases that made me wonder whether this meeting had a point. There are days where the sharing is deep and succinct and profound, where someone gives us a window into her past, where someone acknowledges the pain he has caused others, where someone makes a new connection about her feelings of abandonment that have led to addiction, where someone admits he doesn't know how to fix his relationship.

This was not that day. A few folks shared. They mostly talked too long. They mostly exuded frustration and anger. After each person, we chorused "Thanks for sharing," even though saying it felt a bit disingenuous. After one angry outburst, I noticed sidelong glances and folks uncomfortably shifting in their seats.

The leader took it all in stride. Later, he would tell me, "that meeting went exactly how it was supposed to go." He proceeded with the meeting, explaining that we were all about to share the ritual of communion. He broke half of a hamburger bun and held up a punch cup half full of grape juice, then began passing them around the room, even as some of the other members of the circle continued looking around, unsettled, uncertain. I noticed a certain tension in my chest.

After a hesitating start, a woman offered the cup to her neighbor, saying, "This cup was given so that you may know that even though you are broken, you are not beyond God's love." Just as the reality of those words began to flood into all of us, the leader had begun singing. "Bind us together, Lord, bind us together with cords that cannot be broken...bind us together in love." A few of us joined in, and as we sang and shared and ate, something happened.

My breathing slowed and I turned just in time to see a man who had earlier been shaking his head at his neighbor in disgust and frustration, offering to him the bread and the cup. This was, for both of them, their first time sharing communion in our group. "The body of Christ and the blood of Christ, given for you," the man said as his neighbor took a piece. The neighbor then turned to me. I knew he was angry at me for an earlier miscommunication. But he pushed the cup to me and said simply, "The body and blood of Christ."

"Amen."

I thought how neither of us deserved this moment. None of us deserved to be at this table.

The leader closed in prayer, and people began filing out. I stood to talk to my neighbor, apologizing for hurting him. He accepted my apology. By this time the rest of the folks had left, and I wondered if some of them had been put off by the halting meeting.

I hope not.

Because to dismantle mass incarceration, we need everyone at the table. To build true community, we need to welcome everyone to the table, broken people included. And as Jesus reminded me that night, communion is holy because it reminds us that we are all sitting at a table only by mercy--you, and me, and the one with the angry outburst, and the one with only frustration in her heart, and whoever else walks in the door tomorrow.

A time to mourn: My seminary encounter with Christian violence toward Jews

If I had to tell you one seismic shift in my thinking since starting seminary, it would be the way I understand Jews and Judaism. My favorite classes have been Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and Hebrew. I've had multiple professors who are experts in historical Jewish-Christian relations. And I have been smacked in the face with the grief of the way my religion has treated our such close Jewish brothers and sisters.

I was not, or at least I thought I was not, anti-Jewish in any way before I came here. But sometimes we don't realize the subtle ways our beliefs build walls or breed condescension.

Like a good Christian, I saw the Jewish faith in some way as incomplete, misguided, overshadowed by the advent of Jesus Christ, as though God's intimate and messy history with the people of Israel were no longer worth much attention, except as it prefigures Jesus or reveals human brokenness.

Like a good progressive whose husband spent a year living in the West Bank under the shadow of the Israeli dividing wall, I mourned the way Israel went from oppressed to oppressor. I began to associate Judaism with 18-year-olds on catwalks holding AK-47s, pointing them down to intimidate all who travel through the Bethlehem checkpoint from Palestine into Israel. I began to associate Judaism with Europeans living in wealthy modern cities built on the tears of displaced people. (Americans, and Christians are of course implicated also in these things, which are never simple.)

I still believe Jesus changes everything. God did a new thing in Jesus, but there must be a way to hold that newness in tension with the good and faithful things God was doing and continues to do through the covenant with Israel.

I still believe that, though it is complicated and sometimes painful to talk about, though there is mutual violence and enmity, the state of Israel should be rebuked for the times it has been an oppressor. But this should not define Judaism.

*

Meanwhile.

Did you know that in the middle ages, Christians made up stories about Jews desecrating the bread of Holy Communion in order to justify killing or expelling them from cities?

Did you know that the Nazis extensively used the language of Martin Luther and other Protestant Christian reformers to build up their rhetoric against the Jews in the 1930s?

Did you know that on the way to "take back Jerusalem" in the First Crusade, and aflame with apocalyptic ideas, Christians pillaged and ransacked Jewish cities and killed their brothers and sisters?

Did you know that language from our very own Gospels was used for centuries to view Jews as children of the devil, killers of Jesus, stubbornly unreachable?

Did you know it's not over today, or at least, its felt ramifications are not over today, in the small ways Jews hear our language as superiority, in the small ways our assumptions carry forward?

All of this I deeply mourn.

*

So especially this week, a week when so many of us Christians will unthinkingly associate Jews with the death of Jesus, a week when so many of us Christians will celebrate the historic event that seems to us sometimes to render any of God's work in the world before the time of Jesus as irrelevant or secondary at best, I want to pause and celebrate the beauty that I have found as I've learned more about Judaism.

The Hebrew Bible is an exceedingly beautiful religious text, remarkable for its time.

I love that out of all the ancient religions of the Near East, the Jewish people were the only ones who lost their land and kingdom and independence and yet did not lose their God. Instead of believing (as was typical) that the destruction of their kingdom was a sign their God was not strong enough, or had abandoned them, they believed that their God went with them into exile, and 3 generations later brought them back.

I love that the vast majority of works preserved in ancient Hebrew are theology. We have references to other literature, like political records and court documents, but what was important enough to them to preserve was the story about God.

I love that God's crowning act of creation and a centerpiece of God's law given to Israel is a day of rest. (A day which Christians have largely ignored or explained away, and then have said Judaism is a religion of works and Christianity a religion of mercy.)

And if this is not enough...Jesus himself was deeply Jewish. Christians have sometimes divorced his teachings and theology from its Jewish roots, offering a caricature that paints the Torah as legalistic and Jesus as focused on the heart. But Jesus' teachings are deeply connected with the Hebrew Scriptures, and many of his "innovations" have long precedent in the Torah (Here's a great book about that.) His last word, his last prayer, was a Psalm.

All of this--all this beauty, all this pain, all this mangled history--calls me to mourn. I mourn for the violence of my heritage, and I mourn for the years of missing out on so much richness of my spiritual heritage by not looking deeply into the Torah and the offerings of historical Judaism. I come now to a place of humility, and I think now is my time to listen, and learn, from the tradition that taught the world so much about God, and shaped even my Jesus in his ministry to all.

Minarets, mercy, and me

We arrived in Bangladesh early in the morning, while it was still dark. We walked out of the airport into impossibly thick, hazy air; we hopped into taxis whose drivers we could not understand, en route to a hotel we didnʼt know how to find; as first light broke we breathed in burning trash and listened as the call to prayer rang out in the streets.

I was nineteen, and it was intoxicatingly beautiful and frightening and new, all at once.

Photo by Carleton Browne

My knowledge of Islam was minimal. I had been taught in Sunday school and at camp and wherever else it came up that Christianity was unique in this: it is a religion of grace and mercy. We are a people who believe in a forgiving God; we do not earn God’s love or salvation by our own merit but receive it by grace. Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Humanism—all of these religions attempt to curry favor with God or earn paradise by human deeds.

For a while I bought the argument, which was supposed to be a kind of assurance, showing that our religion was unique among all global religions and that therefore its story held some extra weight. For mercy in time of failure, Christianity was the only place to turn.

*

Two weeks in, we girls were sitting in our translator Jamila’s room, discussing poverty or henna or peanut butter, I don’t remember. The muezzin’s voice rang out, and Jamila turned to us. “Will you mind if I pray?” We shook our heads and quietly chatted on as she insisted we did not need to leave.

She rolled out a mat and knelt, her forehead pressed to the ground; then she up on her heels; she knelt again, prostrated again; up and down as she spoke under her breath. The late afternoon sun snuck through the window slats and bathed her shalwar kameez in gold. It was like a dance.

I saw in her prayer something that went beyond duty and ritual, touched love. I saw in her prayer belief in a God of mercy.

Every evening, after our research in the village, we sat around a coffee table on the humid second floor of the hostel and pretended to have wise observations on village poverty and community development. Dawoud spoke as a professor, not as a person of faith, but it was so evident how his faith informed his view of development. How his compassion for the poor, for the women, for the sick came from the compassion of God.

I woke up morning after morning to the muezzin’s call and couldn’t shake the feeling: Islam too was a faith of mercy, compassion, grace.

*

In the Qu’ran, the most commonly used names for God are “The Compassionate” and “The Merciful.” Muhammad is reported to have said, “Not one of you will enter paradise by your deeds alone…not even me, unless God covers me with his grace and mercy.”

It’s possible that exposure to this side of Islam was one more chink in the wall of my childhood faith that was to crumble around me later that year. I can’t say it was a conscious part of my doubts and questions; I also can’t say it was irrelevant to see another religion so reverently and lovingly practiced.

There was really only one brick that couldn’t be torn down, for me, that stood through my questions, stood past the sense of loss, stood past the many discarded apologetics. That cornerstone was Jesus—his life and death and resurrection.

Maybe Jesus is enough. Rather than try to justify my faith because it is unique, or insist on it because it is tolerant, or prove it against other worldviews, maybe it is enough simply to say I still believe in the compelling God revealed in Jesus—a God who loves and loves to the point of death, a God who seeks downward mobility, a God whose power is in vulnerability, whose life is through death, whose character is paradox and beauty and justice and transformation and solidarity and joy.

Though I found beauty in the practices of my Muslim friends—though I have found logic in the approaches of my agnostic friends—though I have begun to envy the rich rituals of Judaism—though I have been challenged by the ideas of Native American spirituality—I will forever belong to Christianity for one reason: Jesus.

Mix CDs and mustard seeds

Photo by Linda Tanner

It was six a.m., and I was driving to Duke Divinity School for orientation.

I was thinking of a recent faith conversation with my brother. I did not articulate my point of view clearly, and I was wondering—if I can’t speak definitive answers about theology, do I have any gifts at all for ministry? Has my vision has become too vague?

Naturally, these thoughts led me to the recurring whisper in the back of my head, that little voice which says, do you really believe any of this at all? If you are so scattered, so vulnerable sometimes, so unwilling to prove anything concrete—can you truly be a shepherd for other believers?

I am not ready to become a pastor, I was thinking. I have squandered this wilderness time in Cherokee. I have not prayed enough. I have become more cynical, sometimes snarky. Seven years after the “doubt crisis,” I am still an intermittent doubter—sometimes of God and sometimes of myself.

Besides, I thought, I know that I am good at teaching. Why change careers now? Teaching GED classes matters. It is meaningful. For the most part, it is safe.

My mix CD changed to an old Nickel Creek tune.

Can I be used to help others find truth if I’m scared I’ll find proof that it’s a lie?

Can I be led down a trail dropping breadcrumbs that prove I’m not ready to die?

Please give me time to decipher the signs

Please forgive me for time that I’ve wasted

I’m a doubting Thomas

I’ll take your promise

Though I know nothing’s safe

Oh me of little faith

When the song was finished, and my tears, I pressed repeat. I pressed repeat about eighty times, singing along as a plea, as a prayer, until I arrived at Duke.

*

Imagine, for a moment: this is how it has been for you and doubts.

You have a question and you climb down a rabbit hole to follow it to its depths, because if you don’t you will always wonder, you will always worry. And when you follow it down, you find the hole does not go on forever; there is something solid below, something to stand on. You stand on it.

But you don’t live into these questions every day; you can’t spend all your days chasing shadows and digging holes. So most of the time when the shadows cross, you watch them go. They are mostly shadows you’ve already followed all the way down.

You are going on your memory, and like all memories it is hard to retain the certainty of that feeling. You did find solid ground that day when you reached the bottom, you are certain…right?

The thought of starting seminary this fall terrifies you, because you know you will be diving down into some of the holes again, and it is possible they are deeper than you have yet known.

*

I arrived at campus, still a little weepy, humble.

But as soon as it had begun I could sense that they were going to remind me why I was here.

They said remember that you are loved deeply and gifted uniquely by God.

They said remember that the church does not exist for its own sake; it needs to serve and love the world; it is the body of Christ on earth and it must sometimes learn to die so that it may come to life again.

They said remember that the kingdom of God is about all of us—poor and rich, privileged and unprivileged, powers and marginalized, believers and doubters, black and white—seeing each other as children of God, seeing each other as both gifted and broken. It is about all of us, giving and receiving and sharing together.

I remembered. I remembered that this is good news, particularly for the poor and broken. I remembered that the kingdom of God has grabbed me and continues to grab me, that this is why I believe in spite of my doubts, that I can be healed from my loneliness and my numbness and my fears, that I am not in this for a stable job but for a vision and a sacrifice and a resurrection. I remembered that joy is a fruit of the spirit.

I drove back thirty-six hours after arriving, my heart hurting from the good news and the good people and the good God. I felt crushed, wrecked for my status quo, and certain that this place will continue to draw me forth and form me. It was not the first time I have departed that place in tears of longing and belonging.

When I played the Nickel Creek one last time as I drove over the last mountain back home, I heard it differently.

Oh me of little faith. Perhaps a little is enough. Jesus said that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains. He said, a mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it is planted in the ground, it grows and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and all the birds of the air nest in it.

I am embarking on a good and beautiful journey. I am ready to plant my small, sometimes-wavering, vulnerable seed of faith in the soil. I am ready for the Spirit, and the risen Christ, and my new community, to make it grow into a tree where birds will sing. 

Empty words and love enfleshed

Photo by Eric Dufresne

I duck my head under the rafters I climb up and sit cross-legged on the end of her bunk. She is sprawled out on her side, resting her head on her arm. One of the cabin’s two dim light bulbs has gone out. “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” I say.

“My stomach hurts,” she confirms.

I don’t think until later to wonder if she is really sick or if she was just made uncomfortable by the mob of campers crying as they scrambled down the aisles of the campfire, after Jesus was betrayed, beaten, crucified in front of them by dramatic torchlight earlier this evening—if she didn’t want to respond to the altar call but knew she would be the only one still sitting on the benches. I don’t think until later to wonder if I was made uncomfortable by the spectacle, if there was a subconscious reason I volunteered to walk back to the cabin with her.

They call her Bubbles. She’s the one who put my hair in corn rows yesterday. She is thirteen.

“So how have you enjoyed the week?” I ask her. “Crazy you’ll be going home in just a couple days.” I feel no small pressure to make this time with her spiritually meaningful, considering we are missing the altar call and her chance to pray the prayer, to make a decision for Christ.

She adjusts her bandanna and props up her head on her elbow. It doesn’t take much before she launches into it all. She doesn’t much want to go home. Her mom is always pushing her too hard, and she doesn’t do well in school. She misses her dad, who’s in jail. Her uncle is in a gang; lately he has gotten into trouble with members of an opposing gang, and she is worried about him.

I don’t know what to say. I am nineteen and the urban kids who have come for this last week of the summer have experiences and sorrows far beyond my realm of understanding.

I am still young and insecure enough to be afraid of silence. I steer the conversation back to a topic in which I will know what I am supposed to say.

“What did you think about the cross talk at the campfire?”

*

It’s safe to say that even then, I was uncomfortable with these veins of conversation, the forced feeling that I had to always be looking for a door to insert Jesus into—as though Jesus needed me to awkwardly insert him into any place or moment. I thought the discomfort came because I was an introvert, because I was shy, because I was not a good enough Christian, because I was ashamed of my faith. I thought I needed to push through and be bold.

In high school I felt that tension constantly, and sometimes I would notice an opening in the conversation—after an English class about Jonathan Edwards or Dante’s Inferno, after the anxiety-riddled college-application season, as we sat around dreaming about our futures and the purpose and meaning of life. I should say something about Jesus, I would think. Mostly I felt guilty, and sometimes I wrote convoluted emails and letters explaining my beliefs, which usually didn’t get any response.

I wonder what it would have looked like if I hadn’t tried so much to force these words, words I usually failed to say anyway. I could have focused on the gifts and sensitivities I did have, the desires for justice and action. I could have brought tiny pieces of God’s realm right there to my little high school. I could have been a symbol of what heaven looks like: loving my enemies, refusing to climb the American ladder, befriending weirder weirdos than me, raising money to fight malaria, ending human trafficking. I could have shown them what it was like to be unafraid to be myself, unafraid to live by the Spirit, to live free.

*

The last morning of camp, while the others are playing in the waterpark, Bubbles and I sit and watch from the hill (she has her period, which maybe explains the stomach ache a few days ago, or maybe not).

“Have you thought any more about accepting Christ?” I ask her.

“Yeah, a little,” she mumbles.

“It’s a big decision, more than just saying one prayer,” I concede. “Not something you should do if you aren’t ready to dedicate your life to Jesus,” I explain.

This probably isn’t what she was expecting when she started telling me her problems. The things I am saying about Christ are just words, completely distinct from the secrets she shared with me the other night.

She shrugs. I tell her to keep thinking about it.

*

It is so cringingly blatant, now—that every privileged word I could have said to her about Christ being enough, about God being the answer to her problems, was empty. Not because God couldn’t be a source of strength and comfort and guidance, but because I didn’t, couldn’t know how to relate that to her. Because God’s love wouldn’t change the fact that it wasn’t fair that she lacked a supportive family, that she lacked good role models and a community that could buoy her up through the hard times. Knowing that Jesus died for her sins wouldn’t give her the tools she needed to find a way out.

I see now that what she needed, more than an empty idea of Christ being enough, was incarnation—for God’s love to take on flesh. For a community, a family, a friend, a church, to enact in her life a model of real Love.

Lately I am finding that for me, one way to speak authentically is to write, here in this space, to “witness” to the renewal and life God has worked in me.  Another, perhaps harder, challenge is to let Love come into flesh through me. Complaining, being angry, and being sullen are all much more “natural” than the awkwardness of loving where no one else is, spending time with an outcast, reaching out to people I barely know to offer help.

But that awkward kind of love is what makes words come to life.

What we deserve

On Thursday, January 30, I am riding my seventh snow day in a row, and I am angry.

I could enjoy it—read, write, bake—but instead, I calculate the amount of income I’ve lost over the last two weeks and become sullen. “Why can’t North Carolina take a chill pill about the snow,” I say to my husband. Two inches of snow on Tuesday meant the rest of the week off. When I say it out loud it seems a silly thing to be angry about. But I’m in a self-righteous mood.

I don’t deserve this! I think. What I mean is, I don’t deserve to be almost twenty-eight and never have had a full time job where I would get a consistent income despite snow days. I don’t deserve to have an employer that won’t allow me to work more than 22 hours in a given week even if there is work to be done. I don’t deserve to have a paycheck that can be cut in half by a couple crazy weeks of weather.

“I don’t deserve this!” I say out loud. I did so well in school, I worked so hard and I got so many A’s. Then I put in some years of service with nonprofits, and I worked hard there and my bosses liked me. Shouldn’t I have obtained a “real job” by now?!

The truth is I have only looked for this type of job twice. Once, I had three interviews in a week and didn’t get any of the jobs. So I took a part-time job. The other time was when I first moved to Cherokee, where I’m not the only one who has had trouble getting work. Maybe I “deserve” to have a full-time job by now, but then so do the fifty-year-old men who’ve gotten laid off from companies where they worked for twenty years. So do a good chunk of the ten million unemployed people in America. So do the recent college grads who are working as waiters and babysitters.

Because I’m off again today, I can’t say no when my neighbor knocks on my door to ask for a ride. He needs to go borrow money from a friend. “You’re not the only one who lost some days of work this week,” he says as we ride across town. Three days of his construction job were cancelled due to the weather. He is hard up for cash and trying to figure out how to make it as a single dad—he lost his young wife four months ago, to a sudden illness just weeks after she had given birth to their first daughter. They had both been in trouble with the law but had begun to turn things around, had “gotten saved” and sobered up and started associating with a better crowd, especially once they knew there was a baby on the way.  Now he is trying to hold on to that traction while he pieces together the disappointments and curve balls that keep coming. Does he deserve that?

We don’t always get what we deserve. Sometimes it is hard to understand why or how. I could write a whole separate lament on that topic.

But that is not the way my thoughts are flowing today. I know we don’t get what we deserve, but maybe sometimes it is better this way. Maybe this opens the possibility that sometimes, we get more. I don’t think I deserved a free Toyota Camry, for example, but when my grandfather died no one else wanted it. I doubt I deserved a husband who is far more patient and good-looking and fun to be around than I will ever be. Or a friend who is still my friend despite so many hurtful things I’ve done. Or a river view and a shining sun this afternoon and a box full of letters and photos from people who love me all over the country. Once I start playing this game, it is hard to stop. I know I don’t deserve Jesus—who lived a life that was holy and justice-oriented and ethically brilliant and accepting of the marginalized and all about ending down barriers and divisions and self-sacrificial in the freest way—who is the embodiment of God’s unconditional love for all of us.

I’ll take a couple snow days in exchange for that.

A journey, part 5: Jesus in Africa

This is part 5 of a story in five parts. Catch up here:
Part 1: Waiting for a sign
Part 2: A sinking feeling
Part 3: April showers
Part 4: Whispers and campfires

January of my junior year, I boarded a plane with thirteen other students bound for East Africa for five months. On the plane, I sat next to another student, John, who I’d met the day before. He was confident, friendly, attractive.

The first week in Tanzania, we sat through orientations, braved local minibuses, and went to a church together. I learned that his parents had been missionaries in Kenya. He read the Bible on the roof of the hostel in the mornings and spoke naturally about his faith. He took homeless people out to lunch and winced at stories of aggressive missionaries in Africa. He seemed the kind of strong, intelligent, and compassionate believer I needed in my life.

At night in the hostel, while the others watched a movie, John and I sat on the roof to catch the breeze.

We’d known each other less than a week. How did it even come up?

“You’ve been reading the Bible in the mornings?” he asked.

“Yeah. The book of Job.”

“Not the easiest book to get through.”

“I read Jeremiah last summer,” I said. “That was rough.”

“How so?” John had a casual, inviting manner. The sky was clear.

“God is pretty wrathful,” I said. “I wasn’t sure if I believed in him for a while.”

I smacked a mosquito on my leg. God, please don’t let me get malaria. Had I said too much? I barely knew him.

“Me neither,” he said. “My faith really took a beating last year.”

Really? Him too?

We slid easily into the stories: I had to write a paper about Nietzsche. I had to break off a relationship.  I stayed up late talking to my roommate about big questions. Somehow every time we answered each other, “Me too.”

In between classes at the university and volunteering in Dar es Salaam, John and I studied on the roof of the Swahili building. He read me a passage from St. Thomas Aquinas. I asked him more about his doubts. We sat in silence, alternating between Swahili flash cards and prayer journals. Hoping, both, to experience God again.

In the afternoons I went running with another American student, Emily. It was too hot and dusty to last longer than twenty minutes. We stretched afterwards, outside her host mom’s apartment.

“Sometime,” she said, “I want to talk to you and John more about your faith. You guys have something that seems genuine.”

Together, Emily and I read part of the gospel of Mark, the earliest account of Jesus’ life. I discovered again, with her, that Jesus was brilliant. It was refreshing, to hear from someone on the outside that belief could be worthwhile.

This is what it means to say Tanzania. Freedom from college Bible studies where I felt I had to fit a mold. The colors of the fabric they waved in the churches. That John had doubted too. Leaving behind the friends who had unknowingly hurt me by caring not enough, or too much. That Emily saw something real in my faith.

God was coming alive again.

In April, John and I traveled to northwestern Tanzania, and on Easter morning we woke to stand under an acacia tree. The Maasai people trickled in and joined us, their plaid shukas tied across their bodies, white and colored beads dangling from the egg-sized holes in their ears. We gathered to celebrate the victory of Jesus over death.

By 10:30 a.m., they began to sing, nasal and high, and the music encircled me like a wind. The joy of the Lord was in their voices. They sang out under an acacia tree, the rolling highlands of the Maasai steppe all around: “Etupiwuo Yesu!” Jesus has risen from the dead! I watched them jumping and joined in, pushing myself as high as I could, making up my own syllables to the verses I didn’t understand in their tribal language rather than remain silent in this assembly of saints. Gazing at the rolling green hills and blue sky around me, I felt as though joy and earth and God’s spirit building up in me would burst out of me, into the mountains.

This is how we know that he lives in us: we know it by the Spirit he gave us.

During the service, we went down to the river and eleven-year-old Sipironi was baptized. That evening over a plate of roasted goat, I heard Sipironi’s story. A year earlier, crippled by a sudden sickness and unable to eat, he’d been sent from hospital to hospital without diagnosis, a medical mystery. One morning the missionaries left him in the house to run errands. When they came back in the afternoon, he was walking. “Jesus told me to stand up,” he said.

The sky that night was big enough to hold the impossibility of it all. The stars were so many I fell to the ground in awe. Biting ants crawled into my pants and John stood laughing as I wiggled around, yelping and brushing them off my waist and dancing back to the porch for safety.

Etupiwuo Yesu! Jesus is risen.

A journey, part 3: April showers

This is part 3 of a story in five parts. Catch up here:
Part 1: Waiting for a sign
Part 2: A sinking feeling

I resolved that nothing was more important than my inquiry into the reality of Christianity. I was going to dig deep.

After some internal debate, I went to the registrar on the last drop/add day and dropped Professor Stansell’s Old Testament class. I’d never quit anything before and feared I was copping out to avoid challenges. But when I went by his office to ask him to sign my drop/add slip and said goodbye, I felt free to pursue the questions in my own way, on my own timeline.

I walked across the prairie with my boyfriend and told him I needed a lot of space. We decided to take a break. For me this was going to be a solitary journey.

I e-mailed the mentors of my childhood. I checked out of the library a stack of books on theology and faith I couldn’t carry. I drilled my roommate with questions she couldn’t answer.

My father typed up a summary of his own winding path to God, and sent it to me by e-mail. It comforted me for a moment, but I woke up the next morning afraid that I, as my father, would have to stray for years, to let go of God completely for a season, in order to truly return.

I canceled my spring break plans and went home to Maryland. I lay on the couch all week, discovering my mom’s 1960s folk LPs and sleeping. I didn’t visit my friends.

Natasha, my old youth minister, called and told me to come over.

When I walked in, we didn’t sit down, just stood in the foyer. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Well I guess I still believe in God.” I hung on the railing, not wanting to look in her eyes, yet wanting desperately for her to know my pain. I rambled about the latest fears.

“You are hearing a lot of voices, Katie,” she told me. “Mostly voices that are telling you God is distant. Give yourself time to hear the voices that speak for God, too.”

“I can’t run away from it,” I told her.

“You don’t have to run,” she said. “Don’t be afraid. Just listen.”

While I was home, my mother took me to the National Zoo. We walked around in chilly April air and saw the sea otters playing, carefree on their stone waterslides. We stood in line to see the new baby panda, black and white and fuzzy. At the elephant house, the zookeepers were giving the elephant a bath. I fell in love with the elephant as he gently stretched his trunk into a perfect loop and stuffed a tree in his mouth. How beautiful the giant grey folds in his skin, the slow, deliberate swinging of his trunk and tilting of his head.

As I watched him, I thought, yes, he evolved through natural selection, and I thought, yes, he was created by God.

*

Back in Minnesota, I went to church on Good Friday, wary of hearing canned statements about Jesus dying on the cross. I was broken. Why should I ask for pardon and atonement?

I sat in the hard wooden pew while a short pastor told a different Good Friday story. He spoke of a group of people who gave their whole lives to their friend, because they believed in him. One day they turned around and saw him stabbed and hanging on a tree to die. From the tree, they heard their friend cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

These words hit me anew. Was the Christian story from its beginning a story of doubt? Was even Jesus himself not immune to it?

I stayed up all night that night, sitting in the lounge with my roommate and another friend, nothing important to say, just that we didn’t want to turn out the light. Something in me began to open. In recounting her own journey, Simone Weil writes in Waiting for God:

If still persevering in our love, we fall to the point where the soul cannot keep back the cry ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’, if we remain at this point without ceasing to love, we end by touching something…that is the central essence, necessary and pure, something not of the senses, common to joy and sorrow: the very love of God.

Was it possible that in stripping away everything, I would still find something left?

On Easter, two days later, I heard of quiet, fearful women unable to find Jesus’ body; whispers that something strange and frightening and wonderful was happening. A story I couldn’t touch. I liked it.

I began to amble back slowly. In quiet moments walking on the trails, a blooming pink bud reached a part deep inside me that still felt God. As I opened my Bible again, I skipped over certain books and stayed on the gospel accounts. When I accidentally opened to a confusing passage or heard a pastor say something contradictory, I felt my heart miss a beat. So I flipped back to the gospel of Mark, again and again, where the women wake up early on the first day of the week, go to weep over Jesus’ body and find an empty tomb, and don’t know what to think.

There are hiccups on every journey. I skipped a girls night with my friends one weekend, sat in my room feeling disconnected and misunderstood. I waded alone again into the library. Why should I put my heart through the dangerous business of hope once again? When I still had not answered the logical questions?

I called and told Ellen, the director of my Christian camp, that I would have to back out of my summer contract as a counselor. I couldn’t be a mentor of faith to teenage girls. She listened to my story and said, “Nonsense. We want you here.”

To read about that beautiful summer at camp, go to Part 4. 

Further resources on homosexuality and the Bible

This post is a follow-up to part 1 and part 2 of a series I wrote about some lovely people in my life. Here are some places to start for understanding the perspective that gay marriage is blessed by God and by the Bible. I am not really writing this to start a debate. I don't expect everyone to agree. I just provide these resources in case you are interested in how I came to this belief.

It’s hard to change what you’ve always thought. I can’t say there’s any magical argument or perspective that settles it once and for all. It starts with reading the Bible, and not just reading it, but critically and contextually and honestly. And as objectively as possible, but I think if we are honest, all of us read into the text a little of what we bring with us. We are meant to, because it’s a living word that interacts with and becomes real in the context of our experiences.

There are a couple people who helped me think through this logically Biblical support for gay marriage. One of them is Justin Lee, the founder and president of the Gay Christian Network, which does a great job of being accessible to people with various opinions on same-sex marriage. The best is to read Justin’s book, but he has also written about his view here, and if you’re more of an audio-visual person, I love this video (see minutes 37 through 46).

I also found helpful two articles (here and here) by Richard Beck, which helped give some context to the text of Romans chapter 1, which is the main New Testament text that is used to support the traditional view that homosexuality is not acceptable to God.

Gay marriage is a tricky one. As more churches have come to affirm women as leaders and ministers, they have the positive biblical examples of Deborah, Anna, Phoebe, Priscilla. There are no positive examples of same-sex marriage relationships in the pages of scripture.

But there is this:

That Jesus loved the people the religious hierarchy regards with disdain.

That we are to let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his neighbor fulfills the law. The commandments “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Romans 13:8).

That by their fruit you will recognize them...every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. (Matthew 7:16-17).

That we are ministers of a new covenant not of the letter but of the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6).

That if we are going to take risks in life and faith, they should be risks we take for love and compassion.

____

I would love to hear your thoughts. Please keep comments charitable.

Coming out, part 2: Getting off the fence

This piece is a continuation of a post I wrote earlier this week. It will probably help to read part 1 first. Both posts are dedicated to the brave and wonderful people who allowed me to include their stories as a part of mine. I write this in hopes that this piece of my journey will help to break down walls rather than create them.

After the summer of 2008, I was changed. I returned home with new stories in my heart and mind. Three women had been vulnerable with me. They had been honest about their struggle to reconcile their sexuality with their lives, faiths, relationships, identities.

I needed to think more on this. I followed the news and articles closely when my favorite Christian rock singer, Jennifer Knapp, came out as a lesbian. I sought more commentary and read Andrew Marin’s beautiful book Love is an Orientation. I settled comfortably and honestly onto a fence between rejecting and accepting gay marriage. It seemed more important than ever to accept gay people, love them, and believe that God could speak to them, too. But it seemed good to resist labels, to avoid taking sides. After all, Jesus often hung around with the questionable folk, and he often resisted questions that created barriers, questions that tested which side you were on (Should we pay taxes to Caesar? Is John the Baptist legit? How can we get on God’s good side? What is your stance on homosexuality?). So I determined that I didn’t really need to define my “stance.” My orientation could be love.

Meanwhile I got to know a few more folks.

When I first met Martin at church, I had no idea he was gay. I did think he was a brilliant writer, a talented musician, and way smart. I remember feeling like he didn’t fit a label—he read the Bible critically, read the news critically. When someone got off on a liberal rant he could bring us back to see the other side. He never wanted to ignore the hard things about faith, like God’s wrath or the devil.

I also wondered why he was so reserved. In our writing group he always brought fiction and never seemed to want to share about his personal experiences. Then one day he brought nonfiction memoir to writing group, a heartrending story about being gay at his Christian senior prom. Growing up evangelical, he had prayed for God to take away his attraction to men. When he realized he could never fall in love with a woman, he resigned himself to celibacy. Later, after much thought, he came to reconcile his sexuality and faith. He hopes to marry one day. Whenever I have asked Martin questions about his sexuality and faith and journey, he is patient and gracious and takes the time to explain.

A couple months after Martin opened up with us, I started working at a new church, where I met a married couple named Sarah and Lara. They were one of the happiest, most in-love couples I had ever met. They seemed so affectionate and servant-hearted with each other. They had been married in a church ceremony though not “legally” because their state did not allow it. Again, they did not fit any stereotypes. Sarah was a teacher of special ed, and Lara worked for the school system in adaptive services for students with disabilities, and they liked a good concert and a date night and a long vacation like anyone else. Sarah once worked for a local Republican campaign. Sarah and Lara wished the state would recognize their marriage, and they wished they could be allowed to adopt. They would be loving, wonderful parents.

When I attended Sarah and Lara’s more progressive church, everyone probably assumed I was a supporter of gay rights. As I found excitement in my heart when DOMA was struck down and when Maryland voted to allow same-sex marriage…maybe I even started to assume it myself.

*

Last spring, I was accepted to divinity school to become a pastor, and I realized that within a few years I would have to take a public stance on the one question that really remained: Is there a place in the church for Christian same-sex marriage? and can this be supported by someone who takes the Bible seriously? So I began to read some books and articles and look closer at the Bible on this issue.

I write about stories, and memories. Not theology or politics or ideology. So this is the part where my story becomes halting. I’m not sure how to share the rest, the little pieces of different videos and articles and books and prayer and Bible study that have shaped my interpretation. Do I keep writing and try to explain it? Or do I just let the stories above speak for themselves?

By this point you realize what I’m going to say. You realize that I am “Coming Out” as a supporter of gay marriage, both politically and religiously, but more importantly, personally. And, if you’ve had the kindness to read this far, you are either shaking your head—why did it take her so long—or you are slightly frowning—this isn’t what the Bible says. Or maybe, just maybe, you are thinking, I understand. I understand the journey of slowly and honestly changing your mind on something you never really chose to think in the first place, something that was gently given to you by your culture.

So I think I want to stop there. To keep it simply what it is: a story of my journey in learning to love better.

And yes, you’re right, it took me too long, and I am sorry.

And yes, you’re right, the Bible is complex and deep and contextual and we have to read it so carefully and seriously, because it is living and holy and true. I know that you read it carefully and seriously and I understand that change is hard and I respect that. Please know that I read it carefully too. It is actually because of this Bible and this faith that I have come to this place. (If you’re interested in how I believe my position is supported, read this post with some additional thoughts and resources.)

The fence of ambiguous silence is no longer a good place for me. Today, I am Coming Out as an ally because I want to stand up for what have come to I believe is right. Because some people don’t have the choice to remain neutral and blend in everywhere. Because every day, someone on the fault lines of Christianity and the gay community is hurt. Because every day, we have the chance to take a step towards healing.

____

I would love to hear your thoughts on today’s post as well as Monday’s. Please keep comments charitable.

More or less

On the radio I hear it again: the stock market rose today. The economy grew. Housing market resurgence--great! Ford sold more cars--awesome! An unnoticeable part in me sighs with relief. But, is more the answer to inequality?  How often do we question the innate goodness of growth?

The belief that bigger is better seems embedded in all aspects of our culture. In the fitness world, if you can run more miles (ultramarathon anyone?) or lift more weight, you are stronger, healthier. In church I see the pastor smiling: "the church is growing." This implies not only more money but also more momentum. More kids at Sunday school and youth group. More ministries in the community. In the nonprofit world, serving more students/clients/patients is a good thing. While there are some quality standards, funding is often doled out primarily on the basis of the number of people served.

There is, of course, the sustainable growth thing. You hear it from humanitarians and environmentalists. A realization that growth can't go unchecked forever, that we have to be careful about it--but still generally viewing growth as a good thing.

I think we need to stop for a minute before we buy into all this more is better stuff. Even with the good things, like ministries and nonprofits. Even when it's sustainable growth. Depth might be more important than quantity. Equality might be more important than quantity.

Jesus founded what some would call the descending way. The opposite of growth and success. He became smaller--from God to human. He focused on a few people and led them lower and lower in society, to humiliation and death. So if our bible study is only two people, if we only have one student in GED classes today, if our "impact" is small, maybe we're on the right track. It may not make sense, but the last will be first, and the humble will be exalted. So let me shoot for the tiny, small things I can do here in Cherokee, and let's all shoot for the tiny small ways we can love, forgive, and fade into obscurity.