Christian Identity and the Mighty Ducks

First, I recently posted a piece I did as part of my final independent study at seminary on my website. It is a theological look at how Christians can approach pop culture, and you can read it here. It's called Jesus Christ: Superstar! So you should check it out just for the clever title, if nothing else. :)

So onto the real post... 

I was recently watching D2: The Mighty Ducks because despite the awful cheesiness, it's a movie from my childhood and makes me feel nostalgic. In case you don't know, the premise of the movie is basically this team from Minnesota ends up being recruited to represent the US (with a few additions) in the Junior Olympic competition and Gordon Bombay, a jaded lawyer turned passionate peewee hockey coach, who had worked such a miracle before that he is offered a contract with a sporting outfitter to be the face of their gear as he coaches the team in. In order to get "the big contract" Gordon has to dominate in the tournament, and so when the team hits a snag, he turns into a jerk and works the kids way too hard. The kids and their tutor call him out, he has a "come to Jesus" type of moment and reforms his way. The point is that it's not about winning but about the love of the game and playing well. My husband kept pointing out how much bigger the other teams were from the ducks, and as I was watching Woo, a figure skater recruited to play, do a double axel over an opposing player in order to get close to the goal, my brain turned to theology, as it sometimes does.

I won't go into too much depth here, but the point of these movies, trite though they may be, is that good character and individuality are ultimately stronger than big beefy players that are in it to win it and don't care about how horrible they become to do it. So then I naturally started thinking about the Holy Spirit, and a conversation I had with scholar and professor Lois Malcolm from Luther Seminary, who says that the Holy Spirit acts not by creating conformity but by creating unity within diversity. In other words, if you look at the apostles and the early church, and particularly the teaching of Paul when he discusses the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians, it becomes clear that we are called to function with freedom within our own beautiful, God-given uniqueness for the sake of the church and the world. "For just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body--though many--are one body, so too is Christ." (1 Cor. 12:12, NET)

This is important because it touches on a very common misconception about Christianity, and that is that it promotes conformity and insulation from the world. I read a very sad story of a woman who had been born into and living within the Quiverfull movement, which is a loose association of families within American Christianity that believe that the highest calling of a woman is to bear little Christian soldiers, and promotes a number of other harmful ideas about the roles of men, women, and children in the family and within the world. This woman had, understandably, felt extremely suffocated by the role that had been imposed upon her, and ultimately left both her husband and Jesus because she was sick of the message that she should conform to a certain way in order to be acceptable. I understand the frustration she must have gone through, but it's unfortunate that she failed to discover that this very fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian vocation is false. It's very common, though, even in less fundamentalist churches, to promote the idea of conformity: this is what a Christian looks like, acts like, or should be. Those who don't fit into this definition are excluded. Some do this intentionally in the name of protecting the community (and I have a whole other post about that), and some do it unintentionally, because they don't know any other way to be.

Despite that unintentional message, this is exactly opposite what the Bible says about how the body of Christ should be. According to Dr. Malcolm, some of the signs of the Spirit at work in a movement are expansiveness, inclusiveness, and diversity. God didn't create things to be the same. Just look at the diversity of plant and animal life on the planet. These things evolved in a million unique ways, and people are no different. To say that Christians should be in any way uniform is just silly. We live in a broken world carrying a variety of burdens that shape us into different people, and we are given different gifts meant to account for the diversity of needs around us. If we were all gifted healers, who would comfort those who don't get well? We need people with different gifts, talents, and skills to be a successful society, and the body of Christ is the same

Toward the end of the movie, we see Gordon, returning to his true self, gathering the team together with the duck call, reminding them who they are. In the same way that the lasso-swinging skills of the Texan and the figure skating skills of Woo or speed skills of Martinez ultimately make the Ducks more successful, the community of Christians is most able to live out our vocation of bringing about God's kingdom through service when we all act out of our uniqueness. That means that some of us are going to be very proper teachers who love grammar and hate swearing, and some are going to be spitting, cussing, tattooed bikers. Because the proper person is not going to be able to touch the world in exactly the same way as the swearing bikers and we need to serve the world in all places and ways. That's why we need the teachers and counselors and business people and accountants and musicians and stay at home parents and vets and janitors... If a community is calling you to uniformity, such as the Quiverfull movement, that is most certainly not a community acting out of the power of the Spirit of God. Rather, the Holy Spirit calls us to unity, bound by the transformative love of Christ which turns us towards others and brings new life out of our dead places, so that we may live out that common vocation exactly as we are individually equipped.

Who you are called to be is you, and to define your ministry not by the role but by the self that you bring to it. Now get outta here in peace to love and serve the Lord!

What does a chaplain do, anyway?

I finally started my first big-person job as a hospital chaplain resident at a large hospital in the Twin Cities. People usually have one of three reactions. The first reaction is overwhelmingly positive. The second reaction is generally uninformed but curious. The final reaction is more negative or misinformed. There's an episode of Scrubs where Dr. Cox's super-Christian sister comes to the hospital and ends up ministering to a patient, much to his chagrin. They stand around all night praying and lo, and behold, a miracle! The impression is that chaplains are there because we think we'll be able to call healing miracles down Benny Hinn style or because we want to convert people. Having been met with a number of these reactions ranging from curious to confused, I have decided to write up a post. I strongly encourage people to take advantage of a chaplain's presence if they ever find themselves in the hospital, hospice, or other care setting, because it never hurts to have another person on your team.

So now that we've cleared up what a chaplain doesn't do, what exactly is it we actually DO do?

1.) Provide holistic care of the patient.

Being in the hospital, or even another type of care setting (assisted living, inpatient addiction treatment, etc) often feels like you are being looked at as a collection of body parts or as a "problem" rather than a human being. Doctors are great and gifted but sometimes look at people as if they are a liver with a side of intestines instead of a person who is 31 and unexpectedly ended up in the hospital with mysterious symptoms and a possibly really bad diagnosis. In my health system, we are considered "spiritual care" not because we necessarily deal with religious topics but because we see patients as whole people whose beliefs, values, sense of self and purpose also suffer because of medical diagnoses and, conversely, whose diagnoses can be worsened by these more spiritual concerns. There are scientific studies that show that patients who have their spiritual needs attended while in the hospital have better outcomes (are less likely to die) than those who don't! That's because the feelings of fear and dread that come up around illness and death can and do have a physiological impact. Sometimes these feelings and thoughts are mediated by organized belief systems, and sometimes they are not. Patients benefit from having a person who can help them integrate their current situation with their life philosophy and/or beliefs.

2.) Provide emotional and spiritual support for patients, families, and staff in crisis.

Being in the hospital is hard on patients, but it's also hard for family members and for staff. Medical and ancillary staff who work on ICUs or a hematology-oncology unit usually see more bad outcomes than good ones. There is a lot of pain, suffering, and death in these situations, and regardless of the spiritual or philosophical concerns, all of these people need somebody who is willing to delve into the emotions of the situation and address them. Usually this just looks like 'yeah, this is really hard, I'm so sorry' but you'd be amazed how helpful it can be to just feel heard when the world is going crazy around you and you feel totally powerless. I once ministered to a family of a different faith from mine during a terminal extubation (pulling life support). I didn't have the same traditions but I was able to draw from their traditions and mostly just sit with them, bring coffee and extra chairs, and help them talk about some happy memories as their love one died. What we do is walk into a house of sorrow and accept the pain and journey with them in it. It sounds simple, but when you just kissed your baby on the head for the first and last time, or when your wife isn't going to wake up again, it means a lot.

3.) Provide rituals and ceremonies, prayer, or facilitate contact with those who can.

My staff and resident group has several Lutherans, a couple Catholic priests, some Unitarian Universalists, Muslims, Mormons, Baptists and a few other types of Christians. People form their lives around stories and often part of our story is the story of a group of people who came before us and believe like us. Believing in something bigger than us either as a Christian, Muslim, or a Humanist or whatever is almost a biological imperative. We make meaning. Even if your meaning is that 'there is no meaning' you are still writing your life story according to an interpretation. Feeling connected to something broader is important for many people, and as a chaplain my job is to understand people's religious, spiritual, or philosophical needs and help them be met. If that means finding a Jehovah's Witness to minister to a patient, then I call their central office. If that means locating a Qu'ran or getting a priest to do an anointing, then I do that. If it means praying with patients, I will do that in any way they feel comfortable with me doing it (depending on their beliefs and their understanding of mine). Often the difference between total anxiety and a sense of peace is a thirty second prayer with a chaplain, or maybe just a five minute conversation. My job is to assess the need and meet it to the best of my ability.

4.) Give patients a chance to vent their feelings or take a break from getting poked and prodded.

Sometimes I have a visit that is nothing but talking about all the places the patient has visited, or all of their 80 grand-children and what they're up to, or maybe the latest movies we've seen. Hospitals aren't fun places to be stuck if you're not getting paid (worse if you're paying an arm and a leg), and sometimes the best thing for a patient's healing is to not be bored and frustrated. That means sometimes we talk about nothing at all. They ask about me, I ask about them; we chat. Or maybe they're really frustrated that the nurse keeps waking them up and just need to be grumpy with somebody. There are medical staff members and social workers and nutrition workers and occupational therapy and physical therapy, etc etc etc and they poke and prod patients non-stop. I come in and ask nothing of the patient but what THEY need and want right now. Sometimes feeling like you have a little bit of control, even if that means kicking the chaplain out, is everything.

5.) Work on interdisciplinary teams to advocate for, listen to, and care for the patient.

Believe it or not, religious or spiritual issues come up more than you would think for patients. Should a Muslim patient be undressed by opposite sex staff members? How do we handle the patient's beliefs there? What if a Jehovah's Witness opts for a life saving blood transfusion but is feeling extremely anxious about that medical decision? Maybe a patient is in a vegetative state and the medical power of attorney is unclear? There are ethics boards, care teams, palliative teams, and a slew of other teams that are there to care for the patient. As chaplains, we sit in on many of these and make sure that the patient's emotional/spiritual needs are being accounted for in such situations. Chaplains are there to really hear and understand patients, and we work side by side with doctors, social workers, therapists, etc to ensure that the patient is receiving the best care possible that accounts for as many needs as possible. This includes treatment decisions, end of life decisions, or even pregnancy termination decisions. We put on a lot of different hats, but our job is to see the whole person and do whatever we can to see that their values and spiritual health are taken care of.

Ultimately, you want a chaplain in the room because professional chaplains are trained to be on your side. They are there to listen, to advocate, to mediate, and most importantly to love the patients. Sometimes we have our hearts broken by the tragedy we walk beside. I remember these stories sometimes as if they were my own. But for me it's an amazing, fulfilling opportunity to be the hands and feet of Christ to serve all people (of all faiths, beliefs (or not), and backgrounds). My personal belief is that Jesus and the promise of new life in the midst of all this crap that we trudge through day after day shows up through those of us dedicating our lives to serving the world. So I will continue letting the light of love shine in my hospital and wherever else I can for as long as I can.

Rethinking Church: A New Model for Ministry

I'm going to tell you the story behind this blog's name. A couple years ago I was taking a preaching class, and harassing my good friend N with videos of my latest sermon. He didn't have a lot of experience with church but he liked my sermons and told me I should start a YouTube channel. I was slightly horrified by the idea of putting my face on the internet for the world to critique but he kept bugging me with the idea. He had even thought of a name for the channel: My Little Parish. It was funny because it was like My Little Pony except like a magical online church world instead of a world with ponies and bronies and the like. I thought about it for a while but was ultimately too lazy and busy to record my sermons while trying to do ministry in a real-life parish (as opposed to a virtual one). By way of compromise, I decided to start a blog. Writing has always been my forte so I thought, what the heck, I'll give it a shot. I thought for a while about the name, but eventually decided that My Little Parish fit perfectly, not because it was as exciting and magical as a YouTube channel or Ponies, but because it fit precisely with the view of ministry that I have had since Clinton was president.

When I was a teenager I was friends with some people who, quite frankly, made my mother very worried. These were kids from broken homes who had dealt with things like sexual assault, drug use, unwanted pregnancy, and hiding their sexuality from their families. It wasn't that my mom didn't like them as people, but she was worried I would start doing dangerous stuff hanging out with them. Aside from them being awesome and fun people, I always saw my friendship as a sort of ministry. I remember once arguing with my 7th grade Bible teacher because he claimed that we should avoid hanging out with people who could be a bad influence because it could pull us away from the right path. I wasn't a very talkative kid in school but I raised my hand and said, "Um, excuse me, didn't Jesus hang out with prostitutes and tax collectors?" His response was a dismissive, "Well, you're not Jesus." But his class lesson didn't change my mind. I had always been taught that it is through our lives that others see Christ. These friends from messed up homes with difficult crap to deal with might never experience truly giving, unconditional love in any way but through me, and not even the principal himself could convince me otherwise.

A sacrament is something which manifests the reality of the risen Christ in our daily lives. Bread and wine, baptismal water, scripture, service, love, comfort, presence: these are things that break into our world full of illness, crime, disasters, accidents, abusive parents, rape, violence, war and proclaim the gospel of Christ. The gospel is the thing which proclaims that there WILL BE healing, there MUST BE peace, that the future which God is calling our world to is one of reconciliation, joy, brotherhood and sisterhood, and I see Christians not as some elect trying to stay pure in order to get to that future but as people who are put here to be doorways for that incredible future to come through every single day. We are to be living sacraments.

So what does that have to do with church? Well, for a long time, the church has looked like something very specific: parish ministry. Usually these parishes were based around small communities. They were a place where everybody in town gathered together to have the gospel proclaimed, to receive the sacrament of holy communion. They were central to our lives, and there was enough social pressure to keep most people within the church. The church became the place from which ministry flowed into the rest of the community. A hundred and fifty years ago, this model held true, and churches were doing pretty well until the last decade or two. Now, you can't swing a small catechism without running into a closing church. There are tons of dire statistics talking about how the church is dying. The emerging church movement has addressed some of the issues of the more traditional church, modernizing worship style, liturgy, and language to fit better with the culture of the people, and this movement is very important, but despite increasing numbers of churches like Humble Walk, Solomon's Porch, and even the food truck ministry called Shobi's Table (all Twin Cities movements local to me), there are still a lot of people out there who feel no real connection to a church community. The problem with these models is that for people outside the church, it doesn't matter if the pastor is wearing tight pants and hipster glasses, or if it gathers in a community center or school basement--it's still church.

Many people feel alienated from church. Talk to a few members of the LGBTQ community and ask about their experiences at church. More than a handful of these folks have been seriously wounded by negative attitudes at church. Talk to young women fleeing conservative churches in droves: they have been told they are worth nothing without men, that their destiny is to be a helpmeet, that abuse and violence are okay because they just need to respect and submit. Talk to anybody who has ever had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of a political battle in the church, or who dares to be the voice of justice while the louder voice is full of hate. Many, many people have been victimized by church communities that look like people gathering around an altar on Sundays. That's not to say churches can't be wonderful, supportive places; my current church is an amazing, healing place and I couldn't be happier to be a part of it. But there have been times in my life where I have wanted nothing to do with church because it hurt me badly. I am still healing from some of those wounds despite being in ministry and being in an amazing community now. But all that hurt or sense of disconnection (which happens for many reasons from hurt to introversion or social anxiety) doesn't stop people from thirsting for living water. Where does that leave us? How can we "re-imagine" church? Well, maybe we need to think like people outside the church instead of like church people trying to get more people to come inside. Maybe we need to go into the world.

We need to stop thinking of ministry as solely a part of the parish. Mainline denominations have an unfortunate tendency to think of ministry which starts in the parish even if it happens in the world, but if this was ever true (which I'm not sure about), I don't think it is anymore. Ministry is praying with an addict in recovery who is weeping in thirst for someone to tell him he is worthy. Ministry is studying the Bible with a family in the hospital before surgery. Ministry is serving food at a soup kitchen. Ministry is gathering clothes for women to go on job interviews. Ministry is anywhere we do work which presents the love of God. The church is part of that, but it's not the whole story. If we are a people who profess that the Holy Spirit is among us and our world like a breath that fills each and every one of us, how can we confine the definition of ministry to that which flows from the parish? Ministry is what happens whenever the Holy Spirit shows up, and the Holy Spirit shows up first in the world and calls us to gather in church. That means that if we think church has to look like a group of people singing hymns, reading scriptures, hearing sermons, we are mistaken. Parishes are, or should be, a training ground for ministry in the world. If that means ordaining people to carry out their vocation in the world as ministers of Word and Sacrament, we should do that!

So back to the name. I consider this blog to be a "parish" in the sense that it is a gathering place for people to come, to hear the gospel, and to take that message of being loved and called and turn right around to be ministers in their own world. That's what I hope you are doing if you are reading this. I want to empower you to live out your vocation as a servant and minister in the world. This is a parish, because it is a gathering place, but this isn't church. YOU are the church. The Christians you bump into out in your world, they are the church. The church is meant to go to the rest of the world to show it the gospel. The goal shouldn't be to get butts in pews, but to get feet on the ground, and until we stop counting "the church" as congregations, headcounts, and offerings, we're doing a grave disservice to the mission we have been called to.

Now stop reading this post and do something! Go in peace to love and serve the world!

The Gift of Life

[This post contains spoilers about the book and movie The Giver.]

Remember

Remember
when we were young
and the whole world of adventure
and possibility lay beyond.

Bright eyes stared
ahead with visions
of love and fame
and money.

Instead debt,
lonely days and failure,
tears and fights, and
many disappointments.

But also work,
and laughter and
creation of new life and
so much growth.

Remember
when we were young
and had no idea
how amazing a plan
not ours could be.

G. Powell (2014)


My husband and I went to see The Giver on Sunday. Lois Lowry's writing was a momentous part of my childhood. I probably read it the first time in middle school, and then again in my early twenties, and remember being so struck by the themes of identity, but the movie really drove home themes about love and humanity. For those who don't know, The Giver takes place in what appears to be a rather utopian society, where all kinds of evil and meanness has been eradicated. The people live in a community in which food is distributed so that nobody goes hungry, jobs are assigned so that everybody has important work, and the people don't even see color because that would highlight differences. The evil and inequality of the world led the creators of this utopian society to go to what they call "sameness" and to exterminate all memories of what the world was like before.

On the surface, this seems innocent enough. A bit controlling, but what do you do? Nobody is going hungry or being raped or murdered. There's no war. Who can ask for more? The story follows a young man named Jonas who is of the age to be assigned his job that he will have for the rest of his life. He is also on the cusp of manhood, and after having a slightly erotic dream about a friend, he is started on a new medication, which we later find out is to curb these sexual feelings. In fact, the people seem to experience no deep emotions at all, and talk plainly about all the more fleeting ones. No intimacy, no love, only duty and responsibility. Jonas doesn't know any different until he starts his new job, which is to be the "receiver of memory" for the community. Because the community did away with all historical knowledge and memory in order to keep out anything that could cause dangerous conflicts, the memories are kept by one elder who advises the others when a situation comes up that they aren't sure how to handle. Jonas is to be given these memories so that he can fulfill that role.

The Giver begins gifting memories to Jonas, and at first he's thrilled. Soon he begins to understand concepts like color and excitement and deep passion, like the feelings that were so quickly quashed after he admitted to his sexual dream. He experiences joy for the first time. But darker emotions and experience exist as well, and Jonas has to receive these to understand why his community had to "go to sameness." The beautiful parts are glorious, but the pain is awful and the community founders wanted to spare the people.

Meanwhile, Jonas' father has brought home one of the infants that he cares for in his role of nurturer of new citizens, because the boy is not growing as he should. His father feels some kindness toward this baby and thinks maybe being at home will help him. Jonas begins to get very attached to the boy. Along the way, however, he learns about "release to elsewhere" which is the end that criminals, elderly, and sickly people all meet. He discovers that these people are simply killed, and because he has experienced the joys and pains of life through the Giver, he understands what death is and what a horrific thing his community has been doing in the name of peace. The baby that his father has brought home will meet this same fate, he learns, and so decides that he must flee.

Now, we also learn that the memories are tightly contained within these people, but it turns out that if the keeper of memory crosses the boundary out of the community, all of those memories would be released back to where they belong. The book and movie diverge a bit in how this all happens, but the end result is that Jonas realizes that by taking away the "colorful" experiences of life and the potential for pain, the community has also lost the capacity for love, and the result of that is this darwinist, emotionless, empty society with no real depth or beauty.

This is where the poem above comes in. I was thinking about how my expectations of my life are so much different than I ever thought they would be. I have no idea how it happened that I ended up working as a chaplain, married to the amazing man I met, living where I am, meeting the people I meet, but I did. And it was not totally painless along the way. There were lots of fumbles and screw-ups and lots of sadness and misery as I tried to awkwardly figure out who I am called to be. But somehow out of the chaos of this journey has always come something new, something alive, something urging me forward, creating in me a more authentic relationship with God, and a more real way to relate to the pain of the world. The Giver raises the question of what it means to be truly human, what it means to suffer. We don't know why we suffer or what pain really means or where it comes from, but what we know for certain is that God meets us there and promises us new life.

In many ways, pain and suffering cultivate in us a deeper capacity to touch the world around us, and to understand a God who loved us so much that s/he could send Jesus for us. It is that love which weeps that makes us new, the same way that power comes in weakness and life comes through death. When we lose the capacity to love as Jonas' community had, we forget the value of human life--especially the weak or the old or the invalid--and truly lose our power to bring about a better future. Jonas sees the subtle costs of this forgotten magic and does the only thing he can: returns love with the hope that as a people we may, as the Giver said, "choose better." Sometimes love and pain are two sides to the coin, but in the same way that Jonas hoped, we hope for a new future where we may choose only love and thus God's promised future of no more tears and pain and war will become a reality. The path to that future may not always look like we expect, but we humans are rarely wise enough to choose our path well. Thank God for a Creator and Redeemer who sends the Spirit of love and newness into our lives every day.

The Christian Vocation: Thoughts on Ferguson

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness." -Romans 12:1-18

The story of Ferguson, Missouri is on my mind lately, not just because I grew up partly in the state, but because this is a narrative that is becoming tragically familiar. A young, black man is killed by excessive force, and the outcry of the community is met with more violence. Some people seek to justify the young man's death all the while knowing that had he been white he would likely never have been stopped, let alone shot multiple times past the point of surrender. Do I know if Michael Brown robbed that convenience store, or even if he acted aggressively toward the officer who stopped him? No. But I do know that he was unarmed, and that there are ways to use force in less deadly ways, yet when it comes to black men, it's the same old story: shoot first, ask questions later. The narrative that focuses on his actions places blame everywhere but where it should be, which is on all of us for our role in institutional racism, a cycle of poverty and violence which keeps people, particularly people of color, in a hopelessly inescapable landscape that breeds more violence, more crime, more tragedy.

As Christians, we are called to be in the world but not of it, to not be conformed to the world. The "city on a hill" mentality has often led to Christians believing that they are called to live on this planet while remaining apart, somehow, from the problems and violence of society. However it has never been more apparent in all of human history how hyper-connected a life we all lead. The pain of our broken hearts crying for the tragedy of the world should tell us, even if we choose to interpret this passage otherwise, how we are all brothers and sisters. When my black brothers and sisters cry out in the agony of institutional racism and systematic oppression, I should also groan. We should all be groaning right now, not just because of Ferguson, but because of Syria and Iraq and Gaza and Ukraine and everywhere else that people are crushed under the yoke of oppression.

Not being conformed to the world doesn't mean taking the city on a hill approach. It also doesn't mean that being Christians somehow makes us better, different, or apart. Rather, it means that those of us who believe have undergone a radical re-orientation to the reality of the world, where we see not the thrill of power and privilege, but the grief for sons and daughters lost too young to drug addiction, prison, gang violence, and murder. We understand that although we all, in some ways, benefit from and take part in maintaining the social order which continues to segregate the rich from the poor or the white from the black or the man from the woman, that that reality of one stepping on another is a product of brokenness, and the reality that we are called to is that of no Greek or Jew, man or woman, slave or free. It means using "sober judgment" as Paul says, to recognize our role and break away from the biases and say no to the status quo and use our power in society for the good of others. It means understanding our interconnectedness as creatures and using our God-given gifts to usher in the kingdom of God, because we have a God who from the beginning has been about liberation of the oppressed.

Being transformed means re-orienting towards the future to which we are called. That future is the reign of God's kingdom, and it looks not like a people set apart from the world, but a people so deeply moved by the everyday trials and hurts that we stand up against what sometimes feels like overwhelmingly powerful systems. It looks like a people who take on the yoke of the oppressed as if it were our own burden, who fight for the rights of our neighbors as if they were our own rights. God's kingdom looks like brothers and sisters acknowledging and fighting for the right of the other to be fully, uniquely and genuinely who they are as a person also created by the same loving God as you and me.

I believe that the death of Michael Brown should serve as a wake up call to us, that there is still violence in the world because of inequalities large and small, obvious and subtle, and that as Christians our call is to solidarity with those in the world who are suffering. Paul calls us to be renewed; not to be conformed with the world that says that violence and inequality are the way of things, but to be transformed to the reality that God wants liberation for all God's people, who is always for us, who is always faithful, and who is calling us into greater communion with one another. May we all be remade daily so we may more fully learn how to weep, pray, and fight for our brothers and sisters in Ferguson and all over the world until God's promised reign of peace becomes today's reality. Amen.

The City of God

Then I saw coming from the heavens
a holy city, unlike any on earth,
not with an iron dome and military guard
But at the gate of the city, welcome,
and waiting to greet all those who draw near.

Those who entered were not refugees
and came not with terror and grief
but ecstatic joy for the Lord would
dwell there, and make them forget their pain:
the fear of gang violence and rape.

Then seated on the throne was the Son,
not a despot ruler killing for money,
oil, power, and territory, but a King of true goodness who
promised from the ashes of destruction
a sprig of life would burst forth.

I walked the streets of the city,
paved with lustrous gold, every building bright.
Here the gold was for all the people,
not just those with the most guns and militants
but for all to share as kin.

Then I saw a rushing river,
it was clean and clear. No corporate dumping,
or signs warning of toxicity,
only fresh water nourishing the plants on every side,
unadulterated and verdant with wide leaves.

Along the bank of the river were thousands of trees,
with different fruits that filled bellies of hungry
people so that no child would go to bed with the pain
of hunger or disease. The fruit of the trees was a balm
whose magic was in its ability to heal more than hearts.

Then I saw a Lamb, and it came to dwell with the lion,
but the lion could not look upon it
for it was like the sun, shining on all the people.
There could be no night here,
nor would darkness triumph again.

These things I perceived, not a fantasy
or distant hope, but a vision; a glorious
promise to dry tears and mend wounds,
and sure as these words appear here,
so shall this dream become our future age.

The Alchemy of Grace

A sermon based on Matthew 13:24-30;36-43, for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost

My heart has been broken watching the news these days. Jews and Muslims break their fast together in the contested areas of the Gaza strip as bombs explode destroying more homes and lives bare miles away. In Syria, a hundred thousand refugees cower from a tyrannical government, and right here in the US, thousands of children huddle together in fear while Americans argue about what should be done with them. Should they be sent back to death, or brought into a country increasingly hostile toward them? In Ukraine, the war fueled by Russia and its sponsored separatists has resulted in the deaths of almost three hundred innocent people in the Malaysia Air Flight 17 crash—Dutch, Malaysians, Americans, men, women, children. I was talking about all this to a woman where I have been volunteering and she looked at me seriously and said, “we need Jesus.” Our hearts break with our need for Jesus in our hurting world.

It's easy to let that heartbreak turn to anger. I have had many a heated debate as of late. What is wrong with Russia and the separatists and their continuing violence? What is wrong with Hamas and the Israeli government that they can't come to terms? What is wrong with politicians and people protesting against Guatemalan and Honduran children—children who are literally fleeing here for their lives as refugees? What is wrong with humanity?

So often that heartbreak turns into blame; into pointing fingers at one another and saying 'this is your fault!' The other day I happened across an article that said that people who protest the migrant children in Texas cannot be Christians. Can people who wrongfully believe propaganda be Christians? Can people who financially support repressive regimes or slave labor through their purchases and investments be Christians? Our heartbreak leads us to declare ourselves somehow able to discern the heart of another person based on what we see, but how presumptuous that is, to imagine that we can see our fellow human beings, broken and flawed as we all are, as God does! But our righteous and often justified indignation sometimes leads us to our own sin of arrogance, of hatred. This is the condition of our world, and it only feeds more evil. And yet in the midst of this wasteland of despair, we have to ask what can a Christian do to stem this tide of evil?

Jesus discusses this problem in the parable of the sower. He explains that one day the master of a household went out and started sowing good seed in the ground, but that in the night the enemy came and also planted weeds. When the seeds began to grow, the slaves of the man discovered the copious amounts of weeds springing up and reported this to their master. The master explained that an enemy had come to plant the seed, and slaves then asked if they should pull up the weeds. This is often what we're compelled to do, isn't it? It can be done in the best intentions, but we get so angry at people we see as “bad seeds” that we want to prematurely damn them in thought and sometimes in action, shunning them, pushing them out of our lives, and poisoning our own hearts with hate.

Contrary to the gut reaction of the servants, the master tells them that they should leave the plants alone, seeds and weeds, and when the harvest comes he will sort out the wheat from the weeds by sending his reapers, the angels. In other words, only God knows the hearts of the world, and our job as people of faith is not to separate sheep and goats or wheat and weeds. The story doesn't say what the servants did after that, but I imagine them going, albeit with some reluctance, back to the fields and, maybe grudgingly, tending all the plants there, watering and getting rid of bugs on the whole field, not knowing which plants the master would ultimately keep or throw away. I imagine it this way because Jesus makes it pretty clear elsewhere in scripture what is required of a servant of his: love God, and love your neighbor. That's it. If you love God with your whole heart, that relationship will transform you so you can't help but care about your neighbor. This is a little easier said than done sometimes, though, when our hearts are crushed by the suffering in the world.

That's not to say we ignore evil in our midst. As Christians, we are also called to defend the weak in love, but I believe this parable tells us that we should reserve our judgments to the evil actions of others and not presume to know what God can do for their hearts. After all, if Jesus can bring the dead to life and turn water to wine, surely he can turn a weed into wheat. It is the alchemy of the Holy Spirit that turns hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, and this often happens through the love shared by Christ's followers. It is in this way that our own hearts that are broken by the suffering of others can also be mended—not through hate and judgment, but through the transformative power of God's love, the only thing in the universe stronger than evil, pouring through us. That's why Palestinians and Israeli's dining together is so radical. That's why praying for our enemies is such a powerful act of rebellion against our human tendencies. Because only love can be so transformative in light of so much violence and evil.

Micah 6:8 gives us a beautiful job description for a person of faith, saying “What does the Lord require of you? Seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” Our pursuit of justice must be tempered by mercy and a heart that follows the example of the one who defended the weak, healed the sick, fed the poor, and comforted the grieving. And we must always do this humbly, knowing that we too have "fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3) This is possible because of the faith which tells us that we are to be freed from the bondage of sin and death and hatefulness and war and violence and religious disputes and slavery and all the other evil in the world (Romans 8). 

Judgment hardens human hearts, but love breaks those hearts open so that they can be recreated full of hope for the future of peace that God has promised us. My prayer for we servants of the master is that our grief for the pain of the world lead us not to despair, but to a deeper appreciation for the dawn breaking upon our darkness, revealing the peace which surpasses all our understanding. We pray this in the name of Jesus our Lord, who promises a bountiful harvest on the last day. Amen.