Number in Series: First

I Believe

For this week’s Events and Happenings, click “Download PDF.”

For this week’s Spiritual Practice, led by Trecia Reavis, click HERE.

During the past fourteen months, most of us worried more than normal. Many of us stayed home longer than we’d ever done, skipped showers for impressive runs, wore the same outfits days on end, gained a little weight and all kinds of other pandemic accomplishments. I did all that too – high five! Some of us also found a hobby or went back to one. I know people who baked a lot of bread. My wife gave herself over to indoor plant growing at a whole new level. Me, I did something less practical than this – I started an online doctoral program in theology and ministry. 

And my advisor was part of this project that intrigued me, where they went through one of the oldest Christian creeds line by line, talking about how it is they still engage the faith of these nearly two millennia old words in ways that make sense to them and are empowering and life-giving in the age we live in today. They did this with one of the shortest and most famous creeds called The Apostles’ Creed. And they called the series Becoming Christian. 

Now if you’re thinking: who would want to become a Christian these days? Well, you’re not alone. The reputation of Christians (at least in this country) is at a well-deserved low point. So if you identify as a Christian, great. If you don’t, that’s great too. I identify as a Christian because I think there’s a ton of good in this faith and in this tradition that’s worth making the most of, despite all the bad stuff that’s gotten mixed in there. But I can understand why others wouldn’t want to. You do you, really.

But they didn’t call the series Becoming Christian to get anyone to convert, but to highlight the process of becoming. Like anything in life that matters, a Christian isn’t something that you are, like it’s a certificate you put on your wall for this thing you did once or a stage you’ve reached. Life and relationships and beliefs and experiences are dynamic, right? We’re always in motion, we’re always changing, still becoming. The Christian faith is dynamic, something that has been changing and evolving for 2,000 years, and so a person being a Christian is also something we can be becoming, or not, and they explored how they connected to this process now.

Well, as soon as I heard this, I thought: I want to do something like this at Reservoir. We’ve always wanted to live a Christian faith that would be viable and interesting and helpful for people who believe what science has to say, who aren’t going to subscribe to ideas and beliefs that seem out of touch with the modern world. But given how many of us have changed our minds about things we believe or aren’t sure of what we believe about God, it seemed like it could be helpful to talk through this old Christian creed ourselves, and see how we can relate to historic Christian faith in ways that inspire and liberate us. 

So this summer, when Lydia or Ivy or anyone else speaks, they’ll speak however they are led to, but when I preach throughout the summer, I’m going to talk us through the Apostles’ Creed, referencing texts from the Bible as well as the contemporary dynamics and questions and tensions with our faith. I’ll share what some different people think here and there as well as how I make sense of and live into this creed.

I’ve called the series “Becoming Christian: (Re)Interpreting the Apostles Creed and the Christian Faith for Our Times.”

And we’re going to start today with the first phrase of the creed – just two words – “I believe”. And we’ll do that through four lines about belief and faith from the gospel of Mark . 

Here’s the first:

Mark 1:15

“Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!”

In Mark, Jesus’ first public words, or the words that Mark thinks best capture what Jesus had to say a lot were these: Change your hearts and lives, and trust the good news. That’s a modern translation. A little more literally the words were: repent and believe.

At the heart of what Jesus had to say to people was: be open to change, and believe. But when he said that he wasn’t talking about particular information they should believe. Like sign this document. Agree with these facts. No, when he said believe, he meant Belief is trust.

Like trust that Jesus can help you know God. Trust that Jesus can show us what God is like and what God is doing. Trust that Jesus and Jesus’ God have good news worth engaging with. Belief as trust. 

Think about some of the things you used to believe were true.

I used to think that elephants were called “odies” – I insisted upon that fact. I have a child who once said, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a frog.” When I taught high schoolers, I remember this very skinny 15-year old kid who’d never played organized sports told me with a straight face, “I’m going to play football in the NFL.” And what do you say? I thought: good luck with that. 

We change our minds about what we believe all the time. That’s normal. We grow up. And even as adults, we keep growing up. We have new experiences. We learn new things. 

And when it comes to what we think about God or the big questions about what matters most in life, the same thing is true. 

There’s not much that I think about God that I haven’t changed my mind about twice. And even now as a doctoral student in theology, there’s so much about faith that my most honest answer would be: Who am I to say? I don’t know. 

It’s alright to hold lightly the facts and opinions and information which we believe. 

Over the past several years, though, I’ve learned that this can be really hard within the domain of religion. A few years ago, Grace and I went to a conference with a couple of friends. It was a place for people who were aware they were deconstructing their Christian faith – questioning what they’d been taught, changing their beliefs. And I thought: hey, I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things I was taught. And I’m a pastor of a church where a lot of people are doing that too. I’ll go to this thing and find my people.

But what struck me was not how much I related to what was happening there, but how much anxiety people had about the whole experience. And I don’t mean that critically – like it was their fault for being tense. A lot of folks had been given these really intense and even threatening messages about what information and opinions they had better believe. 

I met this one person in her 20s, who when I asked her how she ended up at this conference, she told me that didn’t believe in hell anymore. And by hell, she meant an awful place God would send people to suffer forever if they didn’t believe the right things about God or live it out in the right way. And her grandma had told her something like: if you don’t believe in hell, then that’s where God’s sending you. 

Which is maybe this awful thing to say to your grandchild, but kind of ironic too. Like God’s going to send to this place that you do not believe exists. Like, what do you do with that? 

And as I met people not just at this conference but amongst my friends, here in this church, with experiences like this, with just enormous tension if they question their beliefs, I feel really sad for one. 

And I think this isn’t what Jesus called people to at all either. In fact, the core of his message was to change your mind and believe. And not just as a one time thing, but as a way of moving forward with God. Be open and try to trust me. Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news.

So maybe the first thing we can say when we say “I believe” is not at all about an anxious relationship to facts, opinions, and theories. No, belief is about trust. It’s about who you listen to, and where you go for good news. Jesus says:

belief is trust. It’s trusting that I can show you what God is like, and I can show you good news. 

For me, this is how I can be a pastor even while my faith continues to evolve and grow. Because saying “I believe” isn’t saying “I know I’m right” or “I’m never allowed to change my mind.” It’s saying I’m continuing to trust Jesus and I’m more likely to trust people and ideas that sound like and look like Jesus. 

Belief is trust.

Secondly, belief is shared.

One of the early stories in Mark is about four people who take their friend who can not walk to Jesus for help, and Jesus speaks to their friend’s physical condition but also to the state of his soul. And in that story, we get this:

Mark 2:5 

5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven!”

I love how Jesus is moved by their faith, by the hope and love of their friends. Faith isn’t a solo experience, it’s a team sport. Which is why sometimes the creed begins “I believe” but just as often, it is read, “We believe.”

Belief is shared. It’s not just about what I think or who I trust. It’s to whom and to what I am connected. It’s about the community and the tradition to  whom I am aligned. 

Early in my experience of following Jesus, I would have told you my belief was a personal decision I’d made about God. I read the Bible and prayed on my own regularly before I had any rich experience of faith community. 

But even then, I look back and see that I thought God loved me and was worth my attention because people I had loved and trusted had told me so or had shown me that was so. It was people who loved Jesus who taught me what forgiveness looks like, what accepting myself looks like, and who keep drawing me back to my best self and my boldest hopes. 

In saying we believe in the God revealed in Christ, we’re not saying we’re proud of everything in the Christian tradition, a lot of which – past and present – is absolute trash. We’re not even saying we believe in everything we hear at our own local church.

But we are saying that the Jesus tradition is one we want to be connected to, and that the teaching of Jesus is one to which we want to be aligned. 

We’re saying we want to be aligned with the good news that we matter to God – that God has decided to never be God without us. We’re saying we want to be connected to a faith that says all people are God’s children, and that God’s children are beautiful, inherently dignified, and loved no matter what we do or who we are. We’re saying that to want to be accountable to a faith that teaches that judgement and pride are toxic and that loving our neighbor and loving our enemy is the height of holiness and the path to joy for us all. 

Participation in a Christian community and tradition and set of commitments shouldn’t mean we need to sign off a bunch of content we say we believe – this church doesn’t require that and I don’t think God does either. But it does say we’d like to share in a community that’s welcoming and learning and practicing the good news of Jesus. 

So belief is trust. And belief is shared. You ready for two more? (Ha, I’m going to assume yes, since I can’t hear you.) Belief is also openness. 

One time while Jesus was out in a fishing boat, crossing a lake with his students, Jesus slept while a storm got worse and worse. After they woke him up, he stood up in the boat, spoke some words, and the water calmed. No matter how many times they told the story, no matter how weird it seemed, they all remembered it exactly like this.

And they remembered too that Jesus turned to them and asked:

Mark 4:40 

Jesus asked them, “Why are you frightened? Don’t you have faith yet?”

I don’t think Jesus is yelling. He calmed a storm, he doesn’t want to start another one. I think he’s really wondering:

what is there to fear? Can’t you remember that there is more in this world than you see or understand? Haven’t you learned that with the help of God and friends, you will have enough? You’ll be alright.

Philosophers and theologians talk a lot about the disenchanted world we live in, how before modernity – the age of reason, all our scientific discoveries which continue to teach us about the size of the universe and how to invent these vaccines that make us so very happy right now – before all that, the whole universe seemed enchanted, magical. God and angels and demons and spirits were responsible for everything we didn’t understand. 

Now that we can explain so much more, some of us have reduced the universe, reduced the world to only that which we can measure and apprehend with our senses. A disenchanted world seems to squeeze out God and to render faith useless or quaint. 

But there are more and more scientists and philosophers and theologians who are like: wait, this doesn’t entirely make sense either. Because there are a lot of things that we can’t measure and apprehend with our senses that are really important to us – things like cause and effect, and the mathematical precision by which so much in the universe operates, and the nature of our consciousness, and the behavior of subatomic particles, and the beautiful and remarkable directions evolution has taken. There’s a whole talk here for another day, but there is still so much more than we can seek or understand. 

There are a lot of bad arguments for the existence of God but a pretty good one is the nearly universal human experience of what we might call the holy – something or someone outside of ourselves that is beautiful or powerful or loving or true beyond our explanation.

Belief is an open mind to who and what is behind this. And belief in the God revealed in Christ is the openness that this God isn’t just a far-off force but is with us all and the rest of creation, intimately and near. Belief is an openness that this same God loves us and is wooing us toward all the very best possibilities. Belief tells us that even with this God, our plans may fail, life will disappoint us in some ways, and we may suffer horribly, but we’ll never be alone and never be outside God’s loving attention and care. 

A number of you have asked me what I did during my month off. And I’ve mostly given boring answers. Like I took walks, and hung out with my family, and read some books, and mostly didn’t do all that much at all. And this is all true. But another answer is that I talked with God about not being in control of my life, and accepting the freedom of that’s just the way it is. 

Like most people in middle age, I’ve come into awareness of what I love and am proud of in my life, but also into awareness of some of my own limitations and sorrows – many of which I tell you about, a few of which I hold more privately. I’ve found that what God is doing in all this awareness and acceptance is inviting me to make peace with not being in control and asking me: Steve, why are you afraid? 

I heard an interview recently with Nobel Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman. He was talking about what he calls System 1 thinking – which is fast, intuitive, and unreflective. It’s shaped by our character and genetics and experience and the stories we believe and all that. And then there is System 2 thinking, which is slow and deliberate, shaped by active use of logic and choice at all. And Kahneman makes the point that we exaggerate the importance of our System 2 thinking, when a lot of this thinking we do is really just justification and defense of where our emotions and instinct and intuition take us. 

That seems true to me, and so I’ve wondered if part of faith is taking these beliefs that we hold in our Stage 2 thinking – like we believe that God is with us, and we believe that God is good, and we believe that with the help of God and friends, there will be enough and we’ll be OK, even when we’re not in control, and we believe that more love is the answer and all that. And faith is welcoming habits and prayer and hope that all this will become System 1 for us, that it’ll become more and more our habit and intuition in the world – to be people of faith, hope, and love.

Belief is this kind of openness to God, and a lot of what I did the other month was hope and pray and tell myself and God that I want more of that. Perhaps you do too. 

And lastly, and briefly, belief changes. 

One of the most moving stories in Mark is this time a parent was desperate for Jesus’ help with his kid. Jesus asked about the man’s faith and the this:

Mark 9:24 

24 At that the boy’s father cried out, “I have faith; help my lack of faith!”

I have a little faith, but not a lot. Can you help?

That was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for God and it can be good enough for us. 

There’s no set amount of faith you need to have to believe in God with a community. Belief is trust. It’s shared. It’s openness. And it changes. Belief can lessen and deepen, shrink and grow. Belief isn’t about arriving at a particular level or knowledge base or degree of certainty. It’s about engagement and staying engaged. It’s dynamic, not static. It’s not about a thing you have, but a relationship you’re in.

My invitation for you this summer friends, as you navigate this stage of pandemic or post-pandemic life, is to let your faith be open, let it deepen, grow and find its roots and expression in your life. We’ll be here to find the way together. 

Next week, we’ll talk about the first thing the creed says about God – the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth – and how that’s the best and worst stuff we can say about God, depending on what we mean.

Let’s pray.

Listening to Our Hearts

For this week’s Events and Happenings, click “Download PDF.”

For the Easter spiritual practice led by Steve Watson, click HERE.

Good morning and Happy Easter to you.

I’m pastor Lydia and I’ll be sharing the Easter message with you this morning. Let me read the text, and pray for us before we begin.

Luke 24:13-35

13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles[a] from Jerusalem.

14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.

15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them;

16 but they were kept from recognizing him.

17 He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” They stood still, their faces downcast.

18 One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

19 “What things?” he asked. “About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.

20 The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him;

21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.

22 In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning

23 but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive.

24 Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”

25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

28 As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther.

29 But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.

30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.

31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.

32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

33 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together

34 and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.”

35 Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.

Let’s pray:

Resurrected Lord, open our eyes now that we may see you. Would you burn our hearts up as we listen? Speak to us, not through my lips, but through each of our hearts. Would your Spirit of resurrection anoint each and every heart gathered here this moment and ignite in us the truth that cannot be shaken, love that cannot be moved. Teach us we pray, show us yourself, your holy presence, that we may know and experience in our bodies now, the power of new life and resurrection we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. 

Things are looking uppity up y’all! Vaccines are making their way. There’s Spring sun and flowers. I even saw a bunny the other day on my walk, literally hop hopping through my neighbor’s yard. And, Christ is risen! 

But to get here, man have we had a year. To get here to resurrection, boy have we seen some death and losses and grief. 

With the year we’ve had, with all that you’ve seen, if you’re a bit skeptical, I get it. Even with the vaccines, masks are probably here to stay for a while. And I’ve learned when I moved to Boston, don’t get too settled into Spring even in April. We could still have another snow! And this past year we’ve gotten some wake up calls about racial injustice, and it’s been good to see the awareness and conversations opening up. But I know that for many of us, who’ve seen the old sturdy systems of injustice slow to change at work, sometimes it can get tiring, asking for change, when all you’ve seen is more of the same perpetuated and reinforced.

So what do we do now? How are we to move forward? 

Maybe this is how the two people in our text today felt. The trauma of events that led up to the arrest of Jesus, how he was betrayed by their own leaders, who handed him over to be murdered by the state. And after that gruesome death, they experienced so much grief that their bodies ached, tears hurled on, the community distressed. And then, after three days, they heard rumors that he was alive!? Like an ex who broke your heart calling you back to say they want to get back together, and you’re like wait what? They were distraught and confused, not sure what to believe. 

A side pondering on the characters. The text doesn’t say much about who these two people were. It mentions one of their names once, Cleopas but that’s it, nothing else about this person, not even whether it was a man or a woman. I always imagined that these were two men. Well probably because there are drawings of this scene in that manner and because any unknown character is usually assumed to be a guy. I noticed that I do this even when I’m harmlessly playing with my daughter, a lego block she has personified and feeding, I ask her “what’s he eating?” or a water bottle she’s putting on a truck I ask, “where’s he going?”

I mention this because I’m a female pastor and the excavation of women characters that were present and vital to the story is important to me. I don’t mean just making up female characters, but at the least not assuming every character is male. In fact, when I looked closer into the text, it never once said that they were male. I just assumed so. The text only refers to them as them. In fact, some say that it would’ve been more likely to be a couple, which probably was a woman and a man then, traveling together rather than two men. Just giving us new eyes to imagine the text as we read. But also I like how the text just refers to the two as “they/them/theirs” the whole time too actually. 

Alright back to the story. So. The two of them, they were going to a village called Emmaus.

Why? Why were they going away from Jerusalem, where everything had happened? Why were they walking away?

Maybe because it hurt too much. Maybe they were ready to call it quits from all that they thought and hoped. Maybe they needed a break from all the drama. Jerusalem was where everything had gone down and they were leaving. I mean I get it. Sometimes when we’re afraid, we retreat. Especially in the midst of great change or uncertainty, it’s easy to step away. Understandably, these two were trying literally to get some distance from it all. 

Has that ever happened to you? Where for some reason, maybe you faced a loss too difficult, grief and anger too consuming, that you walked not toward God, but away? Have you ever felt so hurt that you didn’t have the energy or vision or hope to stay in it and the only thing you could do and needed was to get away? Have you ever felt like you wanted to turn away from God?

I actually think we feel this throughout our faith journey. Faith is not just something you have. Like, “I have faith”, But the process of not believing and struggling, walking away and finding ourselves at the crossroads, IS doing faith. 

Our story tells us that when these two found themselves on the road to Emmaus, away from the center of all the drama, that there, right there on the dirt road they were trekking on, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them, asking,

“What are you discussing?”

What are you thinking about? What’s on your mind? Jesus asks.

And when they answered with despair, Jesus asked again, probing, “what thing?” Jesus came alongside them, curious, asking them questions, listening to what was on their hearts. Their hearts were broken. Their hearts were barely hanging on. And the first two things he said to them were, open questions. 

How would you answer Jesus on your walk today? Whether it’s on a speedy brisk walk to figure things out, a churning mind on a hike, or a downcast barely-got-out-the-door stroll, can you imagine Jesus coming alongside you and asking you,

“hey what are you discussing amongst yourselves?” “what’s going on in your community?” “What’s your heart holding and contemplating on?” 

When my husband and I go on walks together, we say it almost every time. I stop us and say “listen!” It’s a bird or the water stream nearby or children laughing. “Listen!” and it brings us back from whatever momentum we were on before, just going and busy, to pause and take in. Listen. 

Let me tell you a story.  A few years ago I met a young man named Shayok. He was fresh out of college, young charismatic energy, dark-skinned, and had an infectious laugh. We started having these meetings (one-on-ones they call them in the community organizing world) where we would meet up and we’d try to tell each other stories that shaped us. Stories that at some point maybe changed you, or solidified you. The story that left an imprint. Stories that broke us and motivated us. 

We were sharing these stories because we were trying to find ways to work together towards making a change. But what change? How? He shared about walking around near Harvard campus and passing by a homeless guy that made him stop in his tracks to wonder –all this prestige and power, right next to this guy. But he didn’t just tell me what happened or what he knows about the inequity and discrepancy in his mind, but how he felt. It made him angry. 

A year ago he started telling me about his dreams of trying to build some power and coalition locally in Cambridge, which is why he kept his relationship with me, a pastor in Cambridge. He was developing relationships with other leaders in the area like the pastor of Outdoor Church of Cambridge and leaders at the Unhoused Advocacy Group.

By April 2021, at the height of Covid, something was coming to Shayok’s attention and his friends. With all the public places closing, cafes, libraries, the homeless community was suddenly at a loss of bathrooms. Bathrooms where they would’ve washed their hands. Bathrooms where you do the usual stuff and get water. They all halted to an abrupt stop, especially at a time when it was needed the most. Shayok shared with me a recording of one person’s experience. It was a recording at the Outdoor Church asking about access for the homeless and sharing that..

there is only one bathroom for all of us from the Arlington line to Central Square…

Shayok rounded us up together. All the relationships that he had been developing in the last few years…it resulted in a series of letters being sent to the City Manager and Mayor of Cambridge, signed by 56 institutions (including us, Reservoir Church), strongly urging the city to provide more washing stations, bathrooms, shelter beds. It took some messy Zoom meetings, and more letters to sometimes no response but I’m going to skip to the end of the story cause I don’t have a lot of time left. 

I got an email a year later, March 2021 from Shayok saying:

Our collective advocacy has resulted in the expansion of public bathrooms including in Davis Square and Alewife, the institution of shower facilities outside First Church Cambridge, and notably, the creation of the 50-bed Green St. Shelter run by Solutions at Work, Inc., which has helped address the severe shortage of shelter beds. 

Which by the way, we’ve had an asylum seeker come through our congregation that a few of us have sweetly been serving for months, ended up living in that very Green St. Shelter. Although now, their story continues with twists and turns. And actually the latest is, we really need your prayer for this person, who’s currently at the hospital, I last heard. I won’t share the details but that’s the honest update. So it’s not a total happy ending to all this story…The stories of death and resurrection continue on. 

I wanted to share this story with you all because it started with listening. It started with our hearts burning for the stories of the homeless, and our hearts burning for this asylum seeker, and it moved us into and through these stories towards actively finding life and actively engaging hope in these stories. In fact through listening, we joined the story and became the conduits of life and hope, shaping these stories towards the arch of justice. 

This morning at the Sunrise gathering we read when Mary first realized Jesus’ body was missing. He asked her,

“Why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” 

Why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for? Shayok and I ask these kinds of questions: what is the world as it is, that you’re crying about, and the world as it should be, that you want to look for and find? Why are you crying and what are you looking for? 

Friends, I want to remind you that Jesus is listening. And when Jesus walked along the two that day, when they arrived to Emmaus, they urged him, “Stay with us!” stay with us!

And as Jesus ascended into heaven after his resurrection, he promised to them in

Luke 24:49

49 “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

Jesus left us with the Holy Spirit. That spirit is among us and with us even now. The power of life, resurrection, and hope– we have been CLOTHED with the power from on high. 

Do you want to invite Jesus to stay with you? Will you share your story and listen to other’s stories? Will you let your hearts burn, even if it hurts, with the stories that arise within us and the stories we hear? Even if those stories are ones of disbelief and walking away? Will you stay with us? 

We’d like to invite you next coming weeks to Listen to the Spirit among us, and ask one another as Jesus did, coming alongside one another saying, “What are you discussing?” “What things are burning our heart? Why are you crying? What are you looking for?

Throughout April and May our church’s Faith Into Action, a group of us who care about putting our faith into action through organizing toward public good and justice, and the Reservoir’s Equity Diversity Inclusion (REDI) team are partnering together to host Listening Sessions in our community and groups.

 Listening to our stories. And that through listening, our collective hearts will burn and that maybe we will stop in our tracks, turn around, and go back to the source and assemble together to say, “It is true! Jesus is risen! There is new hope and new life!” And live into that resurrection reality together. 

Would you join me in prayer…

Jesus, our teacher, Living God, May we boldly gather around tables (or over zoom) breaking bread and sharing with one another, that you may open our ears and open our hearts, that we may see and recognize Jesus, right there in our midst, We pray, in your precious and holy name, Amen. 

Walking Toward the World as It Should Be

For this week’s Events and Happenings, click “Download PDF.”

 

Happy Valentine’s Day, friends who are celebrating that today.

 

And a happy Lunar New Year to all you are celebrating that beautiful holiday this weekend as well. We are ushering in the year of the ox, which happens to be my birth year, and we are closing the books on the year of the rat. Rat to ox, I’m hoping that is a good portent for us all. 

 

In my household, apart from some delicious Chinese new year food, the big news this past week was we sent our daughter back to college. I drove to Philadelphia with her and back to send her away again. And what surprised me was that for me at least, dropping my kid off at college for the second time was a dagger to the heart more than the first time was. The first time I had this illusion that she was still my kiddo, still under our care, just on break, I don’t know, going to a really long sleepaway camp or something. But this time, it was clear to me that we’re way past that point. We have an adult child, starting to make her own way in the world, and there is no going back.

 

It was with this in mind that I was listening to a theology podcast with Rev. Dr. Monica Coleman. Monica Coleman’s work sits at the intersection of feminism, African American studies, mental health, and a kind of theology called process theology, which believes all of life is about change and relationships. 

 

And Monica was talking about the constancy of change, and I’m like… yeah, my babies just keep growing older, and I just keep growing older with them. And she’s talking about how change always involves loss, and I’m like, yeah, I feel like I just lost one of my kids. I feel like I’m losing a piece of myself. There’s a psychologist in our congregation who likes to tell me that adolescence and kids growing up is really about the dissolution of the family unit. You know, a kind of nuclear family break up. You know who you are, and I do not want you reaching out to tell me that today. I know it. 

 

Loss from change, all manner of downsides to the world changing, are central features of our lives. 

 

So I’m tearing up a little as I’m driving along the New Jersey Turnpike. 

 

But then the Rev. Dr. Monica Coleman says this other thing about process thinking, which is that change doesn’t just involve loss and suffering. Change also always opens up new creative possibilities. And from a process theology perspective, God is with all of creation amidst every change, always offering us new creative possibilities. This is who God is, this is what God does. 

 

And I’m thinking, yes, in this sad transition in my life as a parent, there are new creative possibilities. There are new ways to love my children, new ways to invest in their lives and my legacy, new ways to know pride and joy as a father. Even in this year of so many losses, my faith and my experience tell me God is with me for creative possibility here, to find new ways to live a joyful, purposeful, satisfying life as long as I have life to live. 

 

This year for all of us friends has been full of loss. We’ve been living through a kind of master class in just how messed up the world is. Grace and I took a walk yesterday, as we often do, and I look back on what we were talking about. We were talking about a horrible, lurid scandal of a Christian leader whose books we read when we were younger. Turns out the whole time he was preaching about the glories of Christian faith and its virtues, he was sexually assaulting women around the world. And that got us talking about the bad behavior of a number of people in public life. And we were talking about why schools still aren’t open and how badly our country has messed up our whole response to this pandemic, and how angry it makes us that kids and elderly have born the brunt of this in a lot of ways. And talking about elderly people got us talking about the rash of hate crimes recently against elderly Asian Americans in California. All this, in one walk, before coming home to news about the impeachment trial. 

 

I mean again, has not this year been a master class in revealing how miserably screwed up is the world as it is. 

 

But here we are, seven weeks before Easter Sunday, and we are set to begin the Christian season called Lent, our bridge from winter into spring. Lent is our shared season of spiritual formation – of trying to move closer to God. It’s a time when we actively invite God to shape us into more whole people, walking together toward a more loving, just future. 

 

Today we talk about a way we can do Lent this year, how in this messed up, broken year of ours, we can be open to how the Spirit of God is present for new, creative possibilities. 

 

Every year in Lent, we’re guided by some scriptures, and we’ll be in the 

prophets this year, in particular what are called the minor prophets, minor not because they’re not important, but because their books are shorter. There are 12 of these minor prophets, and we’ll read parts of many of them. 

 

Today, we’ll read words from a different prophet, the one with the longest book, Isaiah. And we’ll look at God’s interest in people rediscovering what is important, and having the desire, the power, the capacity to walk toward better lives and a better world together. 

 

Let me read this bit from the 11th chapter of Isaiah. 

 

Isaiah 11:1-9 (CEB)

11 A shoot will grow up from the stump of Jesse;

    a branch will sprout from his roots.

2 The Lord’s spirit will rest upon him,

    a spirit of wisdom and understanding,

    a spirit of planning and strength,

    a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.

3 He will delight in fearing the Lord.

He won’t judge by appearances,

    nor decide by hearsay.

4 He will judge the needy with righteousness,

    and decide with equity for those who suffer in the land.

He will strike the violent with the rod of his mouth;

    by the breath of his lips he will kill the wicked.

5 Righteousness will be the belt around his hips,

    and faithfulness the belt around his waist.

6 The wolf will live with the lamb,

    and the leopard will lie down with the young goat;

    the calf and the young lion will feed together,

    and a little child will lead them.

7 The cow and the bear will graze.

    Their young will lie down together,

    and a lion will eat straw like an ox.

8 A nursing child will play over the snake’s hole;

    toddlers will reach right over the serpent’s den.

9 They won’t harm or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain.

    The earth will surely be filled with the knowledge of the Lord,

    just as the water covers the sea.

 

This sounds like a good place, doesn’t it? The prophets have these amazing pictures they paint of a peaceful and just world – wolves and lambs sharing naptime on the ground, wine flowing from the hillsides, parents pulling their kids aside for a lesson, saying you know what you’ve got to understand, kid: Life is fair. Always.

 

When is this? Where is this? Of what future do the prophets speak?

 

Is this heaven? That’s what a lot of people think, that the prophets see really far into the future. And sometimes, they have a vision of our perfectly wonderful afterlife. 

 

There’s a little problem in this interpretation, though, which is that when Isaiah and the other prophets were written, most Jews didn’t really believe in the afterlife yet. Or they had only the fuzziest picture of what it might be like, and that picture wasn’t so great. 

 

So, it’s kind of ridiculous to think the prophets would be writing about this place they weren’t so sure even existed. Now, that’s what I believed about these passages most of my life too, so I’m ridiculous. 

 

But that’s not what’s going on here. The prophets see really well, they do, but they were always more interested in seeing the present than the future. And when they paint these pictures of a beautifully abundant, peaceful, just world that we all flourish in, they are painting a picture of this world the way it should be. 

 

In our organizing work with Greater Boston Interfaith, we use these two phrases a lot – the world as it is, and the world as it should be. 

 

The prophets see the world as it is. They feel what God feels, and they see what God sees. And the prophets cry out about so much that is wrong in the world as it is – our bankrupt religion, our inequitable economy, the way we say respect your elders and children are the future, but again and again treat them both like trash. The prophets see all the ways we do violence, making safety and security the luxury of the privileged, not the basic condition of life that they should be. The prophets see all this, as this year at least, we increasingly do as well. 

 

But the prophets also point us toward God’s creative possibilities for the world as it should be. 

 

In this passage, there’s a picture of what leaders should be like – humble, cultivating wisdom before God, just, fair, equitable. The leader here is a king in the line of the great king David, son of Jesse. Chrisitans have believed that Jesus embraced the call to be this kind of leader of humanity, to teach us and guide us toward the world as it should be, world where kids can flourish because the threats that are with are dealt with, a world where the presence of justice makes for security and peace, a world where people aren’t harmed or destroyed. 

 

The prophets believe this kind of world isn’t a fantasy. And it’s not just possible in the afterlife, it’s a world that with the help of God and one another, we can see into being. 

 

We’re going to read the prophets this Lent because prophets are people who come so close to God, who feel what God feels and see what God sees, so they know what is important. 

 

I had a taste of praying with the prophets this past week. I was on the phone with one of my best friends, and we were commiserating over the struggles of our children. Their kids have had struggle after struggle with uncaring, unreasonable adults who refuse to put kids first. And my kids, or at least my boys, have spent more than 10% of their life they can remember stuck at home staring at computer screens. All because in this country, we care more about our personal liberties – and our rights to party or gamble or drink maskless than we do about our elders or our kids. 

 

Did I mention I am incensed by this?

 

And as I prayed with my friend, a line from the prophets came to me, words of the prophet Joel, words we’ll read in the 6th week of Lent, where God, in the context of pouring out God’s Spirit into us, says: I will restore the years the locust has eaten. 

 

I see the year of your loss. I feel the weight of what’s been taken from you. And I want to restore that to you.

 

And I’m praying into this hope, praying God, restore to our kids what’s been taken from them. Because in the world as it should be, we don’t sacrifice what our kids need to get what we want. 

 

And even though I don’t know how God will answer that prayer in my life, what creative possibilities will open up for my kids or my friends’ kids or for how we raise them as parents, but praying into that centered and grounded me, got me focused again on what’s most important in my life. And that helped me see differently the choices I’m making while I’m raising teenagers, and helped me focus a little more on the choices I want to make too.

 

Even when we’ve lost so much, even when the world as it is looks bleak, the prophets help us see what is important. 

 

They know which way to go. And they are the ones who show us the way. 

 

This Lent, we’ll walk to the prophets as they show us the way toward what’s most important. As they encourage us to walk toward the world as it should be. 

 

Amos, Hosea, Micah, Jonah, Habakkuk, and friends, they’re all going to suggest different aspects of what’s most important, and they’ll show us the way each a little differently. 

 

But today, as in invitation to this season, we’ll return where we left of with  Isaiah, and the leader who shot out of the line of Jesse, who for our purposes I’ll call Jesus. 

 

Isaiah ends this vision, saying: They won’t harm or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain. That mountain being the city of Jerusalem, whose light, Isaiah says, will extend to the whole world. And then this:

 

The earth will surely be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, just as water covers the sea. 

 

This knowledge of God – it’s a result of all things being made whole, for sure. When the world is as it should be, we know the goodness of God. We can see it. We can taste it. 

 

But Isaiah along with all the other prophets tells us that the knowledge of God is the way there as well. Deep knowledge of the true, living, life-giving God is the way. 

 

Because the knowledge of God shows us what righteousness and justice and love and mercy all look like. If we will humbly listen, God shows us the way the world should be. And the knowledge of God shows us we are known, we are seen, we are loved by an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-loving God of endless creative possibilities. This God tells us we are enough and we are made whole. And that empowers the desire and capacity to make this world whole. 

 

Religion, Chrisitianity in particular, has a pretty mixed track record of getting people here. We see it vividly these days in our messed our world as it is, shoddy, unloving, unjust, un-lifegiving forms of Christianity upholding, justifying the world as it is, failing to ground us in what’s important, failing to show us the way there. 

 

That’s why we go back to the prophets. They see what God sees and feel what God feels. They tell us the truth about ourselves and about God. They know what’s important. And they show us the way there. 

 

This Lent, friends, I invite you to step back a bit from the world as it is. Interrupt your life in some way. Traditionally, Christians have interrupted their lives in this season through fasting and giving. They stop consuming something, and they get a little more generous. 

 

You may not be up for either of these things. You may be incredibly short on money and have no more to give. This year’s been hard on some of our wallets. Or you may feel this whole year has been one big fast, that you’ve given up so much, you don’t want to give up anything else. If you feel that way, that’s OK. God understands. You can skip this step.

 

But if you feel that you could use a little interruption from life as it is, to find your way back toward God and toward what’s most important, you could fast from one meal a week, or you could fast from eating one day a week. Or you could fast from netflix, or from some other form of media. 

 

And of course, there are endless ways to be more generous. 

 

If you fast or give this Lent, it’s not to make you a better or more religious person, and it is not to get God’s attention – you have that already. It’s to interrupt the pattern of the way things are and make room for something new. 

 

And the first step of something new in Lent, the first way we walk toward the world as it should be is by adding in to our lives, or adding back a daily practice of study, prayer, and reflection. This is finding our way toward a daily spiritual practice in which we’re “filled with the knowledge of the Lord….” and we walk on the path toward becoming more whole people who can do our part to make the world more whole as well. 

 

Our team has set you up with a really delightful way to do that this Lent. We have a daily guide that begins a week from tomorrow. It’ll be on our website under the sermon and stories tab, there’s a Lent section where we’ll have this year’s guide. And we’ve bound and printed the guide for you as well. If you pick it up this afternoon at our church sanctuary, you’ll also get a bag with the ashes you need for this Wednesday’s Ash Wednesday service and all the other aides to your spiritual practice Ivy showed you earlier. 

 

I’m really proud of and grateful for our team’s work on Lent this year. I think it’s powerful and beautiful and I hope you’ll participate. 

 

These past 11 months have been hard, friends. They’ve been full of losses common to us all, and I see and hear you – many of us have had our own particular losses as well. We’ve seen so much of what’s wrong and awful about the world as it is. Let’s take the weeks ahead of us, and open our hearts and minds and our time and attention to the living and life-giving God, who can teach us what’s important, who can show us the way there, and who can make us whole people who make the world a little more whole too.

 

Pray with me please. 

Three Ways Jesus Has a Growth Mindset for Us All

For this week’s Events and Happenings, click “Download PDF.”

For this week’s spiritual practice “Listening, Hearing” led by Ivy Anthony, Click HERE.

What a year it’s been already. As my friend Linda wrote rather hilariously on Facebook, if you have gotten out of bed, brushed your teeth, and have not instigated, committed, abetted, or cheered on insurrection, you are rocking 2021. Way to go!

 

Seriously, what a week it’s been. A Confederate flag flying in the Capitol, a gallows set up outside, face after face of angry white men’s rage, Christian slogans on posters lying on the ground next to empty liquor bottles. It’s a lot. 

 

On days like this when we’re troubled by dramatic world events, I can put a lot of pressure on myself to say the perfect things. But the truth is I found this past week’s storming of the Capitol as disturbing as I’m sure you did. Our minds, our hearts have been racing this week.

 

I did put out a statement on Friday morning, which I hope you read. You can still find it on our blog and social media. It’s important to speak with clarity, I know. But I’ll admit that I’ve been on the same ride you all have been on this past year, and it’s been a lot. It’s hard to always know the perfect thing to say.

 

So today, I’m going to do what we’d planned to do. I’m going to take us to the feet of Jesus, our teacher, who has wisdom and guidance and hope and life for us all. And I’m going to trust that the words and presence of Jesus will give us what we need for this moment.

 

But first, let’s pray together. 

 

I used to be an English teacher, and I started out with 8th graders, and mostly kids whose skills in reading and writing were a little underdeveloped compared to many other kids their age. And at first, it seemed like the biggest barrier to learning for my students was the “I don’t want to” attitude. As in: I don’t want to read that book. Well, how about this one? No. How about that one? No. How about any book you choose? No, really. Sometimes the “no” was said out loud like that, but a lot of the time, it was just on the face. Or in the body.

 

Have you been around middle schoolers recently? Were you ever 13? Then you know what I’m talking about. 

 

But as I got to know my students, I’d find that if you scratch under the service of “I don’t want to” you’d find the real issue was “I can’t.” Kids didn’t want to read out loud because they were embarrassed by how they sounded. Or they didn’t want to read books because they felt they couldn’t understand them, or couldn’t relate to them. The same with writing: kids would tell me all the time: I’m just not good at that. And they’d point to or name somebody else, and say: he’s the one, or she’s the one who’s the writer. 

 

I was sure they were wrong. My most important mentor in learning to teach middle school English was a teacher I’d never met, an expert named Nancie Atwell who taught there is no such thing as a good reader or a good writer. Language and communication are pretty central to the human experience, she insisted. And there are people who read and who write, and do so in ways that are meaningful to them, and give them opportunities for deliberate practice, and these are people who become readers and writers over time. But if you don’t read and don’t write in ways that are accessible and meaningful to you, then of course, your skills and experience won’t progress. 

 

These different attitudes about reading and writing and about learning and ability in general were later given names by the psychologist Carol Dweck. She’s studied and written about a spectrum of mindsets about intelligence and learning that have become kind of famous. She called the ends of these spectrums fixed mindset and growth mindset. 

 

Fixed Mindset: Believing our qualities are fixed traits which are hard to change.

 

These are the people who say “I can’t do this” and think that isn’t likely to change. And that attitude becomes self-fulfilling. These are the people who think certain others have the ability, not me, which again, makes it hard for that to change. 

 

I know I feel this way about my life and about the world sometimes – it is what it is. Things are what they are. In the classroom, though, students with fixed mindsets raise their hands less, engage less, receive lower grades, and take longer to recover from setbacks. So a fixed mindset isn’t just a self-fulfilling path to stagnation, it leads to lower levels of resilience, engagement, and hope. 

 

Now Dweck contrasts this with what she has labelled a growth mindset. 

 

Growth Mindset: Believing that effort and energy over time can lead to growth and improvement.

 

A growth mindset says: I may or may not be able to do this today, but I can try and learn and grow. With effort and help and perseverance, I will change and improve. 

 

My big challenge as a teacher was to cultivate this growth mindset about reading and writing in my students, to help them believe in the possibility of their own growth, so they would engage, take risks, keep trying, and see the results that come with this approach. 

 

Now in a year that’s been full of isolation and discouragement, and in a time of history where so much that is broken is being revealed for what it is, I believe that the cultivation of a growth mindset is critical to our joy, to our flourishing, even to our survival. 

 

We want to live with hope. And we want to put in the work to help secure growth and better futures for ourselves, for others, and for the world at large. Growth mindset. 

 

And I think that when we listen to the stories Jesus tells us, we find that one thing he is encouraging is a growth mindset, believing in a present and future that holds healing and renewal and fruitful growth. 

 

Let’s listen to one of Jesus’ stories, where he talks about why he tells stories in the first place. 

 

Mark 4:1-2, 10-23 (NRSV)

4 Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 He began to teach them many things in parables… 9 And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

10 When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11 And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; 12 in order that

‘they may indeed look, but not perceive,

    and may indeed listen, but not understand;

so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’”

13 And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. 17 But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, 19 but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. 20 And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.”

21 He said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand? 22 For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. 23 Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

I chose this passage for today because we’re going to listen to the stories Jesus tells us, the stories called parables, over the next few weeks. And this seems to be like a keystone story for Jesus, one that helps us understand why he teaches the way he does. So we’re starting with this little story about seeds and growth. 

 

And I’ve got three things to say about this one today. The first is that:

  • Jesus is more gardener than carpenter

 

I get this line from a book about raising kids, a book called The Gardner and The Carpenter by Alison Gopnik. The idea is that carpenters have a scheme in mind of something they want to build – usually a pretty specific scheme, down to exact measurements. And you get material and turn it into the thing you have in mind. As Gopnik says: Messiness and variability are a carpenter’s enemies; precision and control are her allies. Measure twice, cut once. 

 

And the idea is that this is a great way to build a house, but not so great a way to raise a human being. People aren’t just commodities that become anything you want them to. They have their own natures that need noticing and honoring. 

 

So while a carpenter shapes inanimate objects entirely according to the carpenter’s own will, a gardener supports animate objects – life – as they grow, according to their own internal nature. 

 

With plants, a gardener tends to the soil, makes room, weeds and all that, and then delights as the mix of predictable and surprising as living things grow. With children, the parent or teacher gardener doesn’t try to control kids according to a pre-set pattern, but helps them grow and flourish each according to their own nature and interests.

 

And Jesus implies that God – not just here but throughout his stories he tells – that God does much the same. Though Jesus was – we believe – literally trained as a carpenter, he tells stories about seeds and plants and other living things. Jesus lets us know that God wants the earth, and wants humanity in particular, to grow and flourish – thirty, sixty, hundredfold – immensely.

 

And what is all this growth? Well, Jesus doesn’t get specific in this story, but there’s a reference to old prophecy, when in exasperation, he’s like people are looking and listening, but if only they would perceive and understand, they would turn and be forgiven. Or, in the original context of what Jesus is quoting, they would turn and be healed. Which includes forgiveness but is more than that as well. 

 

Here’s the interesting with God and all this growth and healing God is encouraging. God isn’t making any of this happen. God isn’t controlling us all like a carpenter picks up tools and nails and just builds his thing. God’s a gardener. God lets everything grow. Elsewhere, Jesus implies God doesn’t even like weeding – God’s going to to plant and water and nourish and whisper goodness and direction to us all and God’s going to continue to let us grow as we want. For good or ill. 

 

See, to drop the metaphor for a minute, God’s project is not like a carpenter’s. God doesn’t control what God made. God is love, and love can’t control. Messiness is not God’s enemy. All living things, people included, have this glorious freedom to in part set our own course. 

 

God has direction. God went through all the trouble to become a person, after all, to tell us stories, to teach us, to inspire and heal, to walk with us, to suffer with us. Jesus, in this parable, is like: God always has a word for each of us. God has a path of abundant life available to us all, at all times. But it is always up to us to take it or not. 

 

And, as we know, many of us don’t much of the time. This is why it shouldn’t shock us when people do horrible things, even people we thought we’re on our team or share our faith. Look no further than Washington this week. People are attracted to lies and conspiracy. People are attracted to power. Fear and resentment often burrow deeper in the heart than love and hospitality. 

 

Many of our gardens are in bad shape. We look around and it’s like, man: this world is an unkempt garden full of toxins and trash. We have a lot of work to do. God won’t do it for us. But the Spirit of God through the words of Jesus says to us as Jesus did in Galilee: I’m speaking. Look and perceive. Listen and understand. Turn, come here, talk it out with me, and be healed. And together, let’s grow something new. Let’s grow something new.

 

Secondly:

  • Jesus is interested in engagement, not performance.

 

Jesus does this really funny thing with his teaching. He tells a pretty generic story about 1st century farming. Seeds flying everywhere. Most of it not really taking or growing or bearing fruit very well, except the parts where it does and then, wow, look at that growth! And then Jesus is like: listen up, pay attention, this is important, and takes a seat, sees what happens.

 

And it turns out is he’s waiting to see who’s curious, who cares to engage. And then he says this funny thing to the relatively smaller group who are intrigued, who ask him questions, who hang around. He says, “You have the secret.” He says You have the secret to God’s Kingdom. That’s kind of an old, patriarchal word in our context, so we could say God’s family. God’s garden. God’s Beloved Community, as we’re increasingly saying around here. The people and the life God is growing on earth. You have the secret.

 

What’s the secret, though? They’re not doing anything special. And it’s not like Jesus ultimately wants to be keeping secrets. He follows up, as we heard, lamps are supposed to have their light shine. You can’t hide the truth. Hidden things are going to be known in time. Just like in families that try to bury their shame, just like leaders that try to cover up their bad behavior, truth rises. Secrets will come to light. 

 

There’s a warning here for any of us that think we can abuse power or harm others and keep that hidden. A day of reckoning is coming. It’s been happening all around this country the past few years, hasn’t it? 

 

But in this context, it’s true of wise and healing words too. They are meant to be known and engaged with, not hidden. Jesus doesn’t want to keep secrets. 

 

So why does he teach with stories and riddles? Why is so much more interested in relationship and engagement than, I don’t know, bland but clear slogans? 

 

Well, I think it’s because Jesus knows about growth mindset. Jesus knows that our minds, our hearts, our habits, our lives are not fixed, and they’re certainly not fixed the way we sort and rank them. This one’s smart, this one’s not. This one’s good, this one’s bad. Fixed mindset, garbage.

 

Jesus knows we all are good soil for the life God longs to grow. Jesus was part of making us all after all. We are all curious, we are all capable of wonderful creativity, beauty, love, courage, kindness, wisdom. All of us. But Jesus knows that there is so much that is undeveloped in us, and there are lot of toxins in our gardens, in our minds, too. Jesus wants to provoke us into a relationship where we will listen and learn, where we will be humble enough to say to God and one another, I don’t know the way forward, but I want to be healed. And I want to be helpful. I want flourish, to have a life that is abundantly good for me and for others and for this earth. Jesus, what’s my way forward? 

 

That kind of engagement is the secret. 

 

This past summer, when I was at peak 2020 pressure and anxiety, God made this clear to me. When I was most worried that in an awful year, I had to as a parent and as a pastor and as a leader, get everything just right. Perform, Steve, or else, I felt inside. 

 

Jesus nudged me and said, I don’t need you to perform, Steve. I don’t need you to be perfect. Just get up and engage. Engage with me, engage with the people and the tasks of your life best as you know how. Stay curious. Ask for help. And the fruit will come. Good things will happen.

 

And it has been so.

 

Jesus doesn’t want or need your performance, friends. He’s not testing you to find our if you are good or bad soil. Jesus is asking you to engage, to be curious, to listen and learn and stay in relationship, so that you can flourish. 

 

And lastly:

  • Everything is grace.

 

Pastor Lydia preached on this passage a year or two ago, and I remember her talking about how you can hear this story from Jesus as pressure: you better be the good soil. Don’t be hard-hearted, don’t give up when trouble comes, don’t get distracted. Be faithful, do good things. And she – again, in my memory – was like, no we’re all each one of these soils at different times. This is not about performance pressure. It’s about grace. 

 

Which is true. I mean look at this farmer after all. Jesus’ farmer, which seems to be God, just throws the seed everywhere, so wasteful. And this farmer doesn’t seem to bother trying to cultivate or till adjust the quality of the soil. I mean a modern farmer would hear this story and be like, Jesus, don’t blame the soil for not being fruitful, it’s the farmer’s fault. Just as some of us look at the state of our lives and the state of our world and think, God, this mess is your fault. Work it out. Fix it already. 

 

But remember, Jesus is gardener, not carpenter. God is gardener, not carpenter, with our world. God knows how we can flourish – each of us individually, all of us collectively. The ways of God, made known in the life and teaching of Jesus, will empower beautiful and productive flourishing, if we engage and listen. 

 

But God loves us so much that God wants us to choose life and grow and flourish, as free, beloved beings. 

 

This goes well beyond Carol Dweck’s theory of growth mindset in learning, but I think this is all growth mindset too. 

 

That no matter what the state of anything today, we live under grace. No matter the state of our minds or hearts or lives, there is more. No matter the state of our country or anything else we’re a part of, we live with a kind God of boundless compassion, a forgiving God of endless second chances, a hopeful and renewing God of abundant possibilities from this point forward. 

 

Everything is grace. Growth, fruitfulness, goodness are still possible, if we’re curious and humble enough to ask for help, if we’re brave enough to engage and take a step forward and try. 

 

God’s much less concerned with who you are today than who you are becoming. God’s so much less interested in the steps you took yesterday than the ones you will take today. Everything is grace. 

 

God is with us, asking: how are you growing? Where do you need to grow? How will you ask for help? How will you engage today? 

 

Let’s PRAY.

Let it Be Scandalous Joy that We Birth: The Song of Mary

For this week’s Events and Happenings at Reservoir, click “Download PDF.”

For this week’s spiritual practice “Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room” led by Cate Nelson, click HERE.

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Good morning everyone! As always it is a pleasure to be with you today. 

As Cate mentioned we are entering Advent today…this season of waiting and longing (and remembering and dreaming) for the coming of Jesus and all that it meant, and still means for us and the world around us today. Throughout the weeks to come- here at Virch – we will be looking at different characters of the Christmas story – and how they prepared their hearts room for Jesus and what unexpected things were birthed as they did – like joy, hope, peace, and wonder – even in the midst of harsh reality.  And after each sermon we’ll have a short intentional time of reflection – which you’ll be led through –  to let the words and character settle into your own story. Today, I’ll invite us to enter the story of Mary, particularly through her song, called the Magnificat and see what joy we can uncover.

 

For many of you it might be hard to imagine as we enter this Advent season – that you have any waiting or longing left in you…  For me, every day feels the same kind of hard….and so the waiting and longing for things to change – feels pretty weary-ing.

And yet part of Advent is to in tandem look for the light – and also be acquainted with the darkness.  A seemingly scandalous birth place for joy.

 

Advent makes space for a different type of waiting – and longing… one that isn’t just empty sameness…but one that asks us to expectantly go to the edges of our same hard days, the same melancholy mood we might wake up with, – and speak out a prayer,  into what might feel like an abyss, “Come! Come, Jesus! Come close to me – be real to me.” You see, Advent is a time of preparing our hearts room to receive – not the vacant echo of our own voice – but to receive, with welcome, what might be birthed in us, when we hear God’s voice echo back. 

 

We need to prepare our hearts and we need room because the story of Jesus’ birth – is a scandalous story – one that is born out of an imperfect partnership of humanity and the Divine. It’s a big story – born in  “tiny” places – like fields, and a house in Nazareth, in a manger, in the hills…  And a story told by unlikely form – coming through bodies and wombs -blood and sweat, hearts – leaping and singing….Intersecting with curious characters – like lowly shepherds, astrologers, teenagers and… women. 

It’s a story told that …”This baby will be great. The son of the Most High. The son of God,” 

 

Jesus’ coming disrupts the ordinary, and turns this world upside down, a world that needed and still needs to be changed. 

 

So much scandalous-ness.  

 

And yet the real scandal is that:
God came to the edge of God’s own divinity and knocked on our human hearts – and said “May I come in?”

And our vulnerable hearts now are the birthplace of where and how, we & God, continue to change the world.

This is why we take time in Advent – to ’enwomb’ these central elements of our faith..joy, hope, wonder, peace and comfort .. Because likely they are not rolling off our tongues these days … yet they are the FUEL of all the work we hope to do in our time – and in our culture.

For the work it takes to continue the Christmas story  – that is indeed revolutionary, scandalous and greatly needed – especially in our dark…. same ….days.

 

I invite you to open your hearts to Mary’s story, and to the wisdom she sings to us ..let me pray.

  • Prayer – Open Unto Me – Remix
    Oh God, the one who comes to open our hearts.

Open unto us this morning.

Open unto us the story of Mary, her song, her love, her power.

Open unto us our story, our song, our love and our power.

And may you unfold the gifts of your presence, your mystery and joy to us today.

 

My Story: 

As I mentioned it’s been hard for me to really feel much joy or hope these days… But just about a month ago – the day after the election – I had a moment of IMAGINING JOY.  I woke up that morning and promptly checked my phone in bed (intending of course to look for updated results), but my attention was caught by an Ad by National Geographic.  

 

The ad was for this raft.. But.. tent… thing… that you can use on bodies of water, rivers.

The tagline in the ad said, “This Tent-Raft Mashup Lets You Drift Off to Sleep on the Waves.”

I… truly spent several minutes imagining how much joy this tent-raft could bring to my life. 

How I absolutely could become a “person of the river” – or “river person”,  whatever that entails…(covid safe!)

And just “drift off” as the Ad promised. Drift off, drift off, away – away  – away from reality. A way to bypass the waiting/ longing.

What joy.

 

MARY:

Now, if Mother Mary speaks to me today – I’m pretty sure she’s saying something to me about this version of “joy” I was trying to formulate from a river tent. 

*And let me say, before we really get going with mary’s story – that Mary’s voice – and Mary’s invitation to joy should be heard, repeated, remembered and spoken in our churches and in the Christmas story more than they are.

My faith background,in the evangelical tradition – silenced Mary.

As best I can remember Mary’s appearance was only as a mute figure in the yearly Christmas pageant. 

Demure. Submissive. 

A mere vehicle for Jesus. 

And the silencing was intentional because too much direct attention or reverence for Mary would compromise the patriarchal theology I was taught.

 

But lo and behold, Mary speaks (!) and shares the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the New Testament.  

 

Her feminine voice begins the Jesus story.

Which I invite you to follow along with the scripture here from Luke 1, on the slides: *I’ll pause a little bit as we make our way through the whole story, but we’ll enter here – where the angel has appeared to Mary – and we learn a bit about their conversation. 

 

Luke 1:28, 35-38, 46-55

28 When the angel came to Mary, he said, “Rejoice, favored one! The Lord is with you!”

Rejoice! I have a message of “Joy” for you….

 

ANd then we have a few verses of back and forth with Angel and Mary – where we kind of get the sense that Mary’s top emotion is not immediate joy.

 

The scripture says that she’s confused at the greeting of this angel? And wondering what the angel is actually saying?

And the angel of course goes on with “angel-like” things to say such as “fear not!”

you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great  –  the Son of the Most High.  He’ll rule forever and ever, and there will be no end to his kingdom.”  JOY!

 

Mary though still is not effervescent with joy – and moves to practical questions like how 

HOW will this happen? – “I haven’t had any sexual relations.” (and then we pick up the scripture on the slides again):

35 The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come over you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the one who is to be born will be holy. He will be called God’s Son. 

38 Then Mary said, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said.”
Then the angel left her.

So let’s stop here for a minute:

After all of this back and forth between the angel and Mary – Mary trying to take in all of this wild, and scandalous message that’s coming to her, we hear her say this pivotal thing – I think – in this last verse, “Let it be.”  “Let it be with me just as you have said.”  

“Ok – yes.”

“Yes, God.”

“I’m not bubbling with ‘JOY’ right now – but I will “OPEN” unto you nevertheless.”  

You see, Mary’s “let it be”, is the move that opens the door to change everything – This opening – is the crack where God implants God’s self .  God’s divinity and LOVE takes up residence in our human hearts – and births something new (perhaps joy)…. Mysteriously..Unexplainably… miraculously – within us.  EVEN AS WE STAND IN places/a reality that we are all done with – that we have no patience for anymore. Where we feel no joy. 

 

Mary’s reality is somewhat akin to our reality too, – hers is not a blissful, copacetic existence. She is disadvantaged in a world that would neither notice nor protect her.  Women and babies – were definitely not at the top of the societal power structure.

She lived in  the time of Herod the Great – full  of terror – “innocents were being killed”.  A census was devised to document the undocumented for governemtal control .. and there were burdensome taxes that cost the poor their land – and left the masses impoverished.
People were hungry, shelter was scarce and people lived in fear for their lives and their children’s lives. 

Mary’s setting is not a roadmap to quick joy.

But it is a birthplace of what I would call, “scandalous joy” … 

 

TENT – Part 2:

It’s probably pretty obvious – but the tentraft I pined for … isn’t particularly designed to take on much, if any of the forces of nature (like rapids or waterfalls – or currents). In fact as I read reviewers comments, that was the primary critique. Reviews ranged from, “Oh yay, now I can peacefully drown while I’m in bed.” TO “bravo! Everyday people invent a new way to die”, or “ If you go to bed at the right part of the river, the plummet over the waterfall can be Nature’s alarm clock”, and on – and – on. 

 

So basically this raft-tent is good for sitting on a stagnant small pond, barely moving. Infact the given name of this tent is “Shoal Tent” – shoal means shallow, or of little depth.

 

My fantasy of finding joy – removed from the rapids of life, zipped up in my own bubble – creates a shallow external joy….. Not this deep joy – like Mary’s that is birthed within her, that becomes a source of strength and the fuel of resilience and of change – CHANGE that she inspires – and spearheads… that she delivers to the world around her…AND not by violence or by weapon – but by song.


Mary after receiving the message of the angel – goes and visits her older cousin, Elizabeth who is also miraculously expecting a child, after decades of barrenness.  And Mary starts to sing, as she and Elizabeth share … and here’s her song:


(and we’ll pick up the scripture on the slides here:)

 

46 Mary said, “With all my heart I glorify the Lord!

47     In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior.

48 He has looked with favor on the low status of his servant.

    Look! From now on, everyone will consider me highly favored

because the mighty one has done great things for me.

Holy is his name.

50 He shows mercy to everyone,

        from one generation to the next,

        who honors him as God.

 

The beginning of this song –  is a song for all of us… and especially for those who like Mary – are discounted by society, pushed to the edges,  invisible …It’s a song  for when we think God has forgotten just how long we’ve been waiting and longing! It’s a song that invites us to join in the ancient chorus – that God’s promise is to be with us forever, that God loves us forever, that God will never leave, or forsake us. 

 

This song was birthed long before Mary – sung by Deborah, Miriam, Hannah who sang of their own struggles and God’s love – a song breathed into Mary’s DNA 

She says, and in those depths – ‘the depths of who I am…that’s where the joy is…. I rejoice in God my savior.”
I say, “let it be” – and I open unto the love and long-standing favor of God. 

 

JOY is the gift of knowing God’s deep LOVE.


ANd from here …from the foundation of love and joy – that Mary gets in touch with – Mary’s “power and willingness to disrupt, intervene and invert the world”….takes off, we hear this as her song continues:

(we’ll pick up this last bit of scripture on the slides:)

 

51 He has shown strength with his arm.

      He has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations.

52  He has pulled the powerful – taken princes – down from their thrones

        and lifted up the lowly.

53 He has filled the hungry with good things

    and sent the rich away empty-handed.

54 He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,

        remembering his mercy,

55     just as he promised to our ancestors,

        to Abraham and to Abraham’s descendants forever.”

 

 

This is not a soft, dreamy, understated Mary song.  This is a revolutionary, a wild, vehement protest song! IT is in direct contrast to the Empire and powers of the day.. And it is laying out Jesus’ kingdom and ministry to come.

Priest Barbara Brown Taylor says, this “was all happening inside of Mary, and she was so sure of it that she was singing about it ahead of time—not in the future tense but in the past, as if the promise had already come true. She says, prophets almost never get their verb tenses straight, because part of their gift is being able to see the world as God sees it.”

 

And some days this is all we can do, to keep trying to see the world as God sees it – even if our reality defies it at every turn. Even if the powerful are still on their thrones, and have their hands full of riches – and even as the poor and powerless are still in the trenches – hungry and suffering.  Some days all we have is the mystery and promises of God’s love and presence – that reside deep within us…

 

We might not have the vaccine we all wish for yet, or the return to hugs, or the justice we want to see rise up in our structures and institutions… 

 

Mary too, doesn’t have the things that would make this an easier go of it for her….Barbara Taylor says, “she doesn’t have a sonogram, or a husband, or an affidavit from the Holy Spirit that says, “The child really is mine. Now leave the poor girl alone.” (Priest Barbara Brown Taylor) All she has is her scandalous willingness to believe that the God who has chosen her will be part of whatever happens next—and this apparently, is enough to birth joy and to make her burst into song.” – and to give her wisdom and focus on where it is her work will be to come.

She does not wait to see how things will turn out first, she prepares her heart room for God no matter what the outcome.. and she doesn’t jump onto a raft in the Jordan River and drift away- she remains actively engaged and grounded in her reality.

 

HISTORY:

Mary’s song – has been controversial throughout time. It has enlivened prophetic imaginations, beyond the walls of the church, into the real lives of people…..and it also has threatened and enraged the powerful elite. 

During British colonial rule of India, Mary’s song was banned.  The British East India company prohibited this song as part of any church liturgy.  Finally when British rule was over, Gandhi asked that the Magnificat be recited at each site where English flags came down.

 

In Argentina, in the 1970’s the mothers of people who disappeared organized protests at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires with the Magnificat written on their protest signs.  

 

The military junta in response ….banned the Magnificat.  https://www.stmarysforpeace.org/blog/2017/4/9/a-song-for-change

 

In the 1980’s when hundreds of thousands of citizens were disappearing in Guatemala, the government banned Mary’s song –  9 verses from the Bible –  because it was considered politically dangerous, subversive, revolutionary.   

 

Oscar Romero, a martyr, priest and saint –  whose ministry was distinguished by his particular attention to the most poor and marginalized – prayed Mary’s song every day of his priestly life.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and one who fought against and yet was executed by the Nazi’s – called the Magnificat “the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary hymn ever sung.” 

 

And white evangelicals have devalued the role of Mary, her song, her voice, her message (her gender) – to the point that she’s nearly been erased.

 

You see – those who impale others as a way of shirring up their authority and power – are threatened by those,  (like Mary), who enwomb the treasures of faith –  hope, wonder, peace – because they can not be conquered, claimed or secured by might….. but if given room, in a heart that has been prepared and opened, by voices and song, and history and the promises of God, our hearts will prove to make way for the scandalous story of a tiny baby to rule and overturn the world by love. 

 

JESUS
Mary teaches this tiny baby Jesus – about God.  And I imagine Mary doing this in part, through her song. Jesus first heard this song in the womb, his ear already tuning to this melody.. And maybe it was the song sung throughout their home while Jesus, as a toddler, scurried under Mary’s foot …perhaps it was the lullaby she sang to him each night … and maybe this song, was the clarion call that Mary sang through the streets when Jesus went missing for 3 days in the temple.   . . Maybe it was the song that inspired his first words of his public ministry to be,

“The Spirit of the Lord  has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners, and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed”, (Luke 4:18-19). 

Maybe it was the ravaged, sobbing song he heard his mom sing – or the one he hummed himself – as he died on the cross… It is a song he heard again and again throughout his life.

 

Mother Mary’s song continues to be sung to us this Advent, and beyond. It is a daily song that we get to make our own. With old lyrics and with new lyrics ….of our longings, our protests, and our bodies.  Advent prepares our heart room for a revolutionary Christmas Story that is to be delivered to the world, by us – one that is meant to shake this world free of violence and injustice – and to also shake our faith down to the central, ancient promise of God’s love … that births unexpected gifts in us, like joy and song.

 

I stand in solidarity with Mary today – with her longing for a new and just re-ordering of society – and I pray with her “let it be, God” – “COME, open unto me”.  For to follow in Mary’s footsteps is to be a mother of God ourselves. 

 

TODAY

Meister Eckhart, a mystic and theologian said that,

“We are all meant to be mothers of God.  What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself.  And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace and if I am not also full of grace?  What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to a Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? (Meditation with Meister Eckhart, Matthew Fox, 74, 81.)

 

Today in our time and in our culture, we get to birth the disrupting, upending, reckless love of God into this world. … and this is deep, scandalous joy. 

JOY TO THE WHOLE WORLD

So may we repeat, 

And repeat, and repeat,

This sounding joy.

 

Let me pray for us: 

“Mother God, come close to us now. Keep singing to us. Show us how to love. Show us how to wait, to long, to push, to deliver you into this world.” Amen.

 

Sources: 

Singing Ahead of Time, by Barbara Brown Taylor

https://www.stmarysforpeace.org/blog/2017/4/9/a-song-for-change

A God We Can Love and Believe In

For this week’s Events and Happenings at Reservoir, click “Download PDF.”

To watch or rejoin our online worship service, click the YouTube link above.

To access our spiritual practice led by Ivy Anthony on Scarcity and Abundance, click HERE.

 

Hi, there, friends. Happy November. It’s two days before election day. I decided not to preach about anything related to the election. But if you can vote and haven’t yet, I trust you will. And you heard during the announcements that there are ways to be together with others this week if you’d appreciate that. I’ll pray for mercy for us all in a moment.

 

Today is also All Saints’ Day, a day churches have traditionally remembered those that have gone before us and have passed away. That will find its way into my sermon, so I’ll pray for God’s blessing on all those we love who have passed, and God’s continued blessing to us through their memory as well. Let’s pray.

 

The last two months, in our community groups, in our services, in our Sunday retreat on the streets of our city, we have explored Beloved Community. This phrase popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is one way to talk about Jesus’ vision for the whole human family, that all of us will be part of communities of love and belonging, and that together we will affirm all human dignity and ensure all people access a hopeful and just present and future on this earth. 

 

We believe beloved community is what church is meant to be as well, a place to safely know and be known, to care and be cared for, to learn to love and grow and flourish and do good for one another and for our neighbor and for this world. Reservoir Church believes we are called to be the beloved community, and we ask everyone to aspire and work toward this together. 

 

We grounded the past two months in the little bit of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5 known as The Beatitudes, or The Blessings, where Jesus widens the circle of who can be called happy and blessed. Where Jesus gives texture to the costs and rewards of making beloved community and living in beloved community. 

 

This month of November, we’ll stew in a phrase Jesus uses just after these blessings, when he tells his community what they are to do in the world. Jesus tells his followers: You are the salt of the earth. Make this earth healthy and useful. Preserve things we value and need. Draw out flavor. Not just through what you do, but who you are. 

 

In English, that phrase “salt of the earth” has this other meaning of being earthy, grounded – not too fancy, keeping it real. In Watertown, where I was a high school principal, this was a compliment. We wanted teachers and leaders who were real, who could relate to people. And we wanted good people, decent people, people who’d be healthy and useful, who’d help draw out the best in others. Salt of the earth.

 

Followers of Jesus have often not been salt of the earth, often not been good and decent people, often not healthy and useful. But we want to be. We want to be salt of the earth people, a salt of the earth church. We want our faith to be healthy and useful for us and for others. 

 

So this month, we’ll get into that. Every November, we spend 4 or 5 weeks talking about what this church believes, who we are. We invite our long-time members to remember what this church is supposed to be and to do your part in making it so. And we invite people who are newer in the past year or two to consider saying: this is my church. I belong here. And we tell you how to do that. 

 

Today, for all of us, we’re going to start big and talk about the God we believe in, a little bit about who that God is and isn’t, what that God is and isn’t like. 

 

I’m going to read a passage from the final book of the Bible, called Revelation. It’s often read on this All Saints’ Day. I heard it read early this week at an online gathering for leaders in the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. We were remembering a long-time volunteer organizer,  a backbone of our work, named Fran Early, who died suddenly last week. And as we did, a pastor friend of mine read this passage from Revelation 7 that I’ll read to you now. 

 

Revelation 7:9-17 (NRSV)

9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing,

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom

and thanksgiving and honor

and power and might

be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

15 For this reason they are before the throne of God,

    and worship him day and night within his temple,

    and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

16 They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;

    the sun will not strike them,

    nor any scorching heat;

17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,

    and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

 

This, friends, is poetry from our future in the life to come. Hunger and thirst, gone from our memories, the loving, gentle presence of God as near as a friend. Tears wiped away; bodies, minds, hearts refreshed.

 

This pain is not forever. All the many pains of this long, hard year are not forever. The pains of injustice, the pain of heartache, the pain of death is not forever. God will make all things new. 

 

The poetry of Revelation dares us to believe in a better future, in this life and in the life to come. 

 

But it doesn’t just tell us things about us, it gives us visions into the nature of God as well. 

 

There’s a bit of fuzzy counting going on here, as there often is when Christians talk about God. Is God one being, or two, or three? Is God present as one person, two, or three? This mystery of the unity and the trinity of God, one God – known to us as Father, Son, Spirit; God, Jesus, Presence; Creator, Savior, Sanctifier. 

 

Here we have that. God is seated on the throne, and the Lamb. In this vision, there is what is called a throne of God, but at the center of the throne is the one called the Lamb. It’s intentionally not clear if there is one or if there are two. But what is clear is that the Lamb is God. The Lamb is praised and honored. Everyone loves the Lamb. In this joyful irony, the Lamb is also the Shepherd, guiding all people to springs of water, water of life, and the Shepherd-Lamb is also wiping away our tears. 

 

The Lamb is poetic language for Jesus, who though innocent, was killed, whose death was part of God’s healing of humanity, and who – though very powerful, was like us, very vulnerable. 

 

What I want us to notice in all this today is that God still looks like Jesus. The Almighty God is still a Lamb. Whatever God’s power is or isn’t, God is still gentle. God is still vulnerable. 

 

Revelation insists that this is part of what we will always love about God. Whatever else God in all God’s power is, God is still a lamb. 

 

Tonight I’m finishing a four-week class I’ve been teaching on church history. As we’ve unpacked some of the worst Christianity has become, we’ve looked at ways that Christians have had problematic or downright abusive views of God’s power.

 

We looked at when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the very empire that Revelation denounces again and again in coded language. When this happened, the church got a sword, which it used repeatedly – against people that believed differently, people they called heretics, against Jews, against Muslims, and in the second millenium, against colonized and enslaved peoples of the earth. The church with a sword thought God was a powerful conqueror, and that they were on God’s side, helping to get that conquering done. But no matter how many times Christians thought or did this, this is not what God is like.

 

In our class, we’ve looked at other views of God’s power that haven’t been so out and out violent, but still were not were not healthy, true, or useful. We looked at how some Christians came to teach that God controls all things that are on earth, that God chooses and wills all things. God who chooses to permit all things, even the really awful things, for some greater, mysterious purpose we can’t understand. 

 

This idea of an all powerful, controlling God, that God that predestines all that is, that lets us say “Everything happens for a reason,” this is a familiar view of God. But it is also a God that lots of us have stopped believing in. Because when our prayers aren’t answered – not the little prayers like for parking spaces or good days, but the big ones, the prayers our lives and our loved ones depend on – when those prayers aren’t answered, we wonder why it is God is allowing such bad things to happen. When we – or others we care about – are neglected, abused, overlooked, mistreated, we wonder: did God choose that? When diseases spread, when injustice runs rampant, when leaders fail us, we wonder what it means that God is allowing all this. And we find that a belief in a God that is controlling history is not a belief in God that salts the earth. This vision of God’s power isn’t healthy or useful to us. 

 

One of the best books I’ve read this year is a new one, by a professor I know named David Gushee. He was going to speak with us this spring, back when people got on planes and spoke places. His book is called After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity. 

 

I’ll say a bit more about it next week, but for today, I’ll just say that Gushee is admitting that a lot of Christian faith in America has gotten worse and worse over the years, and shown itself to be, well, not healthy and useful to anybody. And he’s looking for a path forward as the title says. He’s looking with us for salt of the earth, healthy and useful faith.

 

And in his chapter about God, he shares about his work with Holocuast theology. Holocaust theology is where Jews ask what it is they can believe and say about God after the attempted elimination of their people. After baptized Christians killed six million Jews in the late 30s and early 40s. After children were sometimes thrown into fires to be burned alive.

 

What is left to say about God in the wake of such suffering? 

 

Rabbi Irving Greenberg offered a working principle. No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children. 

 

Don’t say things about God you couldn’t say in front of the burning children. It needn’t just be burning children in the Holocaust, of course. 

We could talk of the Middle Passage, of other genocides, and war brutalities, and acts of violence and abuse. 

 

But in this case, Rabbi Greenberg offers the burning children test for our views of God. 

 

There are things you cannot say about God in the presence of burning children. 

 

You can not say: God is in control. You can not say: This is part of God’s plan. You can not say: God cares about prayer and private morality, but stay out of politics. What does God care about public justice? You can not say: God would have done this, or changed this, or healed this, if we had just prayed more. 

 

It is an offense to God and to the people who have suffered to say or believe any of these things. 

 

So what can you say about God in the presence of burning children? In the face of all the suffering we learn about in our history books and we see protested on the streets and we know in our own experience, what can we say and believe about God?

 

Well, we have to say something. 

 

Burning children tell us not to believe violent or controlling things about God. Bad religion kills. But burning children also demand that we not be silent. Because silent complicity kills too. The presence of evil in the world calls out to us to speak and to respond.

 

In the case of faith, and what we believe and say and practice when it comes to God, the problem of evil calls for salt of the earth faith, it calls for a faith that is determined to be healthy and useful in whatever we believe or say about God.

 

This is why salt of the earth faith starts by saying: God is love.

 

God is patient. God is kind. God does not insist on God’s own way. God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. God bears all things, God believes all things, God hopes all things, God endures all things. 

 

There is nothing in God that isn’t absolutely dedicated to the well-being and flourishing of all God has made, and of all human life, all God’s special children, in particular. 

 

The very reason that God is not controlling us all right now is because God is love. And love doesn’t control. Love celebrates the agency of the other. Love waits to be welcomed. 

 

And our God who is love looks like Jesus. God is a Lamb. 

 

God suffers with those who suffer. God is always with us, wiping tears from our eyes. God is always present in healing power, always present for the good and the true and beautiful. 

 

This God is with us in all things, and this God gently nudges us to do as God does, encouraging us to also become love and to grow, to nurture, to heal, to act for the common good, working together with our God who wills this. 

 

Friends, it’s been a hard year. I’m sure your heart aches sometimes, like mine so often does. We’ve learned and seen horrible things. 

 

What we don’t need is to compound that hardness by wondering why God has done it or why God allowed it to happen, for this is not what God is like. And if we have nothing other than that in our faith, we’ll have to close our eyes and play pretend to protect our faith, or our faith will soon die on us. 

 

Let me encourage you today by saying God has not done or willed this pain. God is still the love God has always been. God is still the healing presence God has always been. God is still on the throne, so to speak, but not with a scepter to rule or a sword to harm. God is on the throne as a Shepherd-Lamb, with a staff to point the way, with a voice to call our names and sing over us, and with steady arms to hold us all.

We need beloved community. Thank God it is the purpose of salvation.

For this week’s events and happenings at Reservoir, click “Download PDF.”

Click this link for today’s Spiritual practice, “Rock of Ages,” led by Vernee Wilkerson.

To watch the online worship service, click the YouTube link above.

 

Last month, I was taking a walk and I was praying. I was telling God how I didn’t know how to be a parent and I didn’t know how to be a pastor this year. Which is a big deal for me because being a parent and being a pastor is a lot of what I do. It’s a lot of who I am. 

 

What you don’t know how to do this year is likely different, but I bet there’s something. I bet there’s something important that you find strange, scary, hard, or overwhelming. So much happening this year that it’s not surprising life feels strange, scary, hard, or overwhelming, and that if we pray, we’re going to say things like I was saying to God: that we don’t know how to do the things that are important to us. We don’t know how to be the people we need to be.

 

So I’m walking along a side street, saying this to God, and I have this sense of what God is saying back to me. I feel like God is saying to me: Steve, I think what you really mean is that you don’t know how to do these by yourself. You’re scared of being alone. You mean that you need partnership, you need help.

 

And I was like, that is so true. I don’t need to know how to be an amazing pastor for a church that doesn’t gather in person for worship. No one knows how to do that yet. And I don’t need to know how to be the kind of parent I want to be for three teenagers, living through all the disruptions and losses and changes of a pandemic. No one knows how to do that. 

 

What I want, what I need, is to not be alone in the most important things I am and that I do. I need to know that God is in it with me, for sure. But I also need to know that I have shoulders I can lean on, partners I can ask for advice and help, allies who will have my back, encouragers who will say: you got this, Steve, and who can help me be true to the best of who I’m supposed to be. I need a community.

 

So I stopped talking to God about trying to figure everything out or how to be a perfect pastor or perfect parent. That’s all out of reach. I started talking with God about how to be more together, more partnered, less alone in these things.

 

I’m trying to all the parts of my life not alone, to be part of what we call Beloved Community.

 

Let me read today’s Bible, just three verses.

 

Matthew 18:20 (NRSV)

For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

 

Jesus said this while talking about how hard but how important it is to forgive people. And he said don’t try it by yourselves. Ask for help. Pray together. Forgive together. 

 

Anytime even two or three people are together in the name of Jesus – meaning just they trust Jesus is with them, Jesus is like, Bam, I’m showing up. I am especially there.

 

Jesus says: friends, you can do hard things. But you mostly don’t have to do them alone. I’m there in special ways when you’re together.

 

John 17:21 (NRSV)

that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

 

As Jesus prayed for his future followers – you and me included – he prayed that we’ll do this together, that we’ll foster and experience connection, unity. And Jesus was super mystical about what would happen there – that as One as God and Jesus are, as One as God the Father/Mother and God the Son of God are, as one as Creator and Christ are, may our oneness with God – our being at home with God and knowing God is at home with us, be like this. Jesus prayed: God, help your kids be together in loving connection, so we feel that God is with us like this. And so other people will see God is with us.

 

We hear that verse in big-picture, super abstract ways, like if all of humanity, or at least all followers of Jesus would have some kind of unity, that would be awesome. Which, sounds great, but sounds so far from our experience, and I don’t know how to do that. But we can at least start small scale. To give ourselves to the kind of loving, interdependent, interconnected relationships that help us know and show that none of us are alone and God is with us. 

 

I Corinthians 12:27 (NRSV)

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

 

God had a body that was the person of Jesus of Nazareth. That Jesus’ body was God on earth. And Jesus and his first followers said to everyone else who lived somewhere else at the time and all of us who’d come later: it’s good it’s not like this anymore, because now God is around as a Spirit that you can feel but can’t see. And now God has a much bigger body. It’s called the body of Christ, and it’s made up of all of the followers of Jesus. 

 

What does it mean to be part of God’s body now? What does it mean to know the names of other people who are part of God’s body? What does it mean to live on earth as if together, as if we are mainly how God will do anything good? 

 

There’s a phrase for all of this, the phrase “Beloved community.” It’s a phrase that was popularized by Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 60s, to describe the just, inclusive, sisterhood and brotherhood of all humanity. 

 

Beloved community is central to our faith. It is central to the purpose of what we call salvation. God wants us to not be alone. God’s plan for us to know that we are loved and we are important is to be part of relationships that show us that. God’s plan to love the world is for God’s children to show people they are loved and they are important. And God’s plan to bring greater healing and justice to the world is for inclusive, loving communities to do what is just and merciful, to help more people fully flourish. 

 

We’re going to explore this experience of the Beloved community this fall in everything we do at Reservoir. We want us each to welcome our place as part of community that’s meant to help us know we’re not alone, that we have each other.

 

We want to experience that more, when the circumstances of our times are trying to rip us apart from one another, to isolate us, to make us alone and scared and helpless. 

 

Friends, that will kill us. But God in Christ means to save us all, and Beloved Community is at the heart of how that will happen.

 

More in the weeks to come. But for today: 

 

We’re going to show you a video that Trecia Reavis produced. There’s a lot of me in it – sorry. And there’s a lot of our physical sanctuary and property in it to represent what we’re missing and losing right now. But it’s really about God’s work among us, and about the opportunity to be church in a new way in this season, to live beloved community. 

 

Then I’ll pop back on for a second and mention two specific ways we’re trying to promote an experience of beloved community for us all. 

 

Reservoir Church is a beautiful church, but the church isn’t the building, it’s us. And we’re going to be the Beloved community for one another and for our city and world. It’s going to be beautiful.

 

Before our closing song, we want to see two more, much shorter videos about two ways we’ll make this so this fall.

 

The second one is about our programs for kids and youth. We recognize that families come in many shapes, sizes, and configurations. Today, we would like to highlight programming for families with youth and young children. We want all the kids and youth around Reservoir to know their important part in the Beloved community, so you’ll hear about that. 

 

And before that, you’ll hear about our community groups – smaller groups of people that meet online and sometimes in person too to experience beloved community together. This is the heart of where the best things at Reservoir happen. And they’re so important that I’m leading or co-leading two of these groups this year. And I’d love for you to be part of one. 

[Videos shown.]

A Time for Groaning, a Time for Hope, A Time for Freedom

For this week’s events, click “Download PDF.”

To watch Virch online service, click HERE to watch entire service.

Note: The June 21 sermon was powerful for many people, but the video quality was poor. To watch just Steve’s sermon (re-recorded for better video quality), click HERE!

 

Hey, Friends, So I’ve been planning a few sermons in Philippians this summer. I still want to continue with that little project later. But I had prepared a talk for today that didn’t sit right with me, and then yesterday afternoon, Spirit of God, with a little help from my great partner in life, my wife Grace – that it didn’t make any sense. So, I’m going with what’s been in my gut and my heart all week instead. 

I want to talk about this moment in time we’re in as a time for groaning, a time for hope, and a time for freedom. 

It’s been a hard year so far, hasn’t it? It’s still achingly hard. A mentor in my life, the Rev. Dr. Ray Hammond, recently used the phrase a “triumverate of trauma” to talk about our collective experiences of pain, dislocation, and anxiety. We face an enormous public health crisis. We face political and economic crises. And we face a massive exposure of our country’s systemic violence toward Black lives and the fact that ending this is somehow still a matter of controversy.  This is a lot of pain for us to process – it’s been a year of trauma. 

If you feel anxious or angry or exhausted or kind of unmoored, maybe even locked up – not sure what to say or what you think or feel – if any of that’s been true for you, you are not alone. I feel all those things a lot; most of us do. 

Strangely, though, this is a year of some considerable opportunity as well. Many of my colleagues I love and respect have a lot of hope right now. 

Back in early April, Arundhati Roy wrote this stunning essay, “The Pandemic is a Portal.” I’ve read it dozens of times. She writes of the US and of India, and how even by early April, the COVID-19 pandemic had opened windows into massive inequities and pain. She was unmincing in the horrors we’re seeing this year in public life. And again, that was back in April. There’s been a lot more since then. 

But she also closed her essay with these words that I still read as prophetic, as full of the Spirit of truth and insight.

She wrote:

“Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. 

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. 

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

 

My friends, this pandemic, and our protests over racial injustice and violence, these offer us the biggest of disruptions. They are offering us an opportunity to imagine our world anew, to imagine and fight for another world. 

But meanwhile, here we are as summer begins and we’re still in the midst of it all. What do you say while you’re still on the threshold? 

When you hope for a new and better future, but you can’t yet see what it might look like, and you can’t yet see the way there? 

Honestly, when we’re at the threshold of a dying world behind us and a new one we can’t see, we waste a lot of our energy and heart and time. I was going to go off on all the ways we do it, but I realized I don’t need to do that. 

What I want to talk about is a way forward. What do we do when we’re between worlds, when we’re at the portal, when we’re longing for a better tomorrow while our pulses still pound and our hearts still ache today? What do we do?

I’m drawn to a passage of scripture that points our way in the Spirit of God. It’s right in the middle of the very middle chapter of the New Testament’s biggest letter, Romans. From chapter 8:

 

Romans 8:18-27 (NRSV)

18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Since September, I’ve been meeting with a beautiful community group on Saturday mornings. We used to meet up in person in the lobby of our church building, and for the past three months we’ve been meeting online. But for most of the past ten months, we’ve been studying this letter to the house churches in Rome. We’re almost ¾’s way through. 

We’re reading slowly. It’s been amazing, incredible, mind-blowingly awesome sometimes, and a total slog other times. Because Romans is complicated. Its author, Paul, makes no sense to us sometimes. And this letter has often over the past twenty centuries been used as an armed weapon against people. Romans has been used as anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-all kinds of people. In the wrong hands, it’s been a tool of oppression and shame. 

But it’s actually this confusing, but impassioned cry of good news – of belonging, of justice, of peace, of God’s love and faithfulness to all people. And here Romans tells us that in this very moment of history, as with all the in-between spaces in which the people of God have ever sat and suffered, the Spirit of God is in us and with us and has a way for us. 

Glory is coming. The beauty, the pride, the pleasure, the joy that is the destiny of God’s children is coming, but today we suffer. Today we long. 

All of creation longs. Have you heard it this spring? Not a just a desire to return back to normal, but to see a better day.

What’s amazing is the Good News tells us creation isn’t just longing for a better world, it’s longing for something specific. Creation is longing for the revealing of the children of God. 

For all God’s children to become what we were destined to be. For those who have suffered, for those who have known too much indignity, too much waiting, too much poverty, too much danger, to know our rightful freedom. Not the so-called freedom that Black Americans have known since Juneteenth, 1865, where as our own Paula Champagne’s art points out, so many “terms and conditions have been applied.” But full physical and spiritual freedom – wholeness, peace, dignity, security. 

For those children of God who have been complicit in other’s diminishment, we are to know what the New Testament calls righteousness, which is not just like private, religious living. The New Testament word for righteousness is like rightly ordered. It’s integrity, wholeness, justice. 

See it with me for a moment. Imagine a future where you and your children and your children’s … imagine a future where you and your loved ones, and the generations to come after you know the freedom of the children of God – wholeness, peace, dignity, security, integrity, justice. Freedom.

It’s coming. And not just for us but for all of creation, because the earth groans too. It is in bondage to decay – viruses that mutate and kill, waters fowled, air diritied, oceans teeming with plastic, and atmosphere soaked with carbon. So much bondage to decay, our earth cries out with us.

How long? When will we be free? 

We’ve had glimmers during this pandemic. I’ve heard that air is cleaner, less carbon-filled than it’s been in years. Even where I live this spring, we live on this tiny urban plot, with a major, busy thoroughfare in front of us, and a long row of brick apartments to one side of our place, and a gas station being torn down on the other.

But on our tiny patch of land, my wife Grace has over the past decade grown and tended a beautiful garden. And it’s been more breathtaking this spring than ever. So sometimes when I sit in the chair outside our door and read or pray there, I see that garden, and I see our future miniature – the renewal, the beauty, the freedom, and I think: Glory, it’s coming. 

But even with the hope of glory, we long too, the passage says, for the redemption of our bodies. That not just our spirits but these bodies of our would be free. These Black bodies of ours, these disabled bodies of ours, these measured and found wanting bodies of ours, these judged bodies, these queer bodies, these too fat or too skinny bodies, these scarred and stretch-marked and wrinkled and sagging bodies, these bodies of ours that cause us shame or danger or regret – when will these bodies be free? 

I see you, church family, in the longing for a world where Black Lives matter, and Black bodies are safe and beloved. I see you longing for a world where all our children are educated with hope and dignity. I see you longing for your voice to be heard in the world, for an end to your invisibility in how you’re seen again and again through White eyes or male eyes or anything other than seeing and celebrating you eyes. 

So much longing among us. 

So what do we do now? 

If Spirit in us, we groan, and we hope, and we live today like our future is here. 

We groan. 

I watched my wife bear three children. Not all at once, thank God. But three babies she bore, in five years. And those labor pains were real. That was some hard core pain.

Now I have never known what it’s like to pant and grunt for hours while my pelvic floor feels like it’s about to explode, but brother Paul, that metaphor takes me where we should go. 

Because I know what it’s like to hurt so much you can’t put that hurt into words. I know what it’s like to pray and have no words to say. 

The groans of our Black brothers and sisters have been loud and clear this past month. They’ve been loud and clear for centuries, to be honest, but not everybody has been listening. But if those are your groans, friends, of exhaustion, of anger, of too much and how long and not again, Spirit of God is with you in your groaning, while you wait for the redemption of our bodies. These groans are holy prayers that God both listens to and joins in with you.

All of God’s children’s cries of pain, and hurt and anger too deep for words, these are holy prayers. God lives and and listens to these groans.

And friends, if you’re not groaning now, if your body and wealth and health and dignity are upheld and in no way at risk, then listen hard and long to the groaning of the rest of God’s family. Listen hard and carefully to the groaning of Black rage, or Black exhaustion, or Black insistence on change. Listen to the groans of our Indigenous siblings who say: can you see my life and my land and all of what’s been taken. Listen to the groan of our Asian siblings who say: we will not be ignored or exoticiszed. We are not a vehicle for your colonial fantasies or fears about who we are. Listen to your immigrant siblings’ groans who say: stop telling us to leave, stop blaming us for your problems, stop making us afraid. Listen to the groans of your queer or trans siblings who just this past week said: thank God we can’t be fired for just existing as who we are. Listen to to the groans of those who lack wealth, lack food, lack health, lack acceptance. 

Care enough, listen hard enough to make someone else’s groans yours, if you don’t have enough of your own, because you can’t really pray until you’ve learned to groan. Spirit of God is in our groaning prayers. And you can’t be where God is if you don’t go where the Spirit of God goes, to the groans and cries of God’s people. 

We groan. And we hope. Not just sentiment. Not hoping like, I wish, I wish, I wish, but growing that muscle for a better future, so we decide it’s worth our time, our resources. We hope when we commit to action that shows we believe a better future is possible. It’s not too late to change our company’s culture. It’s not too late to fight for drivers’ licenses for our undocumented immigrants, it’s not too late to make our law enforcement and criminal justice systems actually protect and serve us all. Hope says, do something about it. Hope says, get to work. 

And listen, I believe in awakening and educating and learning, doing our own work, as much as anyone. On race, I’ve been doing the work of awakening, reading the books, having the talks, all the stuff, for 25 years. I’m going to keep doing it. But we don’t just need a bunch of so-called woke people who can say all the right words, and judge our brothers and sisters when they don’t say it all as well as we do. We need action for a just world of freedom and glory. Hope is the fuel that gets us to put in the work.

We groan, we hope, and we live the future today. The faith of Jesus is what we call an eschatological hope. That’s fancy words for daring to live as if our future is invading our present. 

Daring to live as if freedom has come. Daring to live as if we can rest, and play, and touch the earth, and have some fun, even while we’re still groaning. Because faith in Jesus sees the glory coming. And knows that even if I’m still groaning, even if I have reason to be angry or afraid again tomorrow, today I get to live like I’m already free. 

Today, I get to love and rest or celebrate or do the work or take a break, as I am so led by the Spirit of God. Because today I am free. Or as Romans ends: Nothing can separate us from our inheritance as God’s children. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. 

Glorious Easter!

In the midst of a worldwide pandemic of Covid-19, the Reservoir community celebrates Easter and the risen Christ in a joyful virtual service.

Thank you for joining, and watch here if you missed it or join again!

Putting Cruelty Aside

These past few months, I’ve thought a lot about a conversation I had with a parent a while back. The parent was asking me: How do I explain to my daughter why Jesus died? Because my kid asked me that question, and I started to answer, but realized I didn’t like what I was about to say and I wasn’t sure I even believed it myself. 

I asked her a little more about what it was she thought but didn’t say about why Jesus died, and she told me this theory to do with how bad we all are from God’s perspective, and how much God needs to punish us, and how Jesus got punished instead of us, which takes us off the hook. And as I was listening, I was nodding my head because I knew this version of the story. I’d believed and told parts of that story myself at one time. But I could get why it wasn’t something she wanted to pass on to her daughter. 

Because it makes God seem so cruel. Does God really think we’re all so awful? Not just the villains of humanity, but our saints and heroes and legends? Our young children? That would seem to be a harsh perspective. And does God think we’re so awful that we all deserve to be punished badly, continually, forever, if God can’t find someone else to punish instead? If that’s what God is like, so be it, I guess, but it does sound cruel. 

Now, to be clear, I don’t think this is what God is like. I don’t think this is the best way to understand the death of Jesus either. There’s more to the story. And over the next seven weeks, here on Sundays, and in a blog series I’m writing, and a daily Bible guide that Lydia and I are writing together, we’ll explore the truest and deepest and most beautiful ways we know for considering why Jesus died, and what happened on the cross. More about that later. 

But I start with this story because we’re learning more and more that so much of what has been called justice is not just but is cruel. And some of the things we’ve thought and said about God and ourselves aren’t that beautiful and just either, but cruel. 

And we can do better. 

One place that’s gotten people thinking and talking about all this is a really popular TV show that sadly just finished its run. It’s called The Good Place. How many of you have watched this show? 

It’s a comedy, but it’s a comedy that for the past few years has brought us some really rich reflection on the meaning of life. And I want to show you a little clip from the final season. 

For those of you that haven’t seen it, The Good Place begins with four people waking up after death to find they’re in a kind of heaven, what’s called The Good Place, but one of them knows she’s there by mistake. The show takes a lot of twists and turns, which I won’t spoil for you, but eventually these same four people have the opportunity to redesign the afterlife. To try to make it fair and just for people. Stakes are high – if they can’t pull it off, the Judge of all things will use the powers of this not-quite-robot-not-quite-person named Janet to cancel earth itself. The main character speaking here in this two-minute scene will be a man named Chidi, who in his earthly life was a professor of moral philosophy. 

Let’s have it. 

Good Place Scene from Season 4, Episode 10

Chidi raises the problem of cruelty. They’re talking about our criminal justice system, for sure, but they’re also talking about the afterlife. Chidi wonders why many people should go to Hell, or what the show calls The Bad Place. In most cases, he says, “The cruelty of the punishment does not match the cruelty of the life that one has lived.” Or as his love interest Elanor says, “This is a problem of justice.”

They never mention God or Jesus or the cross, but we could ask the same question about all that. Does the cross tell us that God is cruel, but that we’re lucky to escape that cruelty? Or does it tell us something else?

For the next seven Sundays, we’ll be looking at bits of what happened on the cross through the lens of the seven things Jesus said as he was dying there. Here’s the first:

Luke 23:26-34  (NRSV)

26 As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. 27 A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. 28 But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ 30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31 For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

32 Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. 33 When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. 34 Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing.

This is such a cruel scene. There’s an African immigrant or refugee – Simon of Cyrene, modern-day Libya. And he’s forced by the Roman soldiers to march with Jesus, helping him to carry the tools of his own execution. 

There are these women who admire Jesus, and they are beating their chests and wailing over the cruelty and injustice of his arrest and torture and impending death. But as they wail, Jesus warns them even grimmer days lie ahead for them under Rome. They’ve not seen the worst of it.

Suffering piles up upon suffering, in this place called the Skill, where hardened soldiers bet over dead men’s clothing, and where Jesus and two criminals are strapped to wooden crosses with rope, nailed down by their hands and feet, and hung up to asphyxiate and die. 

It’s an incredibly cruel scene. Luke is using this powerful literary technique called juxtaposition, where you contrast two really different things so that you’ll understand them both better. 

With his words he’s panning around the cross, capturing all the cruelty of the moment. And then in contrast, there’s Jesus and he is so generous and gentle. Jesus too looks out over the cruelty of it all, and says to God, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” 

Jesus views all the participants in his death, the spectators to his pain, more charitably than they deserve. He asks God to hold none of this against them. Jesus uses his dying breaths to love them.

Both the Bible and the best Christian thinking about God have said that Jesus is the clearest picture we’ll ever get of what an invisible God is like. You want to see what God looks like? Look at Jesus. You want to hear what God sounds like? Listen to Jesus. 

And here, despite the cruelty all around him, Jesus is gentle, and is fiercely loving kind. Co-suffering, self-giving, radically forgiving. 

So where did my friend and so many of us get this idea that the story of God we find on the cross is cruel? 

Well, one theory of what happened on the cross is known in technical terms as “penal substitutionary atonement.” Penal substitutionary atonement – it’s kind of an unfortunate name for a theory, because if you say the first word just a little bit wrong, as I have several times – penile – well, then it sounds like a very different kind of theory. 

But what penal substitutionary atonement means is: that we’re so bad as far as God is concerned that God needs to punish us. That instead God punishes God’s child Jesus, who is also in some ways God’s self, by letting him be killed, even though he isn’t bad. And this punishment satisfies God’s anger and sense of justice, so that God can forgive people that trust this system to work for them. 

Now there are a few places the Bible says something that if you read it a particular way, sort of sounds like this theory. And now and then, in Christian history, there were bits and pieces of this theory that were expressed. But it really got popular based on the teaching of a Swiss Protestant reformer named John Calvin who – not surprisingly – was trained as a lawyer and so thought a lot about crime and punishment and thought of God on these terms. 

But this theory has a lot of problems. 

For one, as I’ve shared, many of us don’t want to share it with our children. It seems to portray a vindictive, violent, punishment-obsessed God, a God who would also kill his own child to save others. Awkward.

Two, belief in this theory has not borne the best of fruit in the Prostestant-influenced Western world. Worship of a sometimes violent God has usually made it easier for people to do violence on one another. There’s this deep and true phrase: we become what we worship. Worship a violent God, and well… Christians with this view of God have happily colonized, enslaved, and executed others in the name of this God.

Three, a belief that justice mainly requires punishment has helped us make peace with things like mass incarceration. But – as even The Good Place implied – we have learned that most of our practices of punishment aren’t just and don’t heal or change the world for the better. So, most of us parents for instance don’t beat our kids anymore. If we ever did, we regret it. It’s not even legal around here anymore. 

And four, this theory just doesn’t sound like good news to most of us. The story and life of Jesus – including his death – is supposed to be cleary good news to us all. But this makes God seem cruel. 

On our blog, and in our Bible guide, and in the sermons in the weeks to come during Lent, we’ll share some other understandings of what was happening on the cross, and why Jesus died there. 

But I want to first point out that God forgiving humanity our cruelty isn’t something God figured how to do on the cross when Jesus died. It’s always been what God is like. 

The psalms, written hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus died, will now and then celebrate how good it is that God forgives God’s children, that God loves us and that it gives us freedom to make our mistakes and faults known to God and know that God hasn’t rejected or abandoned us. 

The Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament, also mainly speaking and writing hundreds of years before Jesus, are wrestling with the public and social sins of the nation – with messed up religion, with economic injustice, with public cruelty and foolishness – ancient versions of all of today’s dilemmas. And they do this in colorful language, full of threats and warnings, but underneath it all, they do this because they take for granted that their community is in relationship with a God who wants better for them but is also happy to put all their history behind them once they’ve made amends. The God of the prophets wants to stay engaged with the people because God loves them and will forgive them their grave public errors.

The law of the Old Testament too makes provision for people’s understanding that before God, you are not the sum of your worst thoughts or worst qualities or worst actions. Sometimes at great expense to the lives and blood of small mammals, people were to have these visual, sensory reminders that God loves to clean the slate, that God loves second and third and fourth chances. 

When Jesus calls his God, Abba – Father, this is part of what he assumes to be true of this God. 

This isn’t easy for all of us. We’ve spoken often about how when Jesus or the Bible calls God Father, it’s not implying God is a man. God is mother to us all as well, and there is language about this in the Bible as well – not as much as Father language to be sure, but it’s there. 

It’s also hard because not all of us have known fathers, or mothers for that matter, to be full of love and forgiveness, or very good at expressing it. A few of us have known outright cruel parents. Most of us have known parents that tried their best and never wanted to be cruel, but were cruel on occasion nevertheless, sometimes cruel without wanting to be, sometimes cruel without even realizing that was the effect they were having.

Jesus seemed to get this, when he said, you parents are evil. (And I’m paraphrasing here, but only a little – it’s in Luke 11 and Matthew 7.) He said: Even though you’re evil, for the most part, when your kids ask you for bread, you don’t give them stones. When your kids ask you for fish, you don’t give them scorpions.  (Unless you live in a part of the world where people eat scorpions, which Jesus didn’t, so we’ll forgive him this insensitivity.) How much more, Jesus says, will a perfectly loving parent like God give you all that you need, especially the kindness and compassion and forgiveness that you need. 

God’s not a crueler or meaner parent than us. God is not obsessed with punishment and blame, bound by the need to satisfy his own anger before he can associate with us. Our instincts that tell us this can’t be true, and so does Jesus.  

Jesus shows us this on the cross as well when surrounded by cruelty, he says: Father, my Abba who loves to forgive, forgive all these people too. 

If the cross is the center of the life of Jesus, and Jesus reveals what God is like to us, then we can say that the nature of God is and always has been forgiving.

God is love, and not just generally, not just sentimentally. But as the contemporary theologian Brad Jersak says, God is self-giving, co-suffering, all-forgiving love.

There’s an irony to this with the excerpt I showed you from The Good Place. Because The Good Place highlights that at least some traditional religious conceptions of God and justice and the afterlife are inherently unfair and cruel. And they’re right.

Hang with me on just a quick bit of moral philosophy here, since we’re in a college town and all. 

The philosopher that Chidi mentions in the episode wrote about this too. Judith Shklar taught down the road at Harvard and she died across the river in Boston just a few years before this church was founded in the 1990s. The essay Shklar wrote that Chidi is referring to is titled Putting Cruelty First. She’s arguing that cruelty is the first of our vices, that it should be at the top of any list of moral evils. But in that essay, she argues that we have to be thoroughly secular, non-spiritual, non-religious, to put cruelty first. Because religions need their problems to be affronts against God and God’s standards of moral purity. So Christianity has for instance headed up its traditional sin lists with pride, an affront to God. Shklar notes that cruelty is not one of the church’s traditional seven deadly sins, it’s not outlawed in the 10 commandments either, maybe because it’s not an affront to God, merely a horrible way to treat one’s neighbor. And if churches haven’t put cruelty first, no wonder that historically, many churchgoers have been – along with their non-churchgoing neighbors – really cruel. 

I love Shklar’s sense of morality here. I too think we need to put cruelty aside, in the ways we treat friend and stranger and self in this life. But the genius of Jesus is that love of God isn’t a barrier to this, it requires this. Jesus taught that love of neighbor was inextricably tied to love of God. He even taught that we love God through our love of neighbor, and his first followers taught that if we can’t love other people but say we love God, then we are liars. 

And Jesus showed us that cruelty is in fact an affront to God, one of the gravest of sins, because God is not one bit cruel, so cruelty is a repudiation of the nature of God. 

If our God sounds cruel, it is us talking, not God. And if our conception of what happened on the cross sounds cruel, then we are not listening to what Jesus said there: Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing. 

The God we confront on the cross is a God who confronts cruelty by entering into it, suffering its effects, and by countering it with fierce lovingkindness, and with all-forgiving love. This is a good and beautiful and just God, who has no cruelty in Godself, and wants to love the cruelty out of us all as well. 

I want to wrap up with a couple of implications or invitations I see in this, about how we see Jesus, and forgiveness, and the cross, and about how we see ourselves and one another.

With Jesus, part of how we ended up with this punishment-centered, cruel version of what happened on the cross was that we turned a subject into an object. We turned a person into a formula. Our logical minds want to understand – if Jesus’s death is tied to our life, and if part of that is that Jesus’ death is connected to God forgiving all our cruelty and all our other sin, then we want to understand exactly how this works. 

We want a formula. Our problem was X. Jesus did Y. And so the outcome was Z. Who said we couldn’t put a little algebra in our sermons? 

Penal substitutionary atonement fills in this formulal nicely. It says our problem is that we’re horrible. And innocent, non-horrible Jesus took God’s massive punishment of us all onto his dying soldiers, so we can be free of punishment, declared innocent and just and so able to live at peace with God in this life and the next. 

The formula has a certain legal logic to it, except it kind of doesn’t make sense. No court randomly punishes the wrong people and calls that justice. And every time there’s a crime, you can’t go back and punish the same person again and again – the person who didn’t do the crime at all –  call that justice. That’s just weird. And, as I’ve said at length, this formula implies that God is cruel, and that God has a hard time loving us as we are. Both of which are disastrous to healthy private life and healthy public life. 

This formula breaks down because it isn’t the truth, it’s a metaphor. It’s an image to get at one little piece of a bigger truth. And it’s well known that if you push any metaphor too far, it breaks down.

This is why the Bible gives us so many metaphors for what happened in the life of Jesus to make things right again. I write more about this in part two of the series on the blog, “Why did Jesus die?” but a psychologist I like named Richard Beck has this table of 22 metaphors the New Testament uses to describe what happened between God and people in the life of Jesus.

There’s a legal metaphor. Our problem is guilt, Jesus is punished, we are free. But there are at least 21 more. Our problem is sickness, our doctor Jesus’ prescriptions for life are medicine, and we can be healthy. Our problem is alienation, God adopts us into a big family with God’s kid Jesus, and so we are kin.  Our problem is aloneness, but God in Christ joins us in all our suffering, so God is with us. And on and on it goes. 

So many metaphors to understand the real and true person of Jesus at the heart of all the good news. Jesus, good news, an eternal kind of life — all that stuff is not metaphor. But we have lots of metaphors to help us welcome it all into our minds and hearts. 

If nothing else, take this away from today and from this whole Lent. God is not cruel. God is self-giving, co-suffering, all-forgiving love, delighting in being good to us. 

This Lent, we take an image – the cross – that has been cruel to many. An image of colonization and war to Muslims, an image of anti-Semitism to Jews, a flaming image of racial terror to Black Americans, an image of God’s cruelty to many of us, and we reclaim it as the worst thing humans could do to one another reclaimed by God as an instrument of all that God has, which is fierce and holy, gentle and kind, love for us all. 

Forgiving love isn’t God’s back-up plan to make things right again. It isn’t an exception to God’s character. Forgiving love is at the center of God’s nature. 

And then With ourselves, we become like what we worship. If we worship a God that fights cruelty with love, that has no cruelty inside of God, then we will inevitably have more inclination and more power to put cruelty aside ourselves. And to confront the cruelty we see in ourselves and in others and in our world with fierce and gentle love. 

I know myself, what I regret most in life isn’t my pride, it isn’t my moments of being irreligious, it is my cruelty. Things I’ve said or done, or left unsaid or undone that have been cruel to my children. That have been cruel to the students or communities I’ve served professionally. That have been cruel to my family, cruel to my friends, cruel to my wife. Even the attitudes I’ve had about God and self and world that have led to me being cruel to myself, causing myself wounds and pain that God never wanted for me. If I could take anything back in life, it would be all this cruelty. 

Whenever we discover someone we admire was horribly, horribly flawed, as I did just yesterday morning for instance, we realize that a part of them was so still so mean or so broken or so unhealthy, that they were cruel there. 

The cross tells us that this is not our destiny. This is not the end of our human story. 

Jesus forgives us our cruelty, if we’re humble enough to admit it and to want to make amends – to chart a healthier and more just future for ourselves. And in worshipping this forgiving, gentle Jesus, we’ll grow in our desire and power to be like him, to put cruelty aside for fierce, gently, just, forgiving love. 

More next week, friends. 

Two invitations for this week:

Invitations to Whole Life Flourishing

In your personal and public life, how can you reduce cruelty and magnify kindness, gentleness, and forgiving love? 

Spiritual Practice of the Week

Give Lent a shot this year. Our guide starts today and continues M-F until Easter. 

I’ll talk a bit more about Lenten practices next week, but this week: engage this daily devotional guide. If you miss a day, so be it, but they’re shorter than they used to be, and I hope you’ll give it a whirl. Go to one of our community groups and talk about it, or find a friend or two to connect about it. Read the blogs too if you want – that’s bonus. Lots of other great things going on – a group to unpack your baggage if you need a restart to your faith. Lots more. But this season is for you, all of you, take advantage of this time.