Number in Series: Fourth

There Are So Many Ways to Love God

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

For this week’s spiritual practice, called “Love of God. Love of Neighbor” click HERE.

 

There’s a college professor named David Dark. I follow him on Twitter, and one of the things there is post stories of people doing horrible things to other people and to this earth, just adding the words: There are so many ways to hate God.

News this week. You can be so rich and famous and white that you find it appropriate to question the skin color of your in-law’s child in her womb. Or you can be so rich and famous and privileged that when you’re pulled over by the police for driving while four times past the legal blood alcohol limit, you do all the things you shouldn’t do when pulled over by police and then complain while you’re being arrested that you’re being persecuted for your politics. 

There are so many ways to hate God. 

Whole countries. You can so loves liberty and so hates science that you let over 500,000 people die and you let millions of kids lose their education and their friends so people can keep bars open and not have to wear masks. 

There are so many ways to hate God.

Or me. You can be so caught up in your own wheel of stress that you say something horrible you can’t unsay to someone you love. Or be so paralyzed by fear of a conflict that you let a friendship go rather than do the hard work to mend it. Or so confused about the just right way to do something that again and again, you just don’t do the things at all that other people really need you to do. 

There are so many ways to hate God. 

The basic logic of this is simple. People, all people, are made in the image of God, so whenever we disparage or hurt or degrade another human, or even fail to give them the kindness and respect that is ours to give, we hate them, and we hate God. 

Jesus, and the long line of prophets that came before Jesus, all taught that our love of self and love of God and love of neighbor – friend or foe – are all bound together. Love grows love grows love in all these relationships, just as hate grows hate grows hate in them all too. 

This is one of the messages of our fourth prophet in this year’s tour through the Bible’s shortest books of prophecy. This week, we’ll read the little fable of Jonah. There are five days of text and reactions and prayers in your guide to Lent, which you can find at reservoirchurch.org/lent if you don’t have a paper copy. The theme this year is What is Most Important. 

And one thing Jonah has to say to us is that there are so many ways to hate God. And there are so many ways to love God too.

Jonah begins with God’s call to a prophet of ancient Israel to love the residents of the Babylonian city of Nineveh. Nineveh was a more powerful city than Jerusalem, a richer city too, and a city known to Jonah and his people as an enemy city.

Jonah believes God is calling him to go to Nineveh with a warning, but a warning that if they listen to will – for them – become a blessing. But he is not having that. Instead of travelling northeast across land to Nineveh, he goes the opposite direction to catch a ride on a boat to the other side of the world. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. liked to preach from Jonah, and when he did, he’d say that we love to hide from God, don’t we? Any psychologist could tell us that there are parts of us that don’t want to be known, that are afraid to be known, that hide even from ourselves. And so we – meaning each of us, and we – meaning our whole species, have so many ways of using denial and defensiveness and technology and architecture and everything to keep ourselves from ourselves, and to keep ourselves from one another. 

We hide from ourselves. We hide from our friends. We hide from seeing the image of God in one another. 

There are so many ways to hate God.

One of the fun things about Jonah is that at least in this little story, every other character – all the supposedly pagan outsiders that populate the story – every one of them is a better person of Jonah. Being a religious person does not make you a better person than anyone else. One of the many times Jonah shows this is when he’s got this long, long prayer in chapter two that is a mashup of phrases from the psalms, all these things a person is supposed to pray to God. But it’s clear that Jonah’ still doesn’t understand God at all. Everything Jonah’s got is all about him. And he’s not yet talking to God about what’s really on his mind. So it’s a not very great prayer. 

But then when Jonah prays in the final chapter, he’s being a real jerk with God, but at least he’s being honest, which is a start. And it takes his relationship with God somewhere productive. 

Jonah 4:2-3 (CEB)

2 [Jonah] prayed to the Lord, “Come on, Lord! Wasn’t this precisely my point when I was back in my own land? This is why I fled to Tarshish earlier! I know that you are a merciful and compassionate God, very patient, full of faithful love, and willing not to destroy. 3 At this point, Lord, you may as well take my life from me, because it would be better for me to die than to live.”

See what had happened was Jonah finally went to Nineveh. And he walked around with that warning from God, and people listened. One sign Jonah’s a fable and not literal history is Jonah tells these people: you are bad, bad people. And they’re like: shoot, you’re right. Let’s turn to the living God and confess the error of our ways. Which would’ve been the rare time in history people when shaming and criticizing people opens them up to change. 

Regardless, in the story, the whole city of Nineveh turns to the mercy of God. And God’s affection is stirred toward them as well. 

Which Jonah can not stand. 

The Spirit of God has been working very hard to reach the people of Nineveh. Spirit gives Jonah a dream, or a set of ideas, or an intuition while praying – however it was this thought that Jonah thinks is from God comes to mind. Jonah feels that he is invited to be an agent of God’s change and possibility. Jonah can participate in God’s love, help co-create a new movement of the love of God in a city that has scared him until now. 

And yet Jonah would rather sit alone under his withering little tree that doesn’t even provide any shade than to share the love he’s been given with others. 

There are so many ways to hate God.

Of course, the real message of Jonah isn’t just this. It’s the corollary. It’s to see the fearful, hard-hearted, stressed out, all about me Jonah in each of us. And to know that God will keep inviting us to participate in God’s love story. 

There are so many ways to love God.

Jonah 4:4, 10-11 (CEB)

4 The Lord responded, “Is your anger a good thing?” 

I love that God asks questions. In the very beginning stories of the Bible: Adam, where are you? Jesus, again and again answering questions with questions, inviting us to wonder, to reconsider, to find wisdom, to stop hiding from ourselves or hiding from the truth or even hiding from God. God asks Jonah to consider: your anger with me for loving too many, for loving too much, for being too kind, is that a good thing? 

Jonah doesn’t answer, for what it’s worth. He finds a little place outside the city limits to sit alone, where presumably no one, maybe not even God, will bother him. Comically, the text says God grew a shrub up over Jonah’s head to give him shade, and Jonah was happy about the shrub. And then God sends a worm to eat that shrub, and Jonah loses his shade and overheats in the midday sun, and gets angry again. Here’s God at work in God’s creation to punk Jonah into open-heartedness again. 

And the book of Jonah then ends like this.

10 But the Lord said, “You ‘pitied’ the shrub, for which you didn’t work and which you didn’t raise; it grew in a night and perished in a night. 11 Yet for my part, can’t I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who can’t tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

Did you ever wonder what it’s like for God to consider the state of things on planet earth? 

There’s a window here. God’s up at night, seeing all the things. And all the beautiful things God wants for God’s creation. God sees all a little seedling of a plant and thinks: oh, it’d be so great for that plant to keep growing and serve a great purpose for a plant. I know it is possible to look at plants like this because sometimes my wife Grace walks around and looks at her plants and cheers on the new buds and leaves she sees growing. I think God looks at plants like this too.

God sees all the animals of Nineveh – the roaming free ones, and the caged ones, and the animals on farms and in houses and in holes in the ground and thinks: I so love all these animals. 

And God looks at the 120,000 people of Nineveh, just like the 117,000 people of Cambridge, and the 81,000 people of Somerville, and the 43,000 people of Arlington and so and so on, and God sees them sleeping and waking, feels our breath and our heartbeats and thinks, oh my goodness, these people I love, and how they can’t tell their right from their left sometimes. I love these people still. 

And I want their lives to not be at all wasted, but to be beautiful. 

Everything we’ve read in the prophets, like in Micah last week:

  • that all our habits of aggression and defensiveness would be replaced by peacemaking, 
  • that all people experience safety and security in their homes, in their cars, on their streets, in their schools
  • that all people would have zeal to pursue our own faith while practicing tolerance and curiosity toward the faith of others who walk in the name of their own God,
  • that we would all gather in joyful, inclusive communities of profound belonging,
  • that those formerly marginalized and othered and excluded would be centered and healed,
  • that redemption comes for the wounded, that victims become survivors, that the chronically weak grow in strength…

God wants all this for us and for our friends and even for our enemies. 

And the story of Jonah is that we have the opportunity to participate in this love story. To receive it and to give it. To be a part of it. 

To be the hands and feet of Christ. 

To participate in God’s immense love for all people and all things. 

Each time we love the earth. Each time we honor and respect and love any creature of the earth, we participate in God’s love. It flows through us and it flows into us as well.

There are so many ways to love God.

My child last year, who when we found our dead cat outside, insisted: we need to bury our cat and hold a funeral. 

My friend who heard I’d had a spot of depression and told me for the first time: I’ve been depressed before too. Can we talk?

I’m going to keep sharing a few examples from my life, but could you put something you’ve seen in that chat as well if you’re on zoom? I’d like to read some of those too. How have you seen someone love God, by loving something or someone God loves?

The leader of a seminar I attended who hand wrote me a blessing that affirms and challenges me all at once and that I keep in my journal to call me to my best self.

The many ones of you in this congregation who have sent me a word of gratitude or encouragement when you’ve found truth or help or something good through my work.

The family who took a stranger to live in their home for a month during a pandemic and then had that stranger stay for three months.

The educator who fought for access for children of color and children with disciplinary records and children with low test scores to get into coveted public schools. 

The social worker who kept sitting on the streets with Boston’s homeless, treating them like friends and family, even when she had no idea who had COVID.

The doctors and nurses and drivers and cooks and cashiers and firefighters and everyone who kept going out to work and taking care of us when they didn’t feel safe doing that. 

You’ll notice none of these are about a feeling, a sentiment of love. All of these are words and actions that someone said or did. Love gets outside of our hesitancy and lethargy and self-consciousness and love speaks. Love does. Sometimes love does small things at first. Sometimes love has the courage to be extravagant. It’s all good.

The Spirit of God is speaking God’s love for all the universe through fish and vines and worms and prophets. Art and science and music and trees and the wisdom of the elders and the wonder of the children all contain some parts of God’s love for everyone and everything. 

The book of Jonah ends with a question that the Spirit of God has for us. God asks: Can I not love all I have made? Can I not love it all? And will you not love with me?

Love of self, and love of neighbor – friend and enemy alike, and love of God – they are all intertwined. Love’s one of the only things that when we share or give or make it, we have more. We can start with a little more love of self, or love of earth, or love of friend, or love of foe, or love of God. No matter how, we have more of all of them, reinforcing one another, helping us participate in God’s great, adventurous, creative love story. 

Or we can have less of all of them, and shrink and wither under our little tree. 

Jonah tells us the story. Jonah says that today, we know God will be loving everyone and everything that crosses our mind or our gaze, ourselves included. How would we like to be part of that?

Exile and Return – Youth and Kids Lead Reservoir’s Service

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

A special service led by our youth and kids.

This week’s spritual practice is the Prayers of the People.

Families Pastor Kim Messenger tells the story of the people of God in “Exile and Return.”

With thanks to many of the Reservoir community who contributed to this service.

 

God With Us: Our Partner in Beautiful and Terrible Things

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

For this week’s spiritual practice “Grief” led by Ivy Anthony, click CLICK HERE.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. 

 

I love these words by the late author Frederick Buechner. 

 

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. 

 

Today, this Sunday after Christmas, we’ll look at how beautiful and terrible things alike are part of the first Christmas, and all our Christmases, and all our lives. 

 

We know that in these lives, fear – and the shutting down emotionally that comes with fear, and the paralysis that comes with fear – can be our default reaction to all this. 

 

But on this Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s, I want us to see how the Spirit of God, through the second chapter of Matthew’s gospel, and its account of beautiful and terrible things surrounding the birth of Jesus, gives us an invitation to a particular way of being with God in the world that is so much stronger, so much more wonderful than our fear. And I want to teach you a way of practicing God with us in beautiful and terrible things, a way of being with God that I’ve recently heard called conspiring prayer. 

 

Let’s begin with the start of Matthew 2. These opening couple of verses I just decided to read yesterday, so they aren’t on the slides. 

 

Matthew 2:1-2 (CEB)

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the territory of Judea during the rule of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. 2 They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.”

I love the account of the Magi. Sometimes they’re called the three kings, sometimes wise men. But really they’re magi – astronomers, sorcerers, priests in the Zoroastrean religion of ancient Persia. I’ve always been fascinated by them. I like their taste for adventure and travel, their grand gestures of giving, and their sense of wonder.

 

It’s with the magi in mind that I’ve been doing a bit of star-gazing myself this week, planet-gazing really. I wonder if any of you have too. I’d read that Jupiter and Saturn were going to be closer in the sky than they’ve been in 800 years. And that if the sky wasn’t cloudy, we’d be able to see them, even near city lights. People were even calling this Juptier/Saturn alignment, when they’d be so close they’d almost look like a single star, the Christmas star. A unique celestial event like the Magi saw in their day.

 

So it’s been my Christmas quest this week to see this. It’s not been easy for me. There’s a short window when this happen at night, and I can easily lose track of time. The sky’s also been cloudy on the Southwest horizon when I remembered to look. And that’s the very spot these planets appear.

 

So my first couple evenings looking, I couldn’t see them – too many clouds, at least from the hilltop where I live. But I could see Mars. This week, Mars has been this reddish looking dot not far from the moon. And it’s been beautiful to look up, and see the moon 239,000 miles away, but then look just a few degrees away, and see what looks like a red star that’s actually another planet, and know I’m looking at an enormous something that is 80,000,000 miles away. Amazing.  

 

But then last night, just when I was about to make dinner, I saw a friend post on facebook that you can see the Juptier/Saturn thing, so I ran out – running the ½ mile or so from where I live to this little hilltop lookout spot where you can see clearly to the Southwest. And there it was, the planet of Jupiter, looking like a bright white circular star above the horizon. And if I sort of squinted hard enough, I could also see, just to its right and a little lower, something I was pretty sure was Saturn as well. 

 

And so there I was, looking at four different planets with my own eyes – the earth on which I stood, Mars up by the moon, and off on the horizon, over 500 million miles away, Jupiter, and just next to it, over a billion miles away, Saturn. 

 

It was pretty great. I mean, it didn’t launch me on an epic quest like the magi – not yet at least – but it was pretty great. 

 

Beautiful things will happen. And on some other Christmas, some other year, there’s a whole sermon that stays here – on why we need wonder, what it does for us, how faith in God can grow our capacity for wonder. 

 

But listen, we’re putting 2020 in the bag this week, and for most of us, this has not been a wonderful year. Beautiful and terrible things have happened. And I think it’s something about the experience of year-end that I find myself continuing to think about them this week. The terrible ones in particular.

 

So it’s helped me again to remember that this is all part of Christmas too. God invests in our world eyes-wide open to its mess and pain and terror. Let me read for us the end of Matthew chapter two. It’s after the magi have given their gifts and gone home, without reporting on Jesus’ whereabouts to King Herod, who ruled over Judea. 

 

Matthew 2:16-23 (CEB)

16 When Herod knew the magi had fooled him, he grew very angry. He sent soldiers to kill all the children in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding territory who were two years old and younger, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. 17 This fulfilled the word spoken through Jeremiah the prophet:

18 A voice was heard in Ramah,

    weeping and much grieving.

        Rachel weeping for her children,

            and she did not want to be comforted,

                because they were no more.

19 After King Herod died, an angel from the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt.20 “Get up,” the angel said, “and take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel. Those who were trying to kill the child are dead.” 21 Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.22 But when he heard that Archelaus ruled over Judea in place of his father Herod, Joseph was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he went to the area of Galilee. 23 He settled in a city called Nazareth so that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled: He will be called a Nazarene.

Matthew chapter two isn’t really about the magi at all. They’re supporting cast in the scene. The chapter is really about Jesus being born under the reign of a powerful, violent, nationalist ruler named Herod. We think we have problems with transfer of power. Herod didn’t just never transfer power – he murdered his own family members – wife, children – who he saw as threats to his reign. And here, we’re told he is so threatened by a rumor of a baby destined to be a charismatic leader of the people, that he butchers infants in a quest to stamp him out. 

 

This can’t be what Mary and Joseph expected for the start of their parenthood of the son of God. 

 

In chapter one of Matthew we read that Joseph, afraid of his fiancee Mary’s unexpected pregnancy, had thought about abandoning her. But he had a dream so powerful that he changed his plans. He dreams that Mary’s baby will save his people, and that this baby will grow up to be known as Immanuel, which means God with us. 

 

And Joseph and Mary’s first year with Jesus had its wonders. There was this visit from the magi, and their luxurious gifts, the hospitality of strangers and distant relatives in Bethlehem. There were first smiles, first crawls, maybe first steps. Beautiful things happened.

 

But when Joseph had this dream, and Mary had her own vision of all the promise of this child, all the ways God had favored them, had come to them, I do not think they would have expected to spend Jesus’ first birthday on the run, as refugees in Egypt.

 

What has happened, they would ask? Where are you, God? What are you doing? And what has become of your promises? 

 

Have you asked questions like that this year? 

 

I remember one of the days I was most excited about this fall. I was driving to Philadelphia to pick up our daughter from college. I hadn’t seen her in months, way longer than we’d ever gone not seeing one of our kiddos. And to be honest, I also just hadn’t gone anywhere in months. I crave variety, and I’m not sure if I’d been outside our city’s 128/Rt. 95 perimeter in months either. 

 

So I was like, this is going to be a great day. Beautiful things are going to happen. 

 

But as I’m rushing out the door, I get a call on my cell phone from a number I don’t recognize. I pick it up, and the person on the other line identifies themselves as an ICE agent, calling from a detention center. They were calling me to tell me that the newest participant in our congregation was picked up by them and was being processed for deportation.

 

How could this be, I thought? See, we were part of a team of people that had conspired together to arrange this person’s freedom. Members of a law clinic knew about our church, and with the help of an immigration justice network we’re connected to, and some generous members of our community, and some other folks in people’s social networks, a number of supports were coming together to support the freedom of an asylum seeker among us. 

 

But as I began my drive to Philadelphia, making and receiving calls the first hour of that trip, I started learning how it looked like all this was falling apart. And obviously, the pain of this story was not primarily mine, but the dear person at its center. But something about it tapped all the disappointment and even moments of despair I’d seen this year, and I found myself swearing at God. This is so terrible.

 

I don’t know if you’ve seen that video the ad agency Public made with people telling off this horrible year we’ve just had – I’m not showing it here, it’s pretty much all curses – but I was having one of those moments. Forget you, 2020, but with some other ways of saying it. And me being the Jesus-loving person that I am, I was spiritualizing that moment by including God in my fed up, cursing anger too. 

 

Terrible things happen. For Joseph, Mary, and Jesus too. 

 

The God with us story begins with Jesus born into a funeral of Rachel’s children. This is a scripture about the great destruction of Jerusalem in 587 AD, and the Jewish people off to exile in Babylon. Poetically, Rachel, one of the people’s founding mother’s weeps for her descendants. It’s a scripture that has been cited in the context of the Shoah, what we often call the Holocaust as well. It’s a weeping of death and calamity. Terrible things are happening.

 

Jesus will emerge from Matthew 2, and really in the whole gospel of Matthew, as a kind of new Moses – liberator of the people, a great teacher and leader to guide us all – first the Jews, and then all the peoples of the earth – into freedom and life. 

 

But here, first, there’s a kind of undoing of the Exodus. Fleeing in terror from a tyrannical Pharoah reborn, Jesus heads back into Egypt. Terrible things are happening. 

 

How is God with them? How is this part of the story of salvation? When terrible things happen with us, how is God with us? And where can we find God? 

 

Well, how Gow is with us is the same as how God was with Mary and Joseph, and how God is with all of us. It’s the whole way that the Immanuel  God-with-us thing works. 

 

God is with them in a partnership, in which God is very much present, but which requires our consent and collaboration for God’s good to move forward.

 

It began even with Mary’s conception. The way the story sometimes is told it’s like God overwhelmed Mary and made her pregnant whether she liked it or not. Which sounds scary – does God just do what God wants, regardless of whether we want it? But no, Mary very much first gives consent. She is not going to bear the Savior, no pregnancy from God until she says, Let it be with me. 

 

This continues in Jesus’ childhood as well. God is joining humanity for our collective healing and liberation, but God needs our collaboration for the whole thing to move forward. We need to partner with God for God’s hopes to advance.

 

There’s risk for God too. In investing Godself in an infant child, God is strangely vulnerable as all infants are. 

 

God woos, God speaks – like when God speaks to Joseph in this second dream, this time prompting Joseph to flee danger with the family. But God needs Joseph and Mary to get moving, or God incarnate, will die before Jesus ever utters a word. God’s plans invite and require our participation if they are to work out. 

 

The same continues through the life of Jesus, when some people cooperate with Jesus in their own healing and others do not or can not. And when some people welcome and respond to Jesus’ teaching and others do not or can not.

 

And this continues for us today. 

 

Beautiful and terrible things will happen. And God will be with us, as an encouraging, healing, inviting presence, that we can pay attention to or not, that we can respond to or not, that we can collaborate and conspire with or not.

 

Let me tell you how that worked out for me on that trip to Philadelphia, and let me tell you a way you can do this in any beautiful or terrible time in your life as well. 

 

When we struggle with our faith because of the terrible things that happen, God isn’t angry or offended. God knows what it’s like to be a person and knows how hard it can be. 

 

In my case, on that day in mid-November, I think God knew I needed encouragement. Because it started to come in buckets. I had a lot of extra time to pick up my daughter, and so I had chance the way down to visit the Palisades – the green space between the Hudson River and the Palisade cliffs in New Jersey, just north of New York City. My grandparents spent time there as kids a century ago, and there I was, walking, exploring, in all that beauty.

 

And I had time for two conversations on that trip as well. One more of a mentoring conversation with one of you, where we were imagining together God’s paths for your future, how you might come more fully into your calling for good work in the world. And the other was with one of our church Board members, where we were imagining together some long-term planning for the church on how Reservoir as a community might come more fully into our calling for good work in the world. 

 

Maybe because I was refreshed by all that. Or maybe because I was in the  mode of collaboration with God – remembering that good things happen when we ask God what God is doing among us and how we can participate. But some energy opened up to do that with this ICE situation. I prayed for my new friend. And the thought that came to mind was: I should send an email to the team of people in our church who were supporting them and let them know they were being deported. And then a couple days later, I had the thought: you know, I bet if I just cold call this prison up in Maine where ICE told me they had transferred my friend, and if I introduce myself as a reverend, I bet someone will open up to me with information. And my Jewish colleague in the immigration justice network was like: well, hour housing for this person fell through, but I’ll ask around about other people who might provide temporary housing. 

 

And I said to God: you know, we’re doing all we can. If more freedom is in the cards here, we need you to do things we can not do. And lo and behold, a couple days later, we hear that ICE is not going to deport our friend, but plans on releasing them again. And while all this is happening, one of you reads my email about this person’s lack of housing and pending deportation and something of God comes awake in you, and you think: we have an extra room where I live. There’s no way we shouldn’t be using that for hospitality right now. It’s Christmas after all: how can we not be open to the vulnerable stranger? 

 

And so, with the movement and power of the Spirit of God, and with the creative, collaborative conspiring of people seeking to follow God, this little story of healing and freedom moves forward. 

 

God is always with us, friends, even in terrible things. The question isn’t: are you here, God? Or are you good, God? The question is: what are you doing, God? What good ideas do you have? And how can I participate in them?

 

Mark Karris calls this conspiring prayer. When we recognize that God answers prayer both through what God does, and also through what God’s creation does with God. So we pray for what we would like God to do. And we let God we are willing to participate in what God wants to do. And we ask God for ideas on how we can participate in what God wants to do. 

 

Conspiring prayer is more work that just telling God what we want God to do. It take our willingness to participate in what God might want to do. But it engages our heart and mind more, and it’s also more likely to get more results. 

 

There’s an old cliche that says we should pray like it all depends on God and act like it all depends on us. But I don’t think either of those things are true. When we do what we care about in life, it never all depends on us. And when we pray, it also never only depends on God. God is looking for God’s creation to participate in God’s healing, loving, freedom work among us. 

 

So we can act like things depend on God and us and others, and we can pray like it depends on God and us and others as well.

 

That’s what Mary and Joseph did. That’s what Jesus did. And that’s how the work of God with us moves forward as well. 

 

Let me close with that whole quote from Buechner about the beautiful and terrible things. 

 

“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it..”

Beautiful and terrible things have happened this past year. In the year to come, I expect more of the same. But here is your life, and here is the world. We wouldn’t be complete without you. Don’t be afraid. God is with you. God loves you. There’s only one catch. God is your partner, and all God’s presence and gifts will only be ours if we reach out and take it.

 

Let’s pray.

A Better Way with Race and Politics

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

For this week’s spiritual practice “Love Thyself” led by Ivy Anthony, click HERE. Link included for mural image “Love Thyself” by artist Artist Victor “Marka27” Quinonez.

 

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Hi, Friends, it’s so good to be with you through your screens today. As always, I’m wishing I could look you in the eye or shake your hand or give you a hug today. Soon, soon, we hope. 

It’s Thanksgiving this week. I’m not giving a Thanksgiving sermon. I’m talking about some of the ways our faith has failed in public life and how we can find a more healthy and useful faith together for the future there. There will be a little talk about race, there will be more talk about politics. I really don’t like politics very much, I shared a couple weeks back that I think we’re a little too attached to its significance, and I look forward to a time when socially, we’re not talking about politics so much. But we still are, and it’s been an important area where our faith has gotten off course, so there’ll be a little of that today. 

But as we get started, real quickly, as Thanksgiving is upon us, please celebrate in a way that doesn’t get you or anyone else sick. And please – if that’s hard or lonely – please set an intention to love this week. Ask yourself, how – on Thanksgiving – can I love God, can I love myself, or can I love my neighbor? Vernee set us up with one way to think about loving God and our neighbor on Thanksgiving, as we metaphorically set places for memory, for justice, and for healing. 

But open question for you in the chat as we get started, how can you love God, or love yourself, or love your neighbor this Thanksgiving? If you’ve got an idea, put it in the chat on zoom. 

I’ll start. I’m taking an extra day off this week to walk and rest and play with myself and my kids, and I’m going to call 5-10 people I don’t normally call, and send them some love and encouragement. How about you?

 This pain doesn’t last forever. We are resilient people. We’re gonna get through this, beloved. Alright? 

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Now, last Sunday, at the newcomers’ gathering we hosted after service, a person who knows a fair bit about the church scene said: Reservoir has roots in the American evangelical church, right? This place used to be Greater Boston Vineyard. And he asked: do you mind saying a few words about where the church comes from and what good things have we kept from those roots? 

It was a great question. Reservoir was founded to be a church that took all the best we could from the Christian tradition and made it accessible in a not-very-churchgoing, post-Christian culture. This is why we exist. But the people who started this church had roots in really particular forms of Christianity, in American evangelical culture – and in two places in particular. A national college ministry called InterVarsity Christian Fellowship that tries to help Christian college students become devoted followers of Jesus for their whole lives. And a group of churches called Vineyard Churches, that grew out of the Jesus Movement, a 1970s Chrisitan version of hippie counterculture.  

Now we aren’t affiliated with either of those groups anymore, but it was easy to answer what good we’ve held onto. Those of us that had roots in the InterVarsity group like me learned to love reading the Bible there. We took away a sense that the Bible, as the primary source document of the life of Jesus and the life of faith before and after him for centuries, grounds us in the history of our faith and is one important way God speaks to us still. And from the Vineyard churches, we took away a belief that it is more valuable to experience God than to have particular thoughts about God. And we came away knowing and still practicing that an experience of God can be fun, wild, mysterious, unpredictable, but always healing, and good, and powerful.  

Not all of our roots have been as positive or helpful to us, though. Our church left the Vineyard denomination five years ago primarily because they were going to kick us out if we grew as a healthy, fully inclusive church home for LGBTQ people. So we left. I’ve been disinvited from seminars and talks I was scheduled to lead, I’ve been cursed at, been told I’m not a real Christian, all because I lead a fully inclusive church, or because while I love and teach the Bible, I don’t read it all rigidly or literally. I’ve spoken with many people who were disowned by family, kicked out of churches, even threatened with eternal damnation because they no longer shared one of the beliefs of their Christian family or community. Sorry, but that is messed. up.

White evangelical Chrisitans are also outliers in American public life on a lot of things, and not all in what seem like good ways. I’m not going to name them all, as the media covers this pretty well these days. 

Probably about half this church, maybe a little more, has some roots or personal experience with white evangelical Christianity in our faith history. But there have been a lot of reasons that some of us, and millions of people nationally, have looked for ways to practice our faith outside of this particular Christian tradition. There are enough of us, in fact, that a prominent Christian academic named David Gushee wrote a book about this, called After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity. And it has been influencing my preaching in this Salt of the Earth series. 

The book has 9 chapters, and the last two are on politics and race, because these are two areas where evangelical Christians have stumbled most badly, and have most harmed the witness to the good news of Jesus. 

So, today, in our 4th of 5 weeks on looking for a better future for our faith, one that is healthier and more useful in the world, that lives up to Jesus’ call for his followers to salt the earth, we ask how does our faith find its way out of its troubled history on both race and politics? And again, I’m aware that today, I’m addressing politics more than race.

Rather than a deep dive with a single scripture, we’ll take the briefest of looks at four different verses, each of which illustrates a statement I will make. 

Here’s the first. 

 

  1. Most of the modern American Christian church has White supremacist, colonial roots we need to disentangle.

Mark 2:22 (NRSV)

22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.”

 

Jesus says that new work of God requires new containers. Renewing work of the Spirit of God requires change in our mindset, our assumptions, and even in our institutions. 

I taught a mini church history class this fall – looking at some of the best and worst of our faith’s past as well as some productive ways forward. And the four sessions were built around four famous, hugely influential figures in church story. And someone noticed: they’re all white men. And indeed they were. And not just that, but one was a violent colonial emperor. One presided over executions of his theological enemies. One was a slaveholder who advocated for the expansion of slavery in American’s Southern colonies. And the last refused to fully support the American civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s, as most white Christians did not at the time. It’s too long a history to tell here, but suffice it to say, a faith that began in the Middle East, a faith who early roots were North African, West Asian, and Mediterranean olive skinned and brown skinned mothers and fathers – that faith was in time centered, developed, transformed into the faith of white colonial Europe and then America. Most of Christianity became in time a colonial religion, and slaveholding religion, and a religion that centered the art and thinking and music and culture of the people who became known as White. 

This has done harm both to the faith and to the world. And over the past century, the Spirit of God has through many means, in many times and places, through many contemporary people I would call prophets been showing us this needs to change. The Spirit of God wants us to pour out onto the ground the old, poisonous vinegar of White Supremacist Christianity and drink the new, healthy wine of the true faith of the God who made and loves all peoples and cultures of the earth. Will we collaborate?

 

Here’s the second.

2. God cares about the physical condition of the earth and its inhabitants, especially people.

And the scripture is the final verse of Jonah.

Jonah 4:11 (NRSV)

11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

 

We’re thinking about spending Lent, 2021, the season before Easter, with the prophets of the Old Testament, rediscovering what is most important to God. And one of those little books of prophecy, Jonah, is just charming in how it communicates God’s love of the earth, even when we hate parts of it. This is very much true of people we hate – this is the center message of Jonah. But it is even true of animals. Twice in Jonah, animals are appointed by God for specific tasks, and animals are also part of what God loves, and wants to protect and save. I bring this up in contrast to how Christianity has developed over the years, in that it became a religion that was primarily taught as a path to the afterlife, an escape from an earth that God may not fully love. The result of this heresy really has been a faith that has often demeaned and desecrated the earth and its inhabitants, especially its supposed non-Christian inhabitants. 

God, though, so loves the world. God so loves the kosmos – the whole created order. God so loved entering into relationship with creatures of the earth, that he gave his one and only son that we could have eternal kind of life, both in the future and now as well. God cares about how we’re doing today, not just tomorrow. 

Thirdly,

3. God takes sides.

Deuteronomy 10:17 (NRSV)

17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, 18 who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. 

 

I love this. What it means for God to be impartial isn’t to treat everybody exactly the same. What it means that God is really just is that God looks to do right by people who have been done wrong. God has unique compassion and interest in people who are suffering. The theology shared by most people of color of the earth, by most of the poor of the earth, has learned to put it this way, that God has a “preferential option for the poor.” God takes sides. 

When God acts and moves on this playground of the earth, and sees bullies and the bullied, God doesn’t give them all a high five. God wants to lift up the bullied and get the bullies to stop. When God sees takers and those taken from, God isn’t interested in giving them both a wave and a smile. God wants to make that injustice right and stop it from happening again. This is what the scriptures teach about God. 

 

And last of my four big points I’m setting up today, 

4. The Bible is political, and so is the gospel.

The Bible’s whole message, and the good news of Jesus in particular are political. Now by political, I don’t mean partisan. You’ll hear, I don’t think God is a republican or democratic. I don’t think God is a capitalist or socialist or communist. I just mean that the Bible and the gospel are not merely private or personal – though they are both of those things. But they are also public, and publicly disruptive. 

Jesus said there are two great commandments of God, which are really one. The first he quoted from here.

Deuteronomy 6:5 (NRSV)

5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 

 

Love the Lord your God was literally love the God of Israel. Love this particular god, the good one, the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God who is speaking to you, walking with you. The Israelite faith was not at first monotheistic; it was monolatrous, which means people were told to love and worship and follow a particular god, and not other ones. It was a call not just to faith, but to allegiance. 

And the second great command: love your neighbor as yourself, was most often expressed as Love the stranger among you, for you too once were a stranger. The law of Israel, as much as it called for love of God, called for hospitality and dignity for foreigners, for refugees, for migrants, because all of us were once these things. 

This was political – commands for how to be in public life. And the New Testament faith of Jesus picks it up without a beat. The most common formula of faith in the New Testament was to say, “Jesus is Lord.” In Greek, which the New Testament was written in, this was a direct assault on the Roman formula: Caesar is Lord. Love of Jesus was to say: no human ruler has my devotion or allegiance. It goes to Jesus instead. Again, political.

And all of this, almost all the Bible really was written by and to colonized and oppressed people groups seeking freedom in many forms. Political.

To be apolitical – to say faith has nothing to do with public life, to say churches should stay out of the big things that impact us all away in the world, to say things to do with labor and business and money and politics and land and laws, to say that’s all too controversial so we should just not talk about it, this is a luxury of the privileged. If the way the world is ordered is working really well for you, maybe you feel like you can be apolitical, not talk about public life. But most people need to, and our faith does too. 

Now there are bad and good ways to engage with faith and public life, so let me mention just two ways I think we’re called to live this out. 

One is by decolonizing our faith. The other is by practicing a healthier integration of faith and politics. Here’s what I mean.

  • Decolonize our faith. This means we recover its sources amidst multiethnic, oppressed people groups. We practice again our faith’s radical commitment to the dignity and empowerment of all people. This means we root out habits and practices leftover from a white supremacist, colonial, patriarchal past. (Trusting, paying men more than women. Sidelining and neglecting children. Preferring the intellect and art and history and leadership of white people. Lots to root out.) And we pay particular attention to the voice and work of God among people historically marginalized. To be followers of Jesus, the brown-skinned Middle Eastern Savior of the world, we’ve got to chart an anti-racist future together.

 

Now this is not aligned with any particular political or ideological strategy for doing these things. We’re going to disagree on methods sometimes. And this isn’t us hopping on to a trend outside of our faith, this is us seeking to recover the healthiest, most useful faith possible. We’ve actually been addressing this a fair bit the past couple of years and will continue to do so. 

 

  • Develop a new way forward for faith and politics. I’m no political scientist or expert here, but the path David Gushee lays out in his book is one I endorse. In the era of Trump, parts of this stand in obvious contrast to the so-called Christian right, but parts are pretty different from tendencies in what might be called the Christian left as well.

I’ve given us a lot today, but I’ll close with Gushee’s 7 criteria for healthy, faith based engagement in politics. 

 

  1. Foster a Jesus-Centered Identity, not a Civil Religion

If you follow Jesus, you are God’s child first, and American or Democrat or anything else second. And same is true for everyone you will ever meet.)

2. Practice Politics of Hope, not Fear

(Riling up people’s worst fears, or letting some politician or news outlet or corporation do that to you makes you a sucker and a fool, and a meaner, harder person. It is not the way of Jesus, who is always calling us to hope, renewal, and possibility. Sorry to say this so strongly, but there it is.)

3. Keep Critical Distance from All Earthly Powers (vs. Partisanship, Partnership, or Surrender)

(Don’t over-love your political party, or any brand or company or whatever. They’re not all equal, but they are all flawed.)

4. Learn from Christian Social Teaching Tradition (vs. hard ideologies or improv)

5. Develop a Global Perspective (vs. Parochial or Nationalist)

America first, or Blue States first, or whatever isn’t God’s way in the world. 

6. See with Vision for the Common Good (vs. Self-Interest)

Protecting my dollars from taxes, protecting my religion from governmental intrusion, protecting my kids’ needs above others, protecting my preferences – this is human and may have its place, but Jesus will always stretch us to consider the common good in public life and to live and love and give and work and vote accordingly. And lastly:

7. Practice What We Preach 

Anything you expect someone else to do for the world, ask if you are willing to do your one-person sized bit of that yourself, And say yes to that. 

Beloved Community, the Beatitudes and Radical Empathy

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

For this week’s spiritual practice engaging the Beatitudes led by Josh Comas-Race, click HERE.

To watch or rewatch this week’s online worship service, click the YouTube link above.

 

LOVED by God: Beloved

We are in the midst of a Fall sermon series on Beloved Community, if you’ve been around the last couple of weeks – you’ve heard Lydia and Steve both speak to this.  It’s not solely a Sunday Virch experience though – our community groups have also been engaging with this idea of Beloved Community, as they meet with one another throughout the weeks. And I’d say even beyond that, the hope of us spending time exploring beloved community is so that we can take on this way of being out into the fullness of our lives, in our neighborhoods and cities. 

At the heart of beloved community is this idea…that a human community can be built on love. And that such a community can promote and establish justice, welfare, create deep belonging, and be unified even across differences.

 

And so this type of community – beloved community -is not just a representation found in a church community, or a cul de sac community, or a school community, or a sports community.

Its only platform really is all of humanity – stretching across and encompassing all the communities that we touch, where we worship, where we work, play and live.

It also  encompasses ALL of who we are as human beings – our failings, our short sightedness, our particular traits, behaviors, opinions, amazingness and our okay-ness.  And it has to account for our history – the experiences that have shaped us – where we’ve come from, and where we stand today.

Beloved community, then, is  pretty vast.

It is not easy to create.

And yet we need Beloved Community, more than ever.

We need help. I need help.

To live this life together.

 

Howard Thurman, who was a theologian and mentor to the beloved community, says that,

“The term beloved community has a soft and sentimental ring.  It conjures an image of tranquility, peace, and the utter absence of struggle and of all things that irritate and disturb.  But beloved community is far from such a utopian surmise… Disagreements will be real and germane to the  undertaking of us becoming at home in our world – under the eaves of our brother and sister’s (siblings) house.” (1966: 206)

 

If prophetic voices like Thurman’s are right, Beloved Community is a deep, bold, vision that will ask of us provocative fundamental questions. What do you believe of God?  Where do you stand today, where do you belong? Who do you notice?

 

These mentors of beloved community, say that our starting point – the only way we can even discuss  – no less vision or  BE A PART of CREATING beloved community IS TO KNOW deep in our beings, that we are loved by God. That we are God’s beloved. AND that every single person around us – is also loved by God.  This is the starting point, the belief system,  the theology that we have to buy into. If we are not close to this truth – this deep love of God for all of us – then we can not be close to co-creating this wild and messy beloved community that we are talking about this Fall.  The courage, the power, the capacity it demands of us will be too much to bear ourselves without this anchor of God’s love.

 

Still though, this Beloved Community can feel abstract.  So I want to help us get somewhere more concrete….the first step 1) acknowledging this deep love God has for us – the second 2) a “tool” of sorts to get us on our way- “ radical empathy” (which you’ll hear more of in a moment)… and third 3) a posture I’d like you to consider, a willingness to see that any moment where you are in time and place with other living human beings is the foreground for beloved community.  This is WHERE you move from concept of beloved community- to reality.
ANY TIME AND PLACE WHEN YOU ARE INTERACTING WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS.

 

Scripture – Matthew 5:3-12
Jesus gives us a way into this practical, concrete picture of beloved community in the scripture we will read together today.  This is the scripture that our community groups are spending 7 weeks in – exploring the foundation by which we can create beloved community..  Here’s the starting point he gives us, and Jesus said: (follow along on slide)

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,

    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4  Blessed are those who mourn,

    for they will be comforted.

5 Blessed are the meek,

    for they will inherit the earth.

6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness/justice,

    for they will be filled.

7 Blessed are the merciful,

    for they will be shown mercy.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart,

    for they will see God.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers,

    for they will be called children of God.

10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,

    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

There is a lot to draw out from these verses, the beatitudes – the first words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount… 

I just want to mention a couple of things – one is context, which I think is informative:

  1. That the large crowds that are following and listening to Jesus come from all over.
    From Galilee, a very Jewish area, that they came from the Decapolis, (these 10 towns – a very Greek area which is not Jewish, not religious, not pure, not clean, not holy), and they also came from  Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan.”
  • All sorts of different people, from many backgrounds – races, ethnicities, non-”christian”, “christian”,  very, very, elite religious – and non-religious.
  • People who were curious to learn more from Jesus and people who thought they knew all they needed to know of Jesus.
  • People who were oppressed like Jesus himself – and people who were the oppressors.
  • This crowd is a representation of the wide, massive spectrum of humanity.
    – and JESUS is speaking to everyone, not just some of them.

 

And so in that vein, 

  1. There are some ways that these beatitudes have been TAUGHT that I think might miss the full spectrum of humanity. One way that I’ve heard is to take on these attributes that Jesus lays out – to lead a more godly life: Be more mournful, more poor in spirit, more meek. Or be more invested in fixing the problems of the poor, the meek, and the mourning.

But I think Jesus here is less interested in teaching us new things to do, to check off – to be more holy and in turn get his blessing. And I think he’s less interested in US fixing problems that we have no knowledge or history of – coming in from a distance to be a savior of sorts. 

I think he’s more interested in inviting us to a new way to live with one another in beloved community. 

These verses are not just platitudes, like a sweet way to go about a godly life. THEY ARE robust, disruptive, in-your-face words that shake the dominant culture. Suggesting that to inherit the riches and glory of heaven – one must unlearn all that one has known of power, authority and even of God.

 

This was very hard to swallow for those whose inheritance had been built on generations of religious exclusiveness.

You see, the systems of power that were at work in Jesus’ day were really good at erecting boundaries. They had an established way of being with one another in community, which is to keep people unlike them OUT. And not only OUT, but DOWN, and oppressively so. Their community is self-sufficient, separate and sacred to them.

 

The way of life and living, loving God that they knew had never been touched. They knew what was required of them to ‘obey’ or ‘not obey’ the commandments of God. And their  community operated this way too. 

And yet, Jesus in these verses says, here’s a different way of being in community – and it requires you to move in from the edges of the crowd, down from your hill, OUT from  your system and connect to all of these people here (those you deem unclean, impure).  Community is rooted in concrete experience –  IN REAL LIFE – natural and free. 

 

This is the point of beloved community  that Jesus makes. 

 

And Howard Thurman echoes this, saying that,

“Community cannot for long feed on itself, it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, our unknown and undiscovered brothers and sisters.” (Thurman 1971: 104).  

Jesus was saying the comfort, the inheritance of the earth, the mercy, the kin-dom of heaven, that everyone in that CROWD wanted (including the religious elite), could only be realized in partnership/community with the people that fill the earth.

AND THIS – THIS way of being, is to be BLESSED, blessed in relationship with those we know we despise, and those unknown and undiscovered siblings that we live among.

 

Radical Empathy

You see these beatitudes are a summons to live in the present, as if it is the future we vision for, dream of…to love our neighbor as ourself.  And I think there is a concrete tool by which we can embody love, and that is empathy.  RADICAL empathy.

Author and journalist, Isabel Wilkinson says,

“The missing link in our age is empathy and the recognition of the shared humanity of another who may on the surface appear different from us. Empathy is a muscle that goes flaccid with disuse. The lack of empathy is the source of division, injustice, and unnecessary suffering. The times in which we live call not just for empathy, but for radical empathy.

 

And she makes this distinction by saying:

 

“Empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and imagining how you would feel. This is not true empathy. It’s role playing. And it still centers yourself. It’s a good start, but not enough for the dangerously fragmented world we live in.  Radical empathy on the other hand, means putting in the work to learn and to listen with a heart wide open, to understand another’s experience well enough to know how they are feeling it, not as we imagine we would feel. It is not about you and what you think you would do in a situation you have never been in and perhaps never will.” 

 

 As I mentioned many of our community groups are engaging with Beloved Community content – The Beatitudes are one part – but another part of the content actually set tracks for this radical empathy.  By sharing with one another childhood stories of experiences of passion, strong emotion, of your town, of what has been passed down to you.  And the aim of these story sharing times – is to know more of your context, your history – what shaped you – formed you – what memories or moments stung, still reverberate in your bones and body.  These are not just frivolous icebreakers, they are not just community-building prompts.  THEY ARE active inroads to know one another deeply, to tap beneath the perspectives and opinions that might be so quick to fall out of our mouths – and tap the well of the abundant love of God that comprises that person, that is so recognizable in our own beings, that becomes visible and impossible to ignore in them.

 

DOUBLE DOWN WHEN IT’S HARD?


I find that these days that the margins of my kindness are eclipsed by compounding bad news, hard conversations and pain in my heart.  And when I’m confronted with differing opinions or perspectives that I don’t agree with or understand – I’M SO QUICK TO DOUBLE DOWN. I double down on the point I want to drive home, to stand my ground.  

And in that doubling down – I can feel myself narrow, where everything in me constricts, becomes rigid from my jaw, all the way to my heart. 

I do this enough that I’ve learned that this doubling down is often an invitation to PAUSE with God for a second. God often asks,  “Where are you standing Ivy?” “Are you on some hill of isolation?”  “You’ve climbed really far.”

I often realize that I’ve come very close to the issue or subject of what it is I’m in discussion over, which isn’t bad, but I’m often really far from the PERSON I’m having it with – and far from that sense of God’s love for me.

 

The further out of focus people become – the further their landscape, their life… the further they are from being real to us. 

We have to tap back to God’s generous spirit in these constricting moments.. It takes such supernatural loosening to stay engaged with a heart that’s wide open. With radical empathy.

 

Wilkerson says,

“It is the generosity of spirit that opens your heart to the true experience and pain and perspective of another.  And, radical empathy does not necessarily mean that you agree, but that you understand from a place of deep knowing. In fact, empathy may hold more power when tested against someone with whom you do not agree and may be the strongest path to connection with someone you might otherwise oppose.” 

It may be really helpful in building beloved community.

 

THIS IS THE POWER OF these beatitudes. It’s why Jesus didn’t use individuals to identify who the “Poor in spirit” were – or say the names of those who were meek that he had met, or point to the faces in the crowd that were mourning.  He left it open, descriptors for us to wrestle with, to define.

Because the invitation the Beatitudes lay out is the invitation of beloved community. And it is for YOU and I to fill out the names, the faces, the stories of the individuals who we encounter – all around us.  Everywhere.  And it is to see not only the people who we might perceive on the surface as completely different from ourselves, but to see ourselves in those people.

 

BELOVED COMMUNITY – TODAY’s CALL

Beloved Community, is an ancient spiritual call….

That Jesus responded to…

That philosophers have pontificated about…(Josiah Royce)

That Civil rights leaders, have laid bricks in building.
That churches respond to – like ours –  with vision…

 

This Fall, we are in a moment of POLARITY and PROMISE…  We are in the largest antiracism movement (many of us), have seen in our lifetimes, and we are in the most deadly pandemic any of us have encountered. 

 

The polarity is obvious.

 

The promise is “beloved community. ” A spiritual, personal, collective call to all of us.  A call to the human heart.

 

Jesus said in the verses to follow the beatitudes that “he came not to destroy the law,  -that laws are necessary for structure and guidance of society – but they aren’t always sufficient – so he said he came to fulfill the law” – to give dimension to it. To puff it out – to give it texture – to give it heart – and that heart is US. 

Us – as living, breathing beings.

So let us with radical empathy fill out justice to be a living breathing thing , and love to be a living breathing thing, and mercy to be a living breathing thing….  WE, humans are the ones who populate this earth with these values. 

They can not stay locked up in systems.

 

VISION…

As I close, I want to say that beloved community has always and will always be a life-long pursuit. 

An ever-evolving way of being, living, and responding to the people around us.

AND YET – it is a compelling vision ….

It is, as any true vision is – one that will always guide us to deeper belonging with one another – and into LIVED wisdom.

BUT it’s one that can not be contained, or claimed, or printed on a “BANNER”, declaring:

“WE ARE BELOVED COMMUNITY”

Because it will be up to those who have been most left out – marginalized and oppressed to reflect back to us whether that’s true or not… did they find comfort? Experience the kin-dom of God in beloved community with us?

 

“BELOVED community – can never be achieved as an end in itself.  It must emerge as an experience after the fact of coming together” – Thurman

 

And so we must come together – before we declare ourselves anything we are not.

We must come together and join with the spirit of God, that is still in the making, still on the move…
WE THE PEOPLE, are needed to help create a beloved community – to form a more perfect union … 

WE THE PEOPLE, need to promote the general welfare and develop a culture of radical empathy. 

WE THE PEOPLE  must establish justice as we do the ongoing work of fulfilling the law of love.

It is on us, to greet one another across difference with the blessings of the image of God in each of us. 

We are ……who we have been waiting for. 

 

Prayer:

 

Blessed are those who come down off their hills, for they will be in godly company.

Blessed are those who pause when they double down, for their hearts will be loosened by the spirit.

Blessed are those who breathe life into vacant forms, for they will create beloved community,  rather than destroy it.

Blessed are WE, for we need each other.

Parable of the Sower

Click “Download PDF” for this week’s events.

Click YouTube link above to watch service.

Spiritual practice: “Anti-Racist examen” written collaboratively by Vernée Wilkinson and Ted Wueste

 

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

13:1 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea.

13:2 Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach.

13:3 And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow.

13:4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up.

13:5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil.

13:6 But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away.

13:7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.

13:8 Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

13:9 Let anyone with ears listen!”

—

Matthew 13:18 “Hear then the parable of the sower.

13:19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path.

13:20 As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy;

13:21 yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away.

13:22 As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.

13:23 But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

About a month ago, my family took a walk into the Beaver Brook Reservation in Belmont. We’re still discovering the areas around us so I was quite happy to find a little stream, a waterfall, a short hiking trail next to water. We stopped on a bridge, with the water rushing underneath us, looking down with awe at the flow. It was mesmerizing. We got quiet, staring down. I looked around and picked a leaf and threw it down from the bridge. My husband was looking down from the other side of the bridge and saw my leaf come out the other way. “I see your leaf!” he claimed with excitement. “Oh yeah?” I answered looking around for another leaf to throw. There was a bush protruding out from the side onto the bridge cement. Big leaves that would float down real good. I grabbed a few more, handed one to my girl Sophia, “throw it, baby!” “Watch for it honey!” I yelled to my husband. “Oh I see it! I see it!” We did this for a while back and forth on the bridge, grabbing leaves, throwing, and looking down the stream on the other side. 

A week later I started realizing that I’ve gotten an awful lot of bug bites and I’m itching in like 5-6 different places. I sprayed myself with bug spray, checked for bed bugs, even had the pest control come out and spray our house. But as the days went on the “bug bites” spread, and now they’ve developed into a rash. I made an appointment with my doctor a few days later. She refers me to a dermatologist and they see me a week later. During that week my whole body spread with rashes, some so bad that they are now open wounds, and even to my face. I suffered for over 2 weeks and finally when I saw the dermatologist, she said she thinks it’s poison ivy and prescribed me something that will make me feel better in 24-48 hours. Then I realized, Beaver Brook Reservation! Eugene was like, “yeah I was thinking, yeah I’m not touching that.” 

Oh the paths we walk. What we might find and stumble onto. How it might affect us. I never knew the agony of poison ivy. Let this story be a lesson to you. Please be careful! 

I think today’s story is a bit of a warning about the paths we might take, and what happens on those paths. It’s one of many parables that Jesus used to teach. It’s often taught in a pretty straightforward manner. There’s 4 kinds of soil that seed is sown on: the path, the rocky ground, among the thorns, and lastly the good soil. And it usually goes like this, the moral of the story. Don’t be like the seeds on the path where the birds can come eat it up. Don’t be like the rocky soil, make sure you get rid of your rocks. Don’t be like the thorny area, get rid of your thorns so it doesn’t choke the plant. Be the good soil. Be the good soil that simply receives it, produces crop and multiplies it a hundred fold, sixty, thirty. Be the right kind of soil. 

That’s one way to look at it, which has been a pretty popular exegesis of the text. But that’s the thing, this story, it’s a parable. It’s not all too clear and it’s not meant to be actually. What are parables? They are symbols and metaphors and reveal and conceal. They open up and illustrate but also are a mode of discovery and even some confusion on purpose. In fact, our text today skips from verse 9-18, which is a whole section about the disciples asking Jesus, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” And Jesus goes on for the next 9 verses being extremely cryptic about his message. He says, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you but not them….” Jesus is trying to keep things from some? “Though seeing they do not see, though hearing they do not hear.” “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.” What? Yes. I don’t know. Cryptic. But that is the nature of parables and that’s what we have to work with here. So it makes me ponder, is there something else going on?

Because to be honest, I grew up in the church hearing this message. Don’t be like the path. Don’t be the rocky soil. Make sure you’re not choking God’s word with thorns. When I did have worries of the world, or faced trouble, and my faith did shake or wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, the only advice I heard was, don’t be shaken. Don’t lose faith. Don’t worry. And yes, we do need sometimes life’s simple mantras, but sometimes it didn’t work. Sometimes the things I faced were more complicated. And the message I heard through this text was, that something was wrong with me. I wasn’t a good soil. So I prayed for heavy rocks to be lifted. I tried to clear my soil as much as I could. But it never felt good enough, I didn’t know why I wasn’t thriving and struggling, and it only made me blame myself and feel shame for not being good enough of soil. 

Thinking back, when I would hear a message like this, needing to apply to my life but facing the world with rocks and thorns, I wasn’t sure how to engage the world or my faith. And a message like this didn’t give me the tools I needed. I faced rocks, troubles and persecution beyond my powers. 

My family wasn’t well off. We had this one car that was so old and junky, that when it got cold in the winter time, it could only go about 35 miles per hour, even on the freeway. We’d have to leave the house earlier, making sure to warm up the car, hoping wishing that it wouldn’t break down on the way to school. When it broke down, it was devastation. My mom always freaked out and she’d go into panic mode. I didn’t know why then and always hated the way my mom turned from a lighthearted person to a person met with catastrophe when our car broke down, probably because we didn’t have savings to get the car fixed. She’d argue with the auto repair guy in her broken English, the guy getting frustrated but my mom practically begging him and insisting that he help us out by cutting us a deal. I hated watching it. It was embarrassing and I wish that we had enough money to just pay and get out of there. So did the worries of life, the deceitfulness of wealth get in the way of me being a good kid sometimes? Yeah, it did. 

Economic hardship, family trauma, racism, sexism, my list of rocks and thorns go on and on that I had no power over and yet was told to fix and somehow produce good crop and bear fruit. 

Have you experienced rocks and thorns in your life that’s beyond your control? So heavy that it could not be lifted by pure will power of faith. Or thorns too complex and entangled you weren’t sure how you would lift yourself out of it? Have there been patches of overgrown areas or seasons in your life that felt as if the evil one was snatching away your livelihood, your joy, your faith? What worries of life are choking your hope these days? 

Maybe the joy of God’s providence comes only for a short while through someone’s goodness, but short lived because the money runs out. Maybe your career or stability feels unstable because you didn’t have a safety net keeping you grounded, bills piling up like rocks with no root system to support you. Or maybe you feel like you’re standing on a busy path, maybe even a highway, where others are going 80 miles an hour, and you’re alone just spinning, in loneliness, feeling left behind. How do you sow seeds in these seasons of life? 

And with the complex world and issues we face today, is this the message God has for us? That if we’re not good soils, we will never bear good fruit? 

What if, what if the 4 soils are not a moral comparison, but pictures of the seasons of life, journeys and paths that we may stumble on on our faith walk? What if, these are various pictures of what you might face, what you’re likely to face? 

In fact the biblical commentators are not even sure exactly which is which. Let me explain. In Matthew, Mark, Luke, the wording on each is slightly different and confusing which is the seed, the message, and the seed sown, the one who hears the message. There is confusion, which is why the reading is unclear with phrasing like, “he that was sown”, (is it the message that’s sown or the person?) or “this is he who hears the word that which was sown.” Maybe we’re not supposed to identify with one of the 4 soils, but various seeds sown in different environments. Because the gospel was never about what WE do, our merits, our efforts. So why would this story’s moral be, be better soil? No. 

And my last question is, this is the parable of the Sower. So, who is Sowing? Is it God? If so, why does this farmer not really know how to farm by scattering seeds on paths, rocky soil, or among thorns. Is this God, a really bad farmer? Here’s what I think. God is not the most efficient farmer, no, but a generous, loving, hopeful farmer, a hopelessly romantic famer, who will scatter the seeds whatever God likes, which is, everywhere. Even on the path, even to the dangerous places, even the most unlikely bad soil places. If the seed is the good news, then no matter where you are, what you are facing in life, what kind of soil you are or what rocks or thorns you may bear, God sows. And maybe part of the faith journey has seasons where things don’t always take root and grow. Maybe it’s an encouragement to us all who are not always bearing awesome fruit, showing us, that in life, there may be times we find ourselves in the busy path caught up, under a rock enduring heavy burden, among thorns bearing scars, and the parable of the sower says, even there I will sow. Sure, good soil is nice, but it might not always be the case. And Jesus gives us this parable to journey through our complicated lives with to say, I will sow in you again and again, relentlessly, foolishly, and you will bear fruit one day. Because the message of the good news is always, not what we do, but what God does, not our merits of how well we garden, but the good news is, God is the great Gardner. That is the seed I pray will be sown to you today, no matter what kind of week you’ve had or you will have, for it is God who sows, nurtures, grows, and gathers with God’s abundant grace pouring into us. May it be so. Let me pray for us. 

Generous Loving Farmer, we thank you that you are a constant source of lights, pouring upon us living water, helping us grow. Would you grow us up with resilience, even in the face of adversity in this world, that you know so well. Would you walk with us even through valley of death, parched, no bearing fruit, and reminds us that there, you don’t condemn us saying why haven’t you got fruit. Instead you love us, forgive us, have compassion toward us and move with us through the next season and the next. May we know the ever present power of your love, and walk in that love, no matter what paths we may face today and this week. Pray in Jesus Name. Amen. 

 

May 3 Virch Service

May 3rd Virch service was a joyful celebration – spring has sprung! We shared stories of where our community is finding life during quarantine, worshiped through song and communion, and heard more about the resurrected Jesus giving us invitation to give and receive of God’s provision. Sermon text from John 21. Join or rewatch.

FOR THIS WEEK’S EVENTS highlighted in our service slideshow, including contact information and links: CLICK ABOVE “Download PDF.”

Sermon: Jesus Cooks Breakfast

John 21:9-14

9 When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.

10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. 14 This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

Let’s pray, Loving God, illuminate your word to us now, that we may listen, hear your voice, and be transformed. By the power of your spirit, descend on us now we pray, ignite in us your mercy, your grace, your love, deep within ourselves and for our neighbors we pray. Show us, God, we seek you now. Amen. 

I’ve been cooking a lot lately. More than usual. Why does the next meal come around so fast? Especially in the morning, I’m like so hungry but not sure what to eat. And these days food runs out quicker, I don’t know how. Okay, so I’m constantly eating all day. On Tuesday morning last week, I woke up and there was no yogurt, no banana, and no bread of any kind. Nothing quick I could grab so I made eggs. I put some coconut oil on the pan and adjust the heat to medium like Gordan Ramsey taught me, I crack a bunch of eggs in and take it off the heat, stir, add some milk, on the heat, stir, off the heat salt and pepper, and turn off the fire and back on the remnant heat. And I added some avocados on top. It was delicious and satisfying that I didn’t even sit down to eat. Breakfast, really the most important meal of the day, and ya know, it tastes even better when someone else cooks it! 

Jesus cooks breakfast for his disciples. I love this. Fish and bread. I’m not sure if americans eat fish for breakfast but when my mom made mackerel and rice for breakfast, it was a special day. Jesus cooked up fresh fish by the beachside, over open fire bbq. Have you had fresh fish that’s just been caught and cooked up right after? Our family used to go camping a lot in Korea. It’s one of the cheapest ways to take a vacation and we were always camping either by the beach or by the mountains, public spaces provided by the government. We didn’t catch our own fish but you could buy fish off the boats that would just come in. They’re some of the fondest memories I have with my family. 

It’s been a few weeks since Easter and we’re continuing to meditate on the events following Jesus’ resurrection. The sightings of Jesus, that made the disciples realize, he’s back. Signs of life and love that Jesus showed us before he ascended into heaven. Those few moments they had after the resurrection were the foundation of a church built that would become known as Christianity. There aren’t that many. The book of Mark ends abruptly with the disciples finding out the resurrection and they scattered in fear. When you read the last chapter, chapter 16, you’ll see a little note that says, “the earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20” meaning that the last 10 verses or so were added later with Jesus showing up again, giving them a commandement, a closure you might call it. In Matthew, Jesus resurrects in the first few verses of chapter 28 and then there’s a story about the guard’s being paid to keep their mouth shut and another commandment, known as the Great Commission, “Now go and make disciples of all nation,”ending chapter 28, which some think that the later ending of Mark got it from Matthew and added it to match with Matthew’s account better. Luke has a few more good stories of how Jesus showed up to a few guys on their road to Emmaus, while they were leaving town, and they didn’t even recognize him, and another story about how they gave him fish and saw Jesus eating in his resurrected body. But John, John has almost twice as much as content of the post Easter stories than the rest. Jesus appeared to Mary, Jesus appeared to Thomas, the miraculous catch of fish that Steve shared a few weeks ago. And then, this story, of Jesus cooking them breakfast. I love that we have these varied sources of what happened. No one knows exactly what happened and different people saw different things. I have this one book, that lays out the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in chart side by side with parallel stories. It’s honestly my favorite thing to pull out and look through. I feel like I’m sitting around the table going, wait but what did you see, and you saw this, you didn’t hear this but you did! Fascinating! 

This is right in line with John’s style. “Signs” was a big theme in his book. All of Jesus’ actions are captured as signs, a testament to his power. A visible sign to the invisible reality. Bible commentators name John’s writing style as one with a “sacramental” tone. Sacraments, what we usually call baptism and communion, sacred acts to enact and unveil holy power, water to represent birth, bread to represent life. Sacramental theology is a way of looking, playing, interacting with embodied human things to try to understand heavenly things. It’s part mystery, part poetry, it’s like art–where symbolism is the only way to properly express truth. Like I can’t explain it to you with words that are too lofty to use. I can only show you, here’s what I mean, and the artist busts out in a song that you might not understand, but oh you feel. Yes, John’s style was like this, from the beginning, was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word became Flesh! It reads like the children’s book. 

The poetic nature of John’s accounts are unmistakable. An Introduction to the Gospel of John says, “Some have suggested that his prose is quasi-poetic and should be printed in poetic format.” They said, you can even find rhyme, although rhyme isn’t common in their poetry but does occur, and even rhythm can be picked up in the original language. There’s parallelism in his prose, or “staircase” arrangement of his speech, like a good rap. I mean that’s what hip hop and rap was for African Americans and many others, and like the blues and the gospels, the singing kind not the 4 books of the bible, a way to express the inexpressible things. Like Chance the Rapper’s song, Blessings, here’s a few lines,

“I don’t make songs for free I make ’em for freedom

Don’t believe in kings, believe in the kingdom

Chisel me into stone, prayer whistle me into song air

Dying laughing with Krillin saying something ’bout blonde hair

Jesus black life ain’t matter, I know I talked to his daddy”

Like, I’m not gonna explain the lyrics to you, cause it’s kind of like modern art, you get what you perceive. Kinda like Jesus, said those with ears, let em hear. It’s got double meanings and puns of truth. 

Why am I going on about this? The symbolism of John? Because we need to listen deeper. We need to not just take the story at its face value but dig. That’s how we should read the Bible with some respect, like those art geeks who walk the museums with the commentary device in their ears. Like when you lean into a painting and read the little box that says, acrylic on canvas 1978 expressing individualism of a woman’s body after childbirth. And you’re like, WUUUUUT these colors and lines I couldn’t make out is about, OOOOOOOH! And then you see it. There’s layers of meanings. 

So let’s lean in and see it. This story of Jesus cooking up fish. What does it mean? Here’s one interpretation, and one access point is just a starting place for each of you to find your own deeper meaning in these Bible stories. Never read or take anyone’s commentary as the authority, it’s just one perspective of someone who spent some time and studied it but that’s it. The fish, is the people. Peter and his friends catching fish, is them doing ministry. Peter was the bedrock foundation of the Church. And the way that they were doing ministry, wasn’t bearing fruit. They were looking at the wrong places. They thought they needed to do ministry to a certain people and Jesus says, no not there, the other side. Not those, the others. And then, their ministry boomed. 

At first this story, my first pass at it, I was like, ugh, I love that Jesus cooks breakfast. What a sweetie! Like when your date says, hey this weekend, come over, I’ll cook for you and you’re like ooh! Special night! Which, I think there’s that meaning too in this story. Jesus loves us. Jesus provides for us. Jesus feeds us and nourishes us. Especially in times of frustration and fear, when you’ve worked all day and came out still with nothing to show for. When your loved one has just died and you’re confused and sad and afraid. Jesus sits you down and says, “eat, drink.” But just like good art, this story, it might have different meanings for different audiences. 

And you know, to be honest, sometimes it’s hard preaching one sermon here at Reservoir. We’re so diverse, and that’s a good thing, but sometimes one message is not what one needs to hear but the other needs. Like if I were just to say, God provides for us. That if we just believe in God’s provision, God will make it happen, well it wouldn’t be the whole truth. That would be prosperity gospel. To those who are in need, those who are poor, those who are oppressed, yes, God says, I will provide, I will feed you, I will bless you and liberate you. But to Nicodemus and Zaccheus, and we have some Nicodemus’es and Zaccheus’es in our congregation, Jesus tell Nicodemus to be born again, which essentially means to… face a kind of death first? And Zaccheus, ends up giving his money away. And the rich young ruler who went away disappointed at Jesus’s sermon because it’s not what he wanted to hear that day. 🙂 Preaching is a weird job. If I made everyone happy with my sermon then I’m not doing my job. Many of Jesus’s messages legit angered people and made them want to kill him. So if I’m preaching the message of Jesus, there should be some people….. 🙂 well, even if everyone hates your sermon, that also doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being prophetic. 

Anyways, Sometimes God provides and sometimes God…. destroys. I’m sorry I hate saying it… cause it’s hard. Sometimes God giveth and taketh away. Isaiah 40:4 says, ‘Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.” You know what that means? High mountains shaved down, rugged places stomped over with those big machines that flattens everything out! So are you a mountain or a hill that will be made low, or are you a valley that shall be raised up? Cause we got both in our congregation. We’ve got the privileged, highly educated in this zoom room, who might’ve lost tens of thousand in their stocks right now maybe. And we also have the ones who’ve lost our jobs, taking care of a child as a single parent, old, single/widowed/divorced, those without healthcare, not knowing where the next rent check will come from. For those, I want to say, Jesus will cook us breakfast. Jesus will have it ready for you burning on hot coals, as soon as you get off work, as soon as that fussy baby goes down for a nap, as soon as you get off the phone with your boss, as soon as you go through another bad date or a breakup, as soon as you’re tired and you’re ready to rest. “Come and have breakfast.” There’s some fish here already, all cooked up, and some bread. 

And that categorizing is not even sophisticated enough. Cause there are some who are rich but drowning in addiction, that need to be raised up from the valley. And those who are traditionally poor who are proud or stubborn that needs to be shaved down. I don’t know your heart, but Jesus does. 

Anyways, to some of us Jesus says, verse 10, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” put it here and add it to the pile that I’ve started. But Peter and his disciples might’ve been thinking, but we just worked all night and caught nothing for a while! We’ve been running empty too and just caught these! I worked hard for them! … Bring some of the fish you have just caught. Contribute and be generous, and put in your part, which I have blessed you with. “Simon Peter climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn.” Reservoir, those who can, those who have the means, those who are able, literally and metaphorically, physically and spiritually,  if you’ve just caught some fish, climb aboard and drag the net ashore. The net, ha! you know like what’s your net worth? Cause even with so many, the net will not be torn. 

Because Jesus will come and take that bread, take that fish and give it to us all to feed us and nourish us all. 

“This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.” These were the signs of resurrection that changed the world. What signs of life will you join into? 

Let me pray for us. 

Sweet Jesus who lives and reigns, who gave himself for us and showed us the way. May your life give us life. May your light give us light. Where there is death, where there is darkness, may you shine in and through us we pray. Amen. 

 

Virch Service: We Got This!

Despite being Zoombombed by profane intruders, many of us were able to meet with each other and with God. Watch video and join in if you missed it, don’t isolate! Love to you and yours.

Also, new this week: click above to Download PDF and check out this week’s Virtual Events & Happenings, copied from today’s slideshow! Follow up to get connected.

Purification: Us Marginalizing or Excluding Them

Fourth in the Series, Seven Stories: Jesus’ Big Story, and the Other Stories by Which We Live

Loving and beautiful God, would you bring to light your word? Would you come near to us now, enlighten us with your truth? Would you touch us with your beauty, your delight, your love right now. As we seek to know you. This we pray, in your precious name, Jesus. Amen. 

There are certain stories that people live by. Ask anyone. Why do you do what you do? How do you think you became to think and be who you are today? What story, incident, or person shaped you to be this way? Even though at first, most of us might think, “oh well, I don’t know, there’re many things, and accumulation of many different experiences.” And yes, I’m sure many things added, reinforced, or nuanced you, but there are a few key moments. That clicked you into the you that you are.  A story or two that define you. If there was a movie about your life, what would be a few of those scenes in the beginning, that start the whole movie you know the ones that like establish your character. Or what are the key flashbacks, that really shaped you? 

Here’s a story from my life. When I first moved to the United States, I was 9 years old, I feel like I share this piece about me, everytime I preach, it was a formative time can you tell? And I was one of 2 and half asians in the whole school, me, a philipino boy, and a half korean half white girl. And kids used to ask me, “are you chinese?” and I’d say, “no” and they’d say, “are you japanese?” and I’d say, “no” and they would go, “then what are you?” And I’d say, “I’m korean” And they would say to me, “There’s so such country!” And I was like, oh, maybe I’m wrong and they are right. I mean, what do I know, I don’t even know English. And since then I’ve doubted myself, who I am, learned to depend on what others said who I was. But they never got it either. The thing that mattered to me the most at that time, me being from Korea, didn’t matter to them, in fact, it didn’t even exist in their minds. That became my narrative, always trying to show, to explain to people who I am, even though they’d never seen such a thing. 

Stories shape us. We’ve chosen to talk about particular seven stories these days in our sermon series, based on a children’s book that tries to capture our generation, our current stories most of us tend to live by. According to these authors, there are 6 of them that the world lives by. They are the story of domination, revolution, isolation, purification, accumulation, and victimization. And the children’s book presents these stories through owls and foxes, and turtles, snakes, and so forth to say–none of these stories work. They do not serve us and they do not give us life. These are all stories of US vs. THEM. And those are not the only stories we have to live by. There is a seventh story.  That serves us all toward one another, towards fullness, love, and peace, thriving of all kinds, where there is no us and them. 

Today, I’m talking about the story of purification. In the children’s book it illustrates this core value of purification through a moment when they decide that all those who do not have fur, and look weird with scales like reptiles, must leave the village and not allowed back in. It’s actually a story that most of us really do live by, not only as a natural physical tendency but also as a moral and religious code. Like remain with likes. In fact, religious folks, Christians particular have used and over used, thereby (ab)used this concept of purification to hurt, harm, reject people. We’ve used it as a theological foundation to carry out marginalization and exclusion. And it has hurt people. 

Purification is deeply ingrained in the Christian tradition. It’s a metaphor that’s used all over the Bible. In Leviticus, purity codes determined way of life, the boundaries of religion. It managed and controlled every aspect of life from land, to table, to the body, to sex. These were based on some natural and yes, even helpful ways to operate in a community. Careful as they were, thoughtful as they were, in their best efforts and practices of containment. This was their science. What were contaminants, things that kept them quarantined and safe. If someone was visibly sick or bleeding after childbirth. Some of these things I do think really did help the community and that was their hope and intention, of course. 

The power of these life wisdoms were carried over, not only as protocol, but as the answer, not only physically but also morally and spiritually. It came to dictate what was clean and unclean, who was clean and unclean. And it’s a powerful thinking and it almost seems intuitive and it works. In the book called “Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality” by Richard Beck, he takes a look at this thinking through psychology, particularly a thing called ‘disgust psychology’. To illustrate, he begins by explaining the work of Paul Rozin, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, an expert on disgust and contamination. His focus had been on human reaction to food and has evolved as of late to investigating “forgiveness, aversions to ethnic groups, and ethnic identity.” Take his Dixie Cup research. 

Say I asked you to spit into a dixie cup. Now what if I asked you to drink that cup? Would you? Most of us would not, as it’s gross! And it’s apparently interesting to psychologists why we do this. Because we swallow our own saliva all the time, and yet, if it comes out, it’s now been contaminated somehow, even if it was done in a matter of seconds, and now it’s spit. It actually has nothing to do with reality, whether it truly is dirty. Psychologists call this, “magical thinking”. Yes, magical thinking is what we tend to do. Beck gives another example. If he dropped a cockroach in a glass of juice, took out the cockroach, would you drink it? What if it was filtered? What if it was filtered, boiled, and filtered again? Disgust is illogical. 

But it’s natural! You might say. Well you don’t know a baby. Baby put everything in her mouth. She drops it on the floor and put it right back in her mouth. Well, and now I do too. I put it in her mouth, she spits it out and drops it on the floor and says “all done” and I’m like, uh uh, nom! I don’t want to waste…. Cause this happens a lot! 

We’ve taken this same magical thinking not only to our food, but to other’s food, other’s way of life, other’s lives. 

One time my co-worker brought green tea mochi with red beans to happy hour and I was legit excited. It was on the table, next to the cookies and brownies, and a few of them turned to each other and with a disgusted face was like, “what is that?” “I don’t know. It’s… green!” “It’s got beans in it!” “Ew!” And I felt embarrassed, ashamed, like I was disgusting for loving it. Thankfully, my friend was much cooler than I was, walked up to them and was like, “uh like a billion people in this world would disagree with you.” and bit into the mochi like a champ. Not this place, another work place I was at… in the past… 

This whole disgust psychology displayed in mere food, eventually and inevitably moves into a more robust set culture in all aspects of life. And even at food level, it hurts a little. But when it starts moving into, oh why does he eat that. Oh why does he wear that? Oh why does he look like that or act like that? It becomes not only a little embarrassing but life altering.  

That’s what the Levitical laws ended up doing to people. All the rules that were meant to keep people “safe”, to keep things in order, began to divide and exclude people. Those who had bodily discharge, and didn’t have the means to have proper ceremonial bath or the money to buy two doves to for the cleansing offering. Those who had mildew in their house and couldn’t afford the priest to come and do an inspection. A woman who didn’t have the money for young pigeons for her purification after childbirth. Patches on skin, if a man loses his hair, if you touch blood, if you touch dog poop, I’m serious all of these are in Leviticus and where does it stop? And funny enough, it was about money. 

These were the same rules that the Pharisees were applying to Jesus and his disciples. He was eating with sinners! Contamination! Letting a sinful woman touch him. Blasphemy! 

But Jesus was giving us a new story to live by. We see it again and again in the New Testament, where he reshapes the old stories they grew up hearing. Reframing and re-embodying them in ways it never existed. Here’s just one. 

Luke 5:12-16 New International Version (NIV)

12 While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

13 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately the leprosy left him.

14 Then Jesus ordered him, “Don’t tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”

15 Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. 16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

What happened here.  A man with leprosy, which was a general term for any kind of skin disease, was outcasted from the town and usually lived in their own quarters. They were prevented from interacting with anyone who was clean. Which meant from their families, from the temple. They couldn’t eat with others. They couldn’t worship with others. They were estranged. We heard last week what isolation does to people. 

Look at the story carefully. Jesus did not seek out a sick man. He wasn’t going around looking for people to heal. In fact as this text ends, he would often withdraw himself to pray by himself. But the man came to him. He begged Jesus and said, if you are willing, make me clean! Because he had been told again and again that he was unclean. But he knew inside, that somehow, he could be made clean. Even though priests have written him off. Even though leprosy was something that was incurable. Something inside him compelled him to seek Jesus and say otherwise please.  And you know what happened?  Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. And then said, “I’m willing.” He touched him. He touched him, first. He broke Levitical purity code right there, before he said a word, before healing, before a miracle. Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. And with that, he overturned the tables of moral codes, religious codes, spiritual and physical codes of its time. With one touch, he shattered the magical thinking that leads to disgust and rejection of a whole human being. The man did not contaminated Jesus as widely accepted norm suggests. It simply wasn’t true. And with that touch Jesus proclaimed what everyone always thought was true, that when you touch someone unclean, you become unclean, to be untrue and flipped it on its head. 

Here’s how Beck explains it, “…consider the attribute of negativity dominance. The judgement of negativity dominance places all the power on the side of the pollutant. If I touch (apologies for the example I’m about to use) some feces to your cheeseburger the cheeseburger gets ruined, permanently. Importantly, the cheeseburger doesn’t make the feces suddenly scrumptious. When the pure and the polluted come into contact the pollutant is the more powerful force. The negative dominates over the positive… What’s striking about the gospel accounts is how Jesus reverses negativity dominance. Jesus is, to coin a term, positivity dominant. Contact with Jesus purifies. A missional church embraces this reversal, following Jesus into the world without fears of contamination. But it is important to note that this is a deeply counterintuitive position to take. Nothing in our experience suggests that this should be the case. The missional church will always be swimming against the tide of disgust psychology, always tempted to separate, withdraw, and quarantine.”

Have you seen this happen in churches? Separate, withdraw, and quarantine?  Have you experienced it first hand? I have. Harshly. Mercilessly. I considered sharing it but I can’t. I’m sorry. It was too painful. Maybe another time, another sermon… I’ve shared bits and pieces of it here and there to some of you. I shared the gist of it briefly at the Neighboring and Justice meeting a few weeks ago, as we talked about organizing power at Reservoir. I have been learning through the work with Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, a way to do radical powerful “missional” work that isn’t just about going out to those in need and helping them, but a way we lock arms with our Jewish and Muslim siblings, Catholics, and even those that might not believe in any God, gasp, to partner and support one another in a common goal of doing public good. Apparently this organizing work starts with telling our stories. Why we do what we do. Why I care. Why I’ve had it with the way things always have been, the stories they tell us that we should all live by. Why I am sick of seeing the powerless forgotten and pushed out by those with power. So I shared my story real quick. And it’s funny, even sharing the story is scary, as if if you knew, you might reject me. Stupid right? I’ve been singled out. scapegoated. Have you?

So has Jesus. If purification is the story that drives the ugly over the cliff, Jesus became ugly. And that’s why I find Jesus so beautiful. 

He touched the ugly. And the text says that “the leprosy immediately left him”. That was positivity dominant, or as I would say because I don’t think Jesus operated on dominance but the power of positive embrace. Again, let’s look at the text carefully. When Jesus says, “Be clean!” the words weren’t some hocus pocus words. They were more like, I pronounce you clean, which is something a priest would have said to someone in a cleansing ceremony. A priest that didn’t follow the levitical codes and just pronounced people clean? That was the scandal. And the incident doesn’t end there. That wasn’t the end point. I would go as far as to say, that wasn’t the point. Leprosy leaving. Jesus goes on to say, “Don’t tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” Some scholars think that he may have suggested this to not bring himself more attention, but trying to forward people to their laws. 

This brings us back to Leviticus. Jesus subverts the purity codes and then goes back to them, utilizing them, equipping this newly energized man to go back to the system that oppressed him to take back his power, through the system. With Jesus, it wasn’t just about getting rid of his leprosy, but incorporating him back into the fold of the community. Jesus touched him and said, I care. You’re mine. You’re included. Get up. Go, show them. That you are welcome in the house of God. That you are God’s beloved. No longer are you casted out of the realm of the people.  

We’ve gone personal, biblical, and psychological angles at this. Let me share with you one more, anthropological. This one is from one of our own. Working on his Phd in anthropology at MIT now, is Tim Loh. He told me about his research on Deaf Christians, which fascinated me. He forwarded me his paper, let me read you the beginning real quick: 

“This anthropological research paper explores how Deaf Christians negotiate their identity as members of two distinct identity groups: Deaf and Christian. The historical perception of Deaf and other disabled peoples in the church has not been positive, and a number of Christians today also view disability as one consequence of a fallen world that God will eventually restore. Since—beginning in the 1960s and continuing until the present time—many Deaf people believe that Deafness is a cultural, even ethnic, identity centered around American Sign Language rather than a disability (Lane, 2005),”

Interesting. I’ve never thought of it that way. But I’m not deaf. And honestly, I don’t think I know closely many deaf people. Tim mentions the Bible verse that’s been used in the Christian tradition to distinguish those who are saved and those who are not,  “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17), one that has been taken literally and applied irresponsibly to say that deaf people were beyond salvation. But when Tim interviews these folks, they didn’t seem to see the contradiction as starkly, being deaf christian, and in fact displayed a cohesive meaningful identity in being deaf and it being a purposeful part of God’s plan. Listen to a story from the study:

“The formation of a Deaf Christian identity was in many ways a rejection of and a form of resistance against the label of “disabled”—and often, “in need of healing”—that hearing Christians impose on them. This is seen in that the discourse of “God’s purpose” that was utilised by many participants was often linked to specific instances of misunderstanding or ignorance by hearing people. For example, Vikram recounted an incident when he visited an interpreted service at a church in Chicago. During the service, he saw two people close by whispering among themselves, and knew immediately that they were going to pray for his healing. Sure enough, they laid their hands upon his ears and started praying. Nothing happened, but after they finished praying, one of them handed him a piece of paper, on it asking him if he wanted to give a testimony. He agreed, walked on stage, and said through the interpreter: “Thank you to the two of you for praying for me. For me to hear—you all want it for me, I understand, because you have pity on deaf people. BUT God—He sees me and He doesn’t [have pity on me]. He gave me everything. This body is what He gave to me and I’m happy with it”.”

This linguistic anthropology, when listened to and understood in their terms through their experiences in their words or signs, shows a people who identify themselves in a way that is different from maybe most others, but just, human, fully thriving apparently. Tim asked one of them, “do you think there will deaf people in heaven?” And he answered, “Why not? Maybe Jesus knows sign.” Which is the title of his paper. Maybe Jesus knows sign. And his finding and conclusion was their desire for better inclusion in the church. 

It’s not about figuring out what’s right or wrong. Though sometimes that’s a helpful tool. It’s not about figuring out what’s broken and fixing it. Though sometimes we talk about things that way, like relationship or even people. But it was only meant to be a metaphor. That sin needs to washed in the blood of Jesus. That here’s a debt to be payed. That those who are sleeping need to wake up. All of these are true AND but not the whole truth, that they are trying to get at something much bigger. That no matter what, whether dirty, in debt, or sleeping, that God runs towards us, see us, touches us. That we are worthy being touched first, before anything needs to be changed. The miracle only follows after, and that’s up to God. The miracle only follows if needed, and that’s up to God. That’s why I believe that at Reservoir, it’s about belonging before believing. I come from a Presbyterian background and this is to be honest a bit ludicrous. That people who might not have “crossed the line of faith” can become members. Anyone belongs before they sign some belief creed even. What? Anyone can come to the table of Jesus, communion, we’re not going to check if you’re a member or even baptized. What? This is actually quite radical. And it’s not because at Reservoir, all goes. No, this is very intentionally very well thought out theology centered on nothing but Jesus. We think that we’re not gatekeepers. We don’t check your status for you to join the church. We don’t ask who you’re having sex with or not. We don’t police people’s lives, we just hope that you join our community and journey with us together, humbly, so we can just be together no matter what. And we put up with each other. We ask questions to one another. And sit in the questions without answers! And wonder together, Maybe Jesus knows. 

Purification was only supposed to be a metaphor. But that’s the thing with metaphor, they reveal things but also conceal things. They show us truth but it’s limited in its frame. I believe that we’ve taken the metaphor of purification too literally at times. Who gets to decide what is pure? Where is the line? That’s the thing, if we’re not really careful and if we’re not really listening to the people, then we get it wrong and begin to discriminate, cause fear, based on nothing. 

Jesus was holy and pure yes. And, not. Jesus constantly contaminated himself but touching those who had leprosy, eating with tax collectors, breaking all the rules of sabbath, talking to women, letting sinful woman touch him with her hair and oil. Jesus kept moving and moving and moving towards the those who everyone else proclaimed to be unclean, unworthy. So much so that, eventually everyone did agree that since he hangs out with criminals, he must be a criminal, and they treated him as a criminal. He was incarcerated and tried in court and sentenced to death. A gruesome undignified death on the cross. 

Who gets to decide who is clean and unclean? Jesus never distinguished. It was always those who are in power. 

Maybe our job isn’t to decide who’s in or out. Or who’s clean or unclean. Or even try to figure out how to make ourselves clean, perfect, good, or better. Our job is to be close to Jesus. The rest is upto God. May we have the courage, patience, not the sacrifice but the mercy to know the power of positivity embrace, and touch those around us. May that power bring all of us healing, redemption, wholeness, and love that we need. 

Invitations to Whole Life Flourishing

Think of those that might feel excluded from religion or society. What would it look like to move toward them, to touch them, and to include them back into the fold of your community? 

Spiritual Practice of the Week

If you’ve ever felt like you’ve been excluded or rejected from a dominant group, imagine Jesus putting his loving hand on you, to say, “you’re fine, you’re good, you’re loved and accepted.” 

Jesus, Jesus, are you willing? Give us the willingness to reach out. Not only to know we already know, we get along with, those who want to only help but in a distance. Give us the power to reach out and touch and eat with people we never thought we could. Help us to cross boundaries that we’ve put up, to include all into the fold of your love and care. Give us the strength to do so, in our day, in our church, and in our lives we pray. Amen. 

The Legend of Mary

Kids say the darndest things. My first Christmas as a youth pastor, I had a kid say in our group time, “You know Christmas was stolen from a pagan holiday.” As they do. And there it unraveled the myths of christmas and our Bible study debunked in the face of good education and intelligent self thinking kids.

Turns out, she was right. Jesus’ birthday, known as Christmas, on December 25th is not in the Bible. Turns out, there has been celebration of hope and light in the midst of the darkest of winter solstice, in various cultures and time in history before Jesus, where they cut evergreen trees and bring it inside or have big extravagant parties to celebrate the sun god. These stories, these histories, these myths – what are we to do with them? And in light of them, then, what is the significance of the Christmas story? How do we unpack the religiosity and the politics that wrap the story of the birth of Jesus by co-opting other traditions with their power? If Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th, what are we even celebrating? Are these all just lies? 

That’s what my youth group kids were alluding to when they asserted their knowledge. And my kids, oh they loved seeing me try to make sense of it and do cartwheels around their smarts. And I didn’t want just smooth over them. I wanted to engage them. It’s not like I could only tell the Christian tradition and not expect them to be challenged with other traditions. In fact, in a pluralistic world as today, we can’t be ignorantly covering our ears and belly gazing our own well known story of Jesus. It is, and it must be comparable with the respect and dignity of other traditions. It should be investigated and humbly engaged with BOTH the miraculousness and as some would claim the ridiculousness of the story. Otherwise this wouldn’t be a church, it would be a cult, where questions or critical thinking are not welcome. The Christmas story also must come to terms with the colonized history that retells the story, knowing that the story does not come to us in a vacuum. It comes within the confines of certain theologies. Certain worldviews. Certain perspectives. Stories come in containers. You’ve heard “medium is the message.” And if we know that, we must be sophisticated enough to pull apart the medium from the message. 

Why bother? Why bother thinking about the context of the biblical writers? The Bible says it, so I believe it? Why bother considering the cultural context of the tradition that’s been passed down to us? Because I believe that the message behind the medium, is at core, the message of Good News. A message of promise. What is the promise? I’ll get to that in a few minutes. 

Here’s what I mean. 

One of my favorite movies is “Big Fish.” It’s a Tim Burton film with Ewan McGregor. It’s a telling of the story of the father’s life, but in a fantastical beautiful exaggerated way, as it says, “the way he told me”. The movie is definitely a very much like a fairy tale with witches, giants, siamese twins and all. The son, Will decides to try to get to the truth of the stories, traveling back to their hometown. Now, Will’s disappointment in his father and frustration of having been lied to about the details of his life, takes the backseat when he realizes the beauty and the actual capturing of its grandeur of the “truth” behind the story. Sorry for the spoiler. It’s still worth checking out if you haven’t seen it, as Tim Burton does capture it magically. In fact, isn’t it sometimes that poetry is closer to truth than facts. Fiction brings about real human experiences alive and makes us enter the story and feel, embody, with empathy through our imagination. Myths include more meat than mere historical accounts. Well, I mean even historical accounts are…. Well, just an account. 

Theologian Frederick Buechner in his book called Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, says, “The preaching of the Gospel is a telling of the truth or the putting of a sort of frame of words around the silence that is truth because truth in the sense of fullness, of the way things are, can at best be only pointed to by the language of poetry–of metaphor, image, symbol–as it is used in the prophets of the Old Testament and elsewhere.” Let’s let the silence of truth ring as we take a look at the image of Mary today.

The Christmas story, the birth of Jesus, we have only 2 accounts of it in the Bible, Matthew and Luke. Mark, he actually doesn’t even mention it. The book of Mark starts instead with the baptism of Jesus. Which is interesting point about what baptism is, the moment in which God claimed Jesus through a voice from heaven saying, “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” a very particular set of words, a formulaic words of the ceremony of adoption from that time and culture actually. But I digress. So, Matthew has the birth story, more from the angle of Joseph and Luke more from the perspective of Mary. Here at Reservoir, we’ve been in the Advent Series of pilgrimages. We’ve been following the various journeys of different characters in the Christmas story. I’d like to take a look at the pilgrimage of Mary today. Receiving the story as is, like Will in Big Fish trying to excavate the truth behind the story, let’s see if we might be able to enter the story in all of its fullness of miracles. It’s Christmas week. Let us enter into the magic of Christmas with a sober mind and open hearts. Let me read the text for us. 

Luke 1:26-56 New International Version (NIV)

26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”

38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

46 And Mary said:

“My soul glorifies the Lord

47     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

48 for he has been mindful

    of the humble state of his servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed,

49     for the Mighty One has done great things for me—

    holy is his name.

50 His mercy extends to those who fear him,

    from generation to generation.

51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;

    he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones

    but has lifted up the humble.

53 He has filled the hungry with good things

    but has sent the rich away empty.

54 He has helped his servant Israel,

    remembering to be merciful

55 to Abraham and his descendants forever,

    just as he promised our ancestors.”

56 Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home.

Every good story starts with an origin story. Startup stories like How I built this podcast. Or how two people met and fell in love. In the ancient world, all heros, important figures had an origin story. It’s a way of meaning making and connection building people groups have been doing for ages. This story is at face value a joyful, hopeful story. But it’s not without a pang of tragedy. It’s a bit glazed over but it’s there. 

When my little girl Sophia who’s 14 months old now, grows up, I will tell her, that…

On the morning of her delivery, after I was induced at Mt Auburn hospital, your Dad and I went on a walk along the Charles River as we waited for you to come pushing out of me into the world. I was scared. It was good to walk and get out of the hospital room, hooked up to machines to monitor your heart rate. There had been this song Umma made up for you. Jagabee, Jagabee, Umma loves you Jagabee (the in utero name we had been calling her, named after our favorite asian snack). It was in a minor key, as I’m often drawn to a little blues, a little dissonance, a little smudge in life that makes things unique and beautiful. We were singing it for you. And Dad was trying to rewrite the song into a major key. Jagabee! Jagabee! Umma loves you Jagabee! Now, neither of us are musicians. Eugene’s an actuary. Despite Umma’s disposition toward minor keys, we wanted you to know and experience joy, happiness, an ending without a hanging sad note but with a nice resolution. We sang the song in variations until we forgot how the original song went. And I hope that that’s always true for you. That no matter what happens in life. If it plays for you minor notes, may you re-sing and reclaim your song majorly. 

Fredrick Beuchner also said, “The Gospel is bad news before it is good news.” The reality of Mary’s story is that… this is not just a happy story. It actually starts with bad news. On a minor key. Getting pregnant out of wedlock was bad news. It would’ve been a death sentence for the girl in that culture where attachment to a man through proper manner was everything. I mean, it still is in some circles today. 

The writer, Luke wanted to pass down Mary’s origin story of Jesus to the next generation. Around 80 CE, as the community of Jesus followers were beginning to form its own unique identity, it was probably important for them to start getting it down in writing. The eye witnesses, the various versions of the stories that were passed on orally. Which is why we have the 4 gospels, with some of the events with varying details. The “discrepancies” between the stories do not make them unreliable but adds to the truth of the fact that multiple people experienced Jesus in different ways. If my sister and I each wrote letters about my mom, it would be very different stories. Neither are untrue.   And if my brother wrote about my mom, well it would be songs not letters. Similarly, Matthew had an approach to the Jewish audience where he incorporates much of the Jewish texts to tell the story of Jesus, fulfilling the Hebrew Scriptures. Mark has a very swift way of telling the story, shortest of the 4, often just quickly capture what happened. Luke is a bit more elaborate. He’s educated, known to us as to be a physician from other sources. He has intent and a theological focus in the retelling of his stories. And John, much like my brother Johan, which by the way is John in Korean, John is so poetic. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. Like you gotta snap through reading John like a spoken word poetry slam. 

How did Luke come to capture this account of Mary’s pregnancy? Biblical scholars point to a possible earlier source that Matthew and Luke probably utilized in each of their own accounts. Luke wasn’t there, with Elizabeth or Gabriel. Mary and Elizabeth must’ve told their husbands, their friends, their community. They probably posted on their wall and people liked and loved it. But they probably didn’t record it. The text we have today is a piecing together from the best of their ability, with their most reliable sources, a narrative that Luke wrote, as he says at the beginning of his book, “Many people have set out to write accounts about the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used the eyewitness reports circulating among us from the early disciples. Having carefully investigated everything from the beginning I also have decided to write a careful account for you, most honorable Theophilus…” It’s not a transcript. The Bible is not a history or a science book. It could be said that it’s actually closer to investigative journalism. Luke was likely commissioned by Theophilus, to get it right. He wanted to set the record straight. So he says the story went like this,

Mary was greatly troubled.

And the angel said, don’t be afraid.

And Mary was like, but how?

And the angel said, the Holy Spirit will take care of it. 

And Mary said, may it be so!

I genuinely believe that Luke did his best in trying to capture the glory and honor of Jesus’ birth story. But I think it moved too quickly to Mary’s properly mannered obedience, as is a model woman’s role to be of such nature. And in doing so we miss out on the pain of Mary. Her struggles. Mary’s darkened soul in the face of the realities of her world. Maybe it would’ve been too scandalous to keep it too accurate to her experience. Maybe Luke wanted to highlight the hope part more than the tragic part. And maybe in a sense, that’s why the Christmas story sounds a bit more like a fairy tale. I excavate the story to find the wedge in the joy. Because I personally find the wedge in joy often in life. I don’t know about you, but in the midst of this supposedly joyful season, I find the wedge actually widening and taking up even bigger space amidst the jolly holly. The cold air of those who are not with me are more chilling. The loneliness of being estranged from some family members more painful. Amazon prime orders made to their houses fall short of the embrace I want to give them. All the celebration, the warmth, the love in the air contrast too starkly to the sadness I feel. And I think Luke preserved that wedge for me in Mary’s song, also known as the Magnificat.  In it, it peers deeper into darkened world of Mary’s. Juxtaposed by her hope and victory, she shed light onto the world in which Jesus is born into. This is her reality, hope she made sense of what was happening, and her theology. What is God doing by coming into this world? She says, 

 God as scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

God has brought down rulers from their thrones

    but has lifted up the humble.

God has filled the hungry with good things

    but has sent the rich away empty.

There is this cry of petition, of resistance in this song. A proclamation not of only praise but a preaching, a speaking into the future of how things better be in the future. The proud scattered. The rulers brought down. How the humble shall be lifted up. How the hungry will be fed and the rich left empty. There is a switching of order. And she knows this order because she herself has been the back end of this order. She knows humiliation. She knows rejection. She knows what it’s like to be marginalized. For her, this is personal. 

I don’t know exactly how it all went down. I believe that Luke capture the legend of Mary in a way that tries to honor her. But the reality is, Mary was not that honorable at first. Let us not white wash her trauma. This is a tragic moment for her before it was a divine revelation. She was freaked out. She was mortified that her parents would find out or people would gossip about her. Her sexuality in questions. She was ashamed. She was heartbroken with the possibility of her fiance breaking the engagement. She needed Elizabeth to talk to and calm her down, for 3 months! Heck she needed an angel! All I’m saying that it probably didn’t exactly happen the way Luke captured it. Many parts of it corroborate with Matthew’s account. Many other parts do not. Maybe she didn’t agree to it so quickly at first. Maybe she retold the story after Jesus grew up, realizing what God had done with her story, with her shame. Maybe people retold and retold the story mixing their growing hope into it more than their fears. Quoting Beuchner again, “It is impossible for anybody to leave behind the darkness of the world one carries on one’s back like a snail, but for God all things are possible. That is the fairy tale.” Maybe Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th. 

Accurate factual stories are too small to hold the miracles of God. When a smart person asks you questions about your faith, poking holes into the Bible stories, Do not be afraid. I was afraid when my youth group kid asked me. Teenagers can be scary! We all know how the Bible was written. If not, you can google it. It’s not a secret and it’s a part of human history, passed through many tainted hands. I’m okay with saying that there are many variations of these stories, edited by multiple people and generations over time, written with a theological agenda, intent, and purpose, to preserve the message, the promise. Then, how can it be true? How does the Christmas story hold up? Why should it even matter? The Legend behind the Myth. The truth behind the history. The Promise behind the story. What’s it to me? 

What is truth? Truth is what we deem to be important enough to say again and again, in community, and pass down to the next generation. Whether it’s true or not, is for the each generation to decide. If it is compelling enough, it will speak for itself. Truth need not be forced or manipulated. Truth, even if threatened does not shrivel, when shed of its complexity is not muddled, but continues to reveal in new ways, growing deeper wider web of roots in which it stands. Through it all, the myth, the legend, the history – the promise is clear. 

And the Promise is that, the illegitimate is made legitimate. The Illegitimate is made legitimate. Not only so but beautiful, miraculous, and holy. The promise is that God forsaken situations are covered by God’s mercy and purpose. The sidelines become the center. That shattered dreams are mended with gold. Tricky situations are turned into defining moments. The disgraced are lifted. 

Not just a once upon a time but right now, right here, that’s the promise. God is brewing, in the belly of Mary and at the core of you. This is what Mary proclaimed in her song, that God uses the foolish to humble the proud.

If your heart is broken. If you’re despairing. God sits with you. If you’re down and out, feeling cast out. God is on your side.  If you are depressed, anxious, worried, deflated. God stands with you. If you are suffering, oppressed, and enemies stand against you. God moves toward you. Not only so, God sees to it that you are brought back to the center, made whole, loved and claimed as God’s own, and reinstated back into a righteous justice realm where God reigns. This is the miracle work of Christmas that God is doing, through the marginalization of Jesus in a broken world. In the face of a life tragedies, which there are many, may The Holy Spirit come on you, and the power of the Most High overshadow you. Amen. 

Invitations to Whole Life Flourishing

Move in towards the messes of your life. Or the messes of others. See if you can find it to be a place that can be fertile soil to something miraculous, beautiful, holy. 

Don’t see it with the world’s eyes, as failure or a mistake. See if you can recognize the divine manifestation through the ugly, the shamed, the illegitimate. 

Spiritual Practice of the Week

Close your eyes and imagine Mary’s experience. Visualize looking into the room where Mary first found out that she was pregnant. Try to sit with her emotions that she might be having. Notice and simply witness both the natural fear and the supernatural strength. After, journal how that experience made you feel. What did it bring up for you?