Lydia Shiu - Reservoir Church

Love is…Mussing Up Someone’s Hair

I’m coming to you from my house, pre recording this sermon because, surprise, I’ve been exposed to Covid. Hope you are all well, and getting through these times with some sustained energy.

We just started a series called Love is… and all I can think of is, “What is love? Baby don’t hurt me~” Sorry, it’s an old movie reference, called A Night at the Roxbury, if you don’t get it.

The question is legit though. It is THE question. What is love?

When I started developing crushes, this was a very important question for me.

I remember being in the 4th grade, and there was this kid named Robbie, who was just so cute, even gave me a hand written Christmas card, and no we weren’t doing an activity in class where we had to write a card to everyone, it was just to me.

I got the card and it said, “I stole this card from my sister. Merry Christmas!”

And I thought, is this love?

Often when I had questions, I’d go to the library to find answers. And there was this one book that I still remember to this day, that guided me along these heart wrenching times, called ‘Love is… walking hand in hand’ from the Charlie Brown and the Peanut gallery. Each page gave me real examples of what love was, that were clear and defined. One page said that “Love is meeting someone by the pencil sharpener.” And that year I sharpened my pencil a lot.

Today I want to specifically talk about, as pastor Ivy showed us in our Spiritual Practice, Love is Mussing Up Someone’s Hair.

I saw this kind of thing happen during Christmas, with one of my friend’s kid, a 10-year-old boy who has selective mutism, who didn’t really know how to interact with my son, a 1-year-old baby. And he would just come up and touch his hair, it was so cute.

I’ve also been watching this reality dating show on Netflix. Don’t judge me, it’s not as trashy as you’d think, being a reality show. It’s called Single’s Inferno, where a bunch of single people are placed on an island, kind of like Survivor show style.

They’re sleeping in a tent and have bare minimum to eat and not much to do except date. They have some games and prompts that if you win, you get to pick your partner to go to “paradise” with, which is literally a hotel and resort called Paradise, and you get to stay in a suite room with room service with the date of your choice for one night.

And it’s so hilarious and cute how small things matter so greatly when there isn’t much else to do except think about feelings for each other. When someone decides to sit next to someone at the bonfire, when someone takes a walk with this person as opposed to that person, or when someone touches someone’s hair while talking–the drama!

One guy starts falling for a girl because she said to him, “you look nice in pink. Pink is my favorite color.” Or another guy pointed out how cute it was that someone said to him, “hurry hurry go up!” while they were walking behind them on the stairs. But one of the biggest sacrifices one makes for love, or show of affection here is that they would rather stay in the Inferno (the island) rather than go to Paradise with another person.

You know why I call myself Christian? Because I am enamored by God’s grand gesture of love. Pastor Ivy put it really well recently. She said,

“God comes to the edge of God’s own divinity and knocks on our human hearts and says, ‘May I come in?’ ”

God decided to leave paradise, all that’s associated with being a divine being, gave it all up to be with us and one of us.

Philippians 2 says that Jesus “Instead, gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position, was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form.”

And when God decided to do this, I think God came to mess up our hairs a bit. God came into our space, got in our realm, and began to shake things up a bit. That’s what’s compelling to me about Jesus. Christian theology says,

What does God look like? It looks like Jesus, who came into this world as a helpless baby, born not in a palace but a manger, rode not on a high horse but a humble donkey, and instead of exercising all his might, humbled himself actually to death.

Who is God? What does God do? Who is Jesus? What did Jesus do? There are many things we can say, that have been said, that Jesus died for our sins, or God saves us, or God protects or Jesus cares or whatever. But at the end of the day, why, why did God do any of these things?

1 Corinthians 13 talks about prophecies, fathoming mysteries and knowledge, and faith to move mountains, giving all I possess to the poor or surrendering bodies to the flames, and says all that is nothing, if you don’t have love.

All of theological debates can be ended with, God is love. God did all that because God loves you. Why do we care about justice, welcome the refugees, normalize pronouns to expand our concept of gender binary, include the outcast, why do we confess our sins, why do we gather together as a community, why do we bother to do any of these things, because of love!

How have you been enamored by God’s love? There are many different kinds of love that can help us understand the love of God and romantic love is definitely a metaphor that’s used even in the Bible. Song of songs is all about love, sensuality, flirting, and even sexuality, and it’s been included in the Bible as a way for us to know God’s love for us.

So think about romantic relationships or love interests in your life. Think about your dating life. I think it’s interesting to think about dating love because love after marriage is one thing, but when you’re dating, things kind of heightened, like the show I was telling you about. Like first walking into their apartment. Or the first time you have a misunderstanding. At every step of the way you’re looking and aware, and asking, could this be love? There are seasons in our faith journey where our relationship with God can feel like that. You’re looking and seeing, God, are you speaking, are you initiating, do you love me?

And how have you involved God in your life?
How have you been open and vulnerable, inviting God into your messy room or seen you without your makeup?
Or have you ghosted God?
Have you invited God to parts of your life that you’re not so proud of?

Would you believe it if I said, God sees that insecure, dark, shamed parts of you and still loves you and moves closer to you? And calls you back for the next date?

Or even if you’re thinking about a long-term relationship, after a long season of unemployment, depression, or physical illness, maybe even years after, they don’t go anywhere, but says I’m here, I love you, no matter what.

How have you developed lovey dovey relationships with God? How has God messed up your hair and got all up in your space, every nook and cranny of your life? Do you even expect that from God? Or is God far off in a distance, perfect, and you only go near God when things are good?

1 John 4:16 says that God is love.

Whatever you think love is, or love should be, or the love you hope for, that, that is God.

And it goes on to say in

verse 19 We love because God first loved us.

20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a sibling is a liar. For whoever does not love their neighbors, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.

Because God loved us first, let us love one another.

And what does it look like to love one another? Honestly, it’s really hard. 1 John and other New Testament writers wrote a lot about this, loving one another, because they ran into problems of actually not loving each other well! In Ephesians, Paul is writing to a church in Ephesus with some words of encouragement. But they weren’t just words of encouragement, they were pleas and discipline.

Chapter 4 starts with,

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,

You don’t beg someone to do something when they’re already doing it. He was begging because they were acting up. He is petitioning them,

verse 2, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.

I want to spend the rest of our time talking about this 2nd verse and I’ll close.

These were his tips and advice on how to get along, because this church, they weren’t getting along. The content of Paul’s letter lets us know that there were factions and divisions happening, external influences to the church that were causing problems, there were marital and family problems. He gives this wisdom to, please please you guys, I’m begging you, be humble, gentle, patient and bear one another.

Now I don’t want to use this verse just to tell you, be more humble. Be more gentle. Always be patient! Because that’s not preaching, that’s nagging. And frankly, churches and systems have used this verse to tell people to know your role, get in line, and obey. Again I’d like to remind you that Paul didn’t write this as an instruction on how to love at all times. He was RESPONDING to conflict with these invitations.

And they are good advice generally. Yes, lead with humility and gentleness. Let’s be patient with each other. And then there are times when we need to be strong, confident, and urge one another. What I’m saying is that when you try to love one another, be a community and be a church, conflict is bound to happen. In fact I’ll go as far as to say, that’s what it means to love, to engage in conflict, to like I’ve been saying, mess up someone’s hair? That’s really vulnerable.

It’s getting entangled with one another. It’s sharing space to show your faults or weaknesses. It’s putting yourself out there and leaving the possibility of getting hurt. It’s caring too much that sometimes you might get disappointed or angry. Cause if you didn’t care? You’d be indifferent. If you didn’t care, it’d be perfect. If you didn’t love, your hair would be perfect and no one would mess it up. The most important thing that I want to point out from this verse actually is, BEAR. Bear one another.

Bearing is holding up a burden. Bearing is tiring. Bearing means that there’s stress and struggle. It’s not free of difficulties. And you know what else it means? It means, you stay. You show up. You engage. You endure.

You know, showing up to church, even logging onto Youtube, it’s not ideal. It’s not the easiest thing sometimes. Engaging in a relationship, texting someone not knowing how they’ll respond, it’s work.

I’ve been alluding to the metaphor of dating in talking about love today. Love is… Not breaking up. Even when things get hard.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not condemning breakups or divorce. Sometimes there is, when you’ve done all the humble, gentle, patient, and bearing, a time to give up. A time to heal. A time to change. And all that, we do it for love. Love of God, love of others, and love of self. That’s the work of love, trying and being there, showing up, again and again.

We’re so isolated these days. It’s hard to engage even with church with all these restrictions in place with masks, can’t see any smiles, can’t sing sometimes, can’t even sit next to or hug someone. And well we definitely can’t mess up each other’s hair. Maybe let’s find our way somehow, to figure out how to do that.

Let’s get in each other’s metaphorical spaces. Let’s call them. Let’s face a new person that you don’t know. Let’s Zoom as dreadful as it feels sometimes but it’s a nice tool. Facetime someone. Show up on someone’s porch even if it’s a sad wave from the stairs. One of you did that last week for me, dropped off a covid test and waved and it meant so much.

I know many of you are tired of this pandemic. And I am too. But you know what, we’re strong. We’re resilient. We must bear through these times, and we can. To live is to endure. Endure one another. We must.

So I beg you, much like Paul begged the Ephesians, let us bear one another. Let’s get in there, even if it’s easier to just check out.

Steve’s been telling you about the relational meetings in last week’s email and through the blog in your inboxes. Check it out. Give it a try. Like downloading a dating app and creating your profile for the first time, it’s hard at first. But put love out there. You can fill out this form in the chat and get matched with someone. Maybe you’ll go to paradise together! You never know! May we, reach out, and love one another, because Jesus first loved us, with sweatpants and messy hair don’t care, and hop on a Zoom call. May we love one another, especially right now.

Let me pray for us.

Good and gracious God, do you see us right now? Maybe with a messy bun, no shave, maybe not even a shower. Do you see us, kneeling maybe in a pool of our own loneliness and depression tears, or at the top of our arrogance and ego? Do you see us busying about the best we can, as we work from home in this pandemic? Do you see us, afraid to get vaccinated no matter the pressures we feel? Do you see us, waiting on vaccination for our little ones? Do you see us? We cry out to you.

The God of our friend Jesus, who has shown us that he sits with the outcast, eats with the poor, heals the broken, —be with us now. Sit with us. Heal us, we pray. May we be open to the love that you are pouring into us, open up and maybe even let that love overflow to this dry land we find ourselves in these days. Wash over us we pray these things in your love. Amen.

So Like, How Do You Pray?

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

Good Morning and Happy New Year. I’m pastor Lydia, my pronouns are she/they. I’m going to talk about prayer today. Let me read our Bible text to engage in this conversation and pray for us to start.

Matthew 6:9-15

9 “This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

10 your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

11 Give us today our daily bread.

12 And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13 And lead us not into temptation,[a]

but deliver us from the evil one.[b]’

Let me pray for us.

God we humbly come into this space of worship. Some of us longing and waiting for you to show up. Some of us with great hopes and expectations for the new year. Some of us still in the middle of struggles, difficulties, hardships battling addiction, sickness, or trying to take care of loved ones in need. Wherever we are this morning, would you open up the clouds and shine through, that no one could deny the love that you have poured out to us today, lift us up with your word we pray. Amen.

The first day I started working at Reservoir Church, I came into the office, not knowing exactly what to expect. I had come here after many emails, phone calls, video calls, and a weekend visit, but that was it. I moved from California with my husband to Boston for this job to be a pastor at this church, without knowing a lot. I remember meeting Leah and Christine who worked at the office across from my office, an organization called Theology of Work that one of our members Will Messenger leads.

Leah and Christine were really sweet and kind, asking me how my first day was going. I think I probably told them about adjusting to the move, not sure how I’m going to face the Boston winter and things. And right in the middle of the conversation they quickly said, can we pray for you, and without much grandeur or movement, easily and swiftly said, “so Jesus…” and began praying for me.

Now I come from a Presbyterian background. Which, if you don’t know, it’s one of many Christian denominations, characterized by more formality and order. Literally, Presbyterians have a thing called the Book of Order which is step by step with articles and amendments to how everything should be run.

And prayers among Presbyterians are a little bit more formal too. I mean these are just broad generalizations I’m making of course, but you’d hear more like, Almighty God, or Good and Gracious God, of sorts. And I heard Leah and Christine so easily moving from a casual office hallway conversation into a prayer struck me, and I thought, “huh, they start prayers with ‘So, Jesus…’ here…”

To this day, I love this about Reservoir Church. How it really is such a diverse place, where people from all streams of faith, traditions, or even no faith tradition, come to this reservoir ;), and there is this ease and humility about it. It’s hard for me to describe because it’s like a culture thing, but I think it matters even to how we pray.

Culture is an environment that people are in. And just as a physical environment would determine how you behave and act (like if you were in a museum or a library, or if you were in a playground or a forest, or if you were in a pool or the beach), culture sets the tone for how people behave.

Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, an organization known for their positive work culture says,

“For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny.”

It made me wonder, what culture do you create for people to have an honest, open, and loving relationship with God and others?

What would it look like to create a culture of safe environments to explore faith at varying paces?

Another, when-I-first-started-working-at-Reservoir story. I met a guy here who said,

“I’m actually an atheist.”

And I was like, “oh!” You know, trying to have that, not too surprised or judgment full of reaction face–I’m cool. I’m cool. And I did ask him, in like the coolest manner possible,

“Huh, that’s interesting. Why do you come to church?”

And he just said,

“I like the stories I hear in the sermons. And I like the people.”

And I thought, “wow, that’s great!” A church where atheists can come.

And over the years, you have no idea how actually comforting and impactful that’s been. A woman who’s married to someone who doesn’t practice Christianity, that her husband, though isn’t as involved, feels totally cool to come and join anytime. A person with deep love and faith in Jesus, who’s dating someone who’s not Christian doesn’t feel judged and even feels comfortable to ask for couples counseling.

Or, even someone like me, who is a pastor here, can go through seasons where I can ask, is Christianity even legit? And I do, feel like that sometimes y’all. I have many doubts. Sometimes I don’t know how to pray because it feels like no one is listening or it doesn’t matter whether I pray or not.

And I come across Bible texts like this and sometimes struggle more rather than be encouraged.

“This is how you should pray.”

And right off the bat it says, our Father. I got a problem with that. Why does God have to be a guy? Your kingdom come, oh you a king now. High and mighty above us, and what we’re your minions? I mean, in the first few sentences of this very prescriptive prayer, I’m tripping over patriarchy and hierarchy that I already struggle with so much in the world that I experience.

So yes, it’s hard to know and understand and receive teachings of the Bible sometimes because the Bible was written in its context and we’re getting a glimpse of it, OUT of context. This prayer, Jesus didn’t show it as an example to ME, an Asian-American woman living in 2022. He said it to the Jewish people set in 27AD in the Ancient Near East.

For them, this was a provocative prayer. Our Father? That was not what you called God. You called God, Lord, Adonai, you couldn’t even utter God’s name, but Jesus called God Abba! You don’t curtsy and kneel to this God, you run up and sit and cuddle on their lap!

It’s like if I were to stand here today and say, This is how you should pray. “Hey Boo~” You’d be like, hm, that’s different. And yes, I don’t have authority like Jesus. But the comparison point here is, Jesus was often saying some really strange and ridiculous things that people didn’t recognize. Usually when Jesus said something, People were like, “what did he say?” “Why is he talking like that?” “Who does he think he is?” And if that’s what you think after you hear me speak, well then I’ve done my job! I’m kidding.

And kingdom and heaven. He was using their language and spinning it on its head. They were concepts and metaphors that they were familiar with. It was like saying, God’s realm. God’s space. God’s rules, not the rules of the Romans who were ruthless and oppressive, but God’s rules. Or another metaphor that might speak more closely to some of us, God’s household, let God’s loving care and nurture be present here with us now rather than the whatever other powers that seemingly mattered the most. No, it’s not who we pay our taxes to that controls our lives, but the One who loves us and cares for us, there is a loving power far greater than rulers.

And heaven, heaven was a particular concept that they had, that’s different from what we know about our world and universe today. At the time the biblical cosmology consisted of understanding of the world called firmament, a dome like structure that was made up of upper and lower portions; heaven and earth.

So this prayer, actually, doesn’t work for us at all knowing what we know about our galaxy, except in the metaphorical way. Let your love press into our love. Let your body infuse into our bodies. Let your universe expand into our way of doing things.

Because what else do we have beside metaphors to talk about God with?

And if you say anything about God and claim it not as a metaphor but an objective truth, then you are a liar.

But what is a metaphor? Is it less true because it’s a metaphor? Sometimes metaphors, stories get at more truth captured in such a way that I could never express in literal ways. Like literature. Haven’t you ever read fiction that made you go, oh yes! They put it better than I could’ve said about exactly what I’ve felt and experienced in this world!

You know what I think about often when I think about prayer? It’s from a totally random place but I don’t know, it like matters to me. Okay, bear with me. There’s this book series, actually some Christians don’t really like them, by Dan Brown. You might’ve heard of the movie Da Vinci Code with Tom Hanks. Hey I liked the books, like thrilling and adventurous. I think it was in one of the series, called The Lost Symbol.

It talked about noetic science, which apparently is a real area of study, which is, “the study of subjective experience, and to ways that consciousness may influence the physical world.” So the book had this noetic science lab, it had to be enclosed within a huge empty space because it needed to be free from all influences of the external world. And I thought, that’s kind of like prayer, influences of our hearts and thoughts onto a real material world.

Or like the movie Inception. I love this movie. Leonardo DiCaprio, such a great actor. But the premise that one word, one thought planted in your mind, in your deep deep sleep, is more powerful than any other influence. I mean that’s how marketing works for me, and yes I am very impressionable. One time Pastor Steve talked about eating McDonald’s in a sermon, and later that week I had to go to McDonald’s! Not sponsored.

Now all of these are silly, but also kind of true you know? Our words matter. Our thoughts matter. Our feelings matter. What we say to children matters. I’ve even seen different kinds of music played to water as it’s becoming ice, making different kinds of patterns. I mean of course it does, each snowflake is different, as I am reminded from a kid’s show called Daniel Tiger these days. I mean, I learned that before, but really isn’t that amazing, that each snowflake is different? That music affects water crystallization?

I don’t know. I’m not a scientist. But have you heard about the Black Hole? Like what is that? It just sucks everything from matter, sound, and light into, what?!

There’s so much we don’t know. About our world, religion, and ourselves. I don’t even know myself sometimes. When someone really asks you, “how are you?” It’s like, um…

I’ve been so challegened and fascinated by the ministry approaches of our Kids Church pastors Dan and Angel. And the way they approach a child’s faith journey, it made me wonder, isn’t that what we’re all doing. Dan was talking about at a base level, what are we doing with the kids? What are we teaching them? And he said,

“It’s like this, at very young: it’s God loves you. It’s nice to be around other people. As they get older: sometimes it feels like God doesn’t love me, what does that mean.”

And I thought, isn’t that what we’re doing with adults?

Whether you’ve been a Christian for a long time, or you’re exploring faith, or maybe you were but have left the church a while and not sure how to re engage, here’s what I want us to hear. God loves you. It’s nice to be around other people.

But then (and I personally spent some time with family over the holidays) and yes it was nice to be around them for a bit …and then it was like, ugh, not so nice to be around them at some point. As time goes on, sometimes it feels like God doesn’t love me, or my family or other people don’t love me, what does that mean? What do we do with that? There is no answer, only the journey.

There is no answer to how to pray. Only the humble journey of asking questions. That is the faith journey. And church is us trying to do that together.

Christianity is not a formula, it’s a story to be invited into.

Prayer is not a formula.

It was never meant to be a formula.

More as a prompt, an example. A metaphor to be unpacked and entered into.

So I’ve said a few things about prayer today, but I really honestly don’t know how it works. I can’t convince you that it works, but just to say, it’s like going out for a walk. I don’t know what it does, but sometimes it’s nice, sometimes it’s not, but it does do something for me.

So I wanted to give us a chance to bring it back to the basics. It’s a bit elementary and I meant it that way, because I do think that at the end of the day, a childlike faith, a childlike prayer is the best one.

I’m going to pass out a worksheet for prayer. If this is too cheesy for you, no worries, you don’t have to do it. You can just use the time to just sit and think, or be silent, be present to yourself. But I purposely made it kind of child-like. To bring us to the basics.

How to Pray: A Guide

Prayer can look many different ways.

Sometimes words. Sometimes not.

Here’s a guide you can use with some words.

Let me give you some time to give prayer a try.

How do you pray? Pray like a child.

I’ll give us a few minutes and wrap us up with a prayer.

Holy and Loving God, give us the humility to be okay not knowing everything. But just walk with us, as we walk with you in prayer. Sometimes stumbling in words, sometimes mumbling in our steps, guide us and be with us we pray, that’s all we ask for and really that’s all you ask of us, to know that you are with us. May we see and know that you are here, right here, talking with us, all the time.

Amen.

Waiting For The Heart

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

For this week’s Spiritual Practice, click HERE.

John 14:27

27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

I went to the mall on Black Friday. Don’t judge me. I really like Christmas decoration, Christmas music, that whole mood you get into, and honestly the mall really knows how to capitalize (pun intended) my vibe. The people, the chaos, it was crazy and I wanted to be a part of it!

What’s the word you think of when you think about Advent? Is it peace? Is it joy? Or is it anxiety on how much money you’ll spend on presents? Or trying to figure out how to get all the work done in three weeks to be out for the holidays? Or the hecticness of planning gatherings and travels? I do feel like the world goes a little on crazy mode in this season. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday!

I’ve noticed that more and more, many people struggle with anxiety and depression. Mental health has come up again and again as something that’s really impacting people…that need more wisdom, science and study, and care from ourselves, friends, and family. And something I’ve personally noticed (not based on a study or anything) but that folks older than me struggle more with depression and the younger generation more with anxiety.

It’s just something I noticed. And I almost get it. Like with all that’s going on in the world, the bombardment of news and information, worries like climate change, and social media, it almost seems to me like anxiety is the most natural response.

Mental health workers and scientists talk about how the body has this reactionary response that is explainable. It’s the fight or flight. When we’re faced with something that is upsetting or dangerous, that is our body’s natural response.

I’m actually so good at fight or flight. Well usually it’s flight, denial, ignore, and even numbing and not sure what I’m feeling. But if I know you pretty well and I feel close to you, I fight. My therapist tells me to breathe first, do some other activity, to bring at least my body back to the present moment. But honestly it’s so second nature because the world has trained me and my body to respond a certain way. And to change it, it takes extra effort to create new brain pathways to respond differently. And some extra time.

In seminary I took a class on a thing called the Clearness Committee. It comes from the Quaker tradition, which could be considered a Christian denomination, (but not all Quakers see themselves as Christians). I thought at first from their name they must quake or shake, but actually their distinctive tradition is how they worship–which is: they sit in silence for an hour. Imagine if we just sat in silence for an hour here!

Sometimes they might say a word or so here and there but mostly they just sit, in silence. Clearness committee is like that, but more specifically a way to discern and get clarity. They do so by sitting in a circle (mostly in silence). It usually involves one person sharing something and then sitting in silence some more and everyone kind of helps bring clarity to the person’s situation.

And one of the things I learned in the clearness committee was that, after you hear the person’s story or dilemma, you can bring up questions, but when you think of a question, first you sit on it. See if it’s just your curiosity or if it’s going to help this person bring clarity. So you don’t ask questions for your own sake, like, if they were talking about doing a grad program, you don’t ask “oh where and what program?” You sit with the question and see and ask if you really really need to ask, not for yourself but for them. Maybe a question like, “How would it impact you, or would it, if you didn’t do the program?” or something like that.

And it was funny how many times I would sit with a question, and I don’t say it, and how it just floated away if it didn’t feel important. Or other times, I wouldn’t say it, and another person would ask the exact same question. You gave it time. You waited. You sat in silence. You sat in the unknown, in the dark. And that’s actually how you gained more clear answers.

One of the themes for the season of Advent our church is focusing on is waiting and hoping. It’s the time that Mary was pregnant with Jesus. Joseph and Mary were figuring out their turbulent relationship with this new surprise child that Joseph apparently knew nothing about at first. Awkward and probably a scary time for this couple. Mary was probably worried as any expecting mother does, how am I going to be a mom?! A mother to a God at that?! What a crazy time! I’ll tell you, an expecting pregnant mom’s mind is crazier than the mall on Black Friday.

With this theme of waiting, we ask you to give us art to adorn our Dome Gallery right outside of those glass doors. The preachers have been picking one to inspire us to use in our sermons and I want to share with you, Tom O’Toole’s photography work titled, The Hopeful Tree.

He titled it the Hopeful Tree.

It makes me tear up just looking at it. I mean look at it. Look how old it is. I don’t know how old it is, but it doesn’t look like a young tree. And without leaves, so many branches reaching out and extended, growing and searching. And what shadow it casts, a big one. I imagine what it’s been through. And I can also imagine what it will become, maybe in the next season, full and vibrant, green.

But the thing I love the most about this is that Tom titled it the Hopeful Tree. That makes all the difference for me. It shows me his resilience, his faith, his trust in God and imagination, that even in the face of what it apparently looks like an empty stripped down tree, Tom’s showing me his vision of the future, one that’s filled with a rebellious hope. I imagine standing in front of this photo next to Tom, maybe without the title there, I wouldn’t have known he’s the one who took it. And I’d say, “hm, a tree.” And he goes, “no. a hopeful tree.” And just like, everything changes about the way I see this tree.

And the thing is, that’s more powerful than seeing a vibrant luxurious tree and calling it hope. It’s almost like, that’s easy hope, even a not that big of a deal hope. Like, shrug, I’m hopeful. Like cheap hope. Of course there’s hope, it’s live and well and all good, no worries. But when you’ve been through hell, going through some dire situations, with no evidence or reason or signs of hope, and you cry, “I have hope.” That’s faith.

One of my friends has been journeying through her dad’s cancer recovery. She shared with me the feelings of sadness seeing her tall strong vibrant Dad, who would often pick up building projects around the house, just a few years ago making a tree house for her kids, seeing him go through chemo and medication, and lately having lost so much weight she described as skin and bones. I got a chance to talk to her during Thanksgiving weekend.

She had just finished an emotional family meeting, a rare one where the husbands had to watch the kids, and she and her sister, mom and dad sat around to talk about his evident deteriorating condition, trying to talk through the hard inevitables, and they started with logistics but somehow it turned into questions about church. You see, her dad had never really been into church although his wife and the girls have been devoted Christians. But he began to ask them,

Why do you believe?

My friend almost didn’t know what to say, saying I don’t know why because churches are full of broken people and we’re all just a mess. She shared with me how strange it was to hear him ask,

Who is God?

And then at the end they prayed together. She said that she heard him pray for the first time in a really long time. He never prayed, it was always the mom. But he prayed, she said, such an honest, baby-like faith prayer, full of questions and theology that strangely seemed so right and even biblical without him knowing anything. And he said in the prayer, this stoic private korean man, never-would-say-this-in front others, but in a prayer, how grateful he was for his wife and his daughters.

The ladies cried of course, and my friend was on a video call with me, as she was snacking saying, “that ended just 20 minutes ago, I’m so emotionally drained, it was crazy.” I felt honored to sit there and get a chance to see into a window of such an intimate and vulnerable moment of someone. It’s a dark time for this family. Her grandma, the mom’s mother, had actually just passed away a few weeks ago and now her dad with this… And yet, what a beautiful moment for this family.

I think there might be a reason why there is a kind of surrender of a soul when we get faced with things like cancer or death. Because you can’t fight or flight anymore. You just have to be, in that moment, with all the fear and pain. And yet it allows an invitation to dig deeper to what the heart really wants. At times like this, with strange strength, things like hope and gratitude set in…for no good reason except that that’s the only thing that matters. I feel like my friend’s dad probably had every reason, and the whole family has every reason to be worried, troubled, be afraid, and they are, and yet, there was a gift for them in that moment of prayer. Tears, confession, gratitude, surrender, longing and seeking for peace that the world cannot give.

Have you ever lit a candle in a bright room in the daylight? Have you ever lit a small candle in a dark room? Do you go on Christmas lights drives or tours in the daytime? No! You go at night.

The staff decorated this place a bit with Christmas lights last week. We turned on some 80’s/90’s inspired Christmas playlist, and I made my round to my colleagues while they were decorating to join me in a few merry steps. It was fun.

And then, after a day of working in the office in the ministry center, I was heading back to my car, and the lights in here drew me in. I came inside to take in the lights as the sun was going down. It was dark. It was quiet. It humbled me, and made me see the twinkling lights differently than earlier that day.

I think the heart is like a small twinkling Christmas light. Sometimes, it’s not the brightest or the most visible. I mean I think our brain and minds get so much credit. But if you quiet your mind a little, you might notice the heart’s burning hope, longing or desire. Its strength of peace, especially when there’s a cacophony of noise in the world. When you give it some time, some quiet and some silence. Sometimes by invitation of your own, or sometimes by invitation of circumstances where all the noise becomes background noise, when things are dimmed a bit, and darkness sets in, I think it’s then, when the little glow is the most beautiful.

Darkness is a part of life. Heck it’s half of our lives, and if you don’t do well during those hours, those who struggle with rest or sleep, it’ll impact all of your life. In fact, those are really precious parts of our lives. Negative space makes a photo. When we are bored with “nothing to do” is when our brains get a chance to be creative or even thread together biographical narratives about our past and future. Do you wait for your heart to speak?

I think that’s what prayer is. Or listening to God is. Like the Quakers that worship in silence. Waiting on the Lord means quieting our anxious minds and listening. And I think, especially initially, it takes a really really long time. I think with practice it does get faster, like you hear and recognize God’s voice.

I’ll end with this illustration.

I grew up playing the piano. Have you ever been in the room when the piano tuner comes? Tuning a piano takes a really really long time. They go through each note, and turn up or turn down, with each note. I don’t know how anyone could have the patience to do so. Look up piano tuning on YouTube and try to watch it, it’s so boring. But when they are done tuning, you can play beautiful music. Well first you have to learn, and then practice, and then maybe memorize and feel it in your soul and body, and you become one with the piano to play beautiful music.

Maybe our heart is like a piano, sometimes really out of tune from clunking it around to different floors of our house. I hope that you will find some space and time to sit and wait on the Lord, waiting for your heart to tune. That you will find freedom and peace in God knowing that you are so in union with them, God knows you and you know God, that your hearts are one. Let me pray for us.

Crumbs from the Table

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

Matthew 15:21-28

New International Version

21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

After our family moved to the United States, my mom started writing letters to my grandmother. My mom was the 6th daughter out of 8 children, often lost in the shuffle and – she would say- didn’t get much love. But letters from America was one way she tried to heal her relationship with my grandmother. She would write 5-10 pages of affirmation, encouragement, and forgiveness, to try to mend the relationship.

After my grandmother passed away in 2016, my uncle collected her things, one of which was a collection of all of my mother’s letters to her. He sent it back to my mom. And if I wanted to get a closer understanding of their relationships, my mother- even after she passes- and her mother, these letters would be one of the primary ways I’d do that.

Reading the Bible is like this. Why do we care to take this story of Jesus from the Bible to read, meditate and reflect on, and attempt to find our own story in it? Because when I get my hands on those letters my mom wrote, I’ll hurl myself over them, with a kleenex in hand, peering into the mind of my mother holding her mother in her heart to see if I could find myself in any of those words.

The story we just read: where do you see yourself in the story?

Do you find yourself relating to the disciples – who are close to Jesus, have access to Jesus, and yet sometimes find the things that come around and with Jesus bothersome or as a nuisance?

Or do you find yourself relating to Jesus – finding yourself on one path, determined and sure, and for some reason, realizing that you should go another path, out of a prompting of an unexpected person?

Or do you find yourself relating to the woman – begging for crumbs, because you’re desperate for a miracle, even crumbs would do?

Well, let’s go through the characters, and see what we can learn about what God is like and maybe even a bit about ourselves.

So, first the disciples. Many of us here could likely be identified as the disciples. Many of you have been Christians for a long time. And this line they say in this text,

“Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

I think it invites us to something that we Christians need to reckon with. Who have we been sending away? Who keeps crying out after us, that we choose to ignore or exclude?

And what we eventually learn from this text, though it takes a moment before we get there (we’ll get to that in just a minute) is that God’s kin-dom is bigger than you think. Let me say that again. God’s kin-dom is bigger than you think. God’s embrace is larger than you can imagine. Think of someone you think, oh no, not them. I could never go to the same church with them. I could never worship in the same place as them. That person, yes that person, God is saying, hmmmm maybe we could sit next to them at a table.

I was thinking about this from last week’s sermon Steve preached. We reflected on the text from the beautiful Community Group content that pastor Ivy made in our Mindfulness Community Group (shameless plug: Tuesdays 12pm on Zoom). In that text the Pharisees were asking,

“why do they eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

And it made me think of you know those finance guys, or the bad boys of pharma, or the 1%. You know those privileged, rich folks. Turns out, yo this is Cambridge, we got some of those right here.

God really challenges me sometimes with God’s expansive love. I’m not talking about forgive and forget. I’m not talking about not having healthy boundaries. I recently was reading a book called Bold Love, by Dan Allender.

One of 5 subtitles got me to pick up this book again,

“how to love an abusive person without opening yourself up to more damage.”

And it’s not wishy-washy love. It’s powerful, strong, confident love that can withstand so much. I experienced some trauma when I was a child, and there was a time, when I was deep in processing all that, I imagined walking into church and having that person who had done me wrong standing there holding the communion plate.

I’m not saying you should. It is a complex, nuanced journey, unique to each person. And please, don’t engage this if this is too soon or tender for you. Take care and zone me out right now. But could it be, that even our greatest enemies, the worst kind, that we say, “no not them”, God says,

“yes, even them”?

Let me move onto Jesus. Now this is one of the most interesting texts about Jesus because it’s a rare one where he is…. Corrected. Disagreed with. And Jesus changes his mind. So what does that tell us about God? Does God change God’s mind? Isn’t God all powerful, all knowing? Then why didn’t God just do, in the first place, what God was supposed to do?

There are extended scholarly debates in the chambers of academia arguing about this –did Jesus really know he was God? The divinity of Jesus is a mystery, a both/and as common creeds confess, fully human and fully God. And that’s the beauty of it all! With all that God is, should, can be, and could be, God CHOSE to not be all those things in the body of Jesus to be and in relationship with us! If God kept true to all of God’s full nature, we would not have access to God. God wouldn’t need us. We would be robots!

But look at Jesus in this text. He’s kind of rude here. He doesn’t even answer her! Isn’t he like that rabbi who walks by the guy who was hurt on the side of the road in that Samaritan story? Jesus was kind of… stubborn, saying,

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

And then when she wouldn’t let up, he says to her,

“It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

Um, did Jesus just curse? Did he just call her a dog? I think so. I recently read a book called, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, a Vietnamese American writer, where the main character is called “little dog” by his grandmother. Because if you had a beautiful pet name for your little one, like sweetie, or cupcake, then the evil spirits would come and get them, so instead she named him “little dog”. It’s a curse word in Korean too. I think in most languages, dog is considered not a pleasant thing to be called. Fully human and fully God.

And does God change God’s mind? I earnestly believe so. How could it be? Because, God isn’t worried about the perfect end product. God is worried about you. God cares what you think. What you have to say. I always get a bit frustrated with God. Why don’t you just fix all this stuff, if you call yourself God and you’re all good. Then why do you let me stumble, and fall, and bleed. God sometimes gets quiet when I say these kinds of prayers. Quiet and listening, nodding. I see God quietly putting a hand on my knee where it’s bleeding, scraping their hand on the gravel for no reason, as if to clean dirt. Sometimes I even see God showing me how to walk, fall, and showing me how to patch oneself up and get back up. And I hear God say,

“Cause I wanna do it with you.”

Watching my 2-year old girl climb into her car seat by herself is about the most frustrating thing in the world. If I pick her up and sit her down, we’re ready to go, clip, and off we go. But seeing her climb up in the most leisurely fashion, putting her foot in the most inefficient place, all turned around and struggling, for what! I’m like, gripping my hands, trying not to grab her leg into position, (because then it would be an even longer ordeal where she says I can do it myself! And cries and gets out of position, and hurts herself), so I just have to hold my heart together so she can get in the car seat by herself. I need to leave the house earlier, so that she has time for this. It’s completely inefficient, I just stand there and have to breathe and watch her struggle. That is my job.

I’m sure God is more patient than me, but I wonder too, if God’s not like, ooh, just don’t do that, don’t do it like that, yikes, just…

But then again, sometimes I let my girl do it all by herself, and she comes up with the most brilliant, creative, hilarious and smart thing ever. Like, when I tell her to go ahead, she knows how, and she grabs my hand and says,

“but I want to do it with you.”

And I’m like, so humbled, and think, she got it right. I had it wrong. She knows what’s important. To do it together. That’s what I think prayer is. For us to do it with God. And that’s why I think, as crazy and mysterious as it is, that prayer works.

Lastly, the woman. Can you relate with her?

Jesus kind of insults her but she doesn’t even miss a beat. In fact, this is not her first time, and she doesn’t have time to get offended about stuff like that. She’s trying to get her daughter healed and that’s the only thing that matters.

Have you ever been that desperate?

Earlier I talked about the privileged folks, welcoming them. The thing is, it just so happens some people choose not to come themselves, because they don’t need it that bad. Or they feel that they don’t need it that bad. Whether it’s community, or healing, or grace, or forgiveness. The reality is that many of us have the luxury and the privilege to drown that out with hobbies, or food, or drinking, or preoccupations and projects that numb us from the reality of what we really need.

Have you ever needed to beg at Jesus’ feet for help? For mercy? Have you ever been that desperate? When everything you’ve used as a crutch or a distraction disappears or fails, what are you left with? When the career you’ve built or the job you’ve given everything to all of sudden fires you. When you’ve poured yourself into your kids, and they’re growing up and don’t need you any more. In a way, we get a taste of things like this when you try a spiritual discipline like fasting.

Fasting is something I hate to do.

I used to smoke. Oh and when I read Michelle Obama’s book and found out Barack smoked, I was like see, even he did it! And for anyone who’s in any kind of sobriety journey, big hats to you, because addiction is a dog. I mean, addictions are horrible, and if you can fight that, you have really tapped into a great source of strength and power and you can do anything. Quitting was really hard. And during that time, if I even walked by someone who was smoking, it took every ounce of me to not ask, “can I bum a smoke off of you?”, and instead just get a whiff of their smoke. Crumbs…

In a book called Addiction & Grace by Gerald May, he talks about the desire behind addiction. And in his experience, it wasn’t just about drugs or alcohol, but he experienced people struggling with all kinds of addiction from aspirin, nose drops, to work, to performance, intimacy, being liked, helping others, and more. And he talks about his own experience this way,

Compared to what happens to people who suffer from alcoholism or narcotic addiction, what happened to me may not seem much of a “rock bottom.” But it had the same grace-full effect. To state it quite simply, I had tried to run my life on the basis of my own will power alone. When my supply of success and this egotistic autonomy ran out, I became depressed. And with the depression, by means of grace, came a chance for spiritual openness.

This woman was so desperate that she compelled Jesus to expand his mission and calling. Because a Cannanite woman’s daughter’s life mattered. Prayer works.

When have you asked God for something with this kind of “chance for spiritual openness”? Has there ever been a time you’ve knelt and said, “help me?” This you, now?

When we do so, God does not turn away. In fact God expands God’s arms fully to embrace whatever state you might be in to say, “You are healed.” Do you believe that? I don’t know that I always believe that. I mostly don’t when I’m fine and just don’t need God that much. But for the rest of us, do you need help? Do you need Jesus? Do you need the love of God to break through every lesser gods that failed to satisfy you? Do you need God’s healing? Even a crumb of it?

Dear friends, I hope that you’re not in that place, where a crumb will do. But if you are, may you taste and see, and know that God is good. Even a crumb will do. Let me pray for us.

God, throw me a bone will ya? So many of us are holding so much right now. Juggling life, school, health, our bodies, our families, our safety. Our bodies are tired of fears and anxieties that we’re in need of your peace to break through. Will you shine a light on us Jesus. As the psalmists prayed, don’t look away. Answer us! Shine your face on our face. May you bring healing. May you bring healing. On our land, in our school, in our workplaces, in our families, and in our bodies. May you bring healing. Amen.

A Time for Everything

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

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

1 There is a time for everything,

    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2 a time to be born and a time to die,

    a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 a time to kill and a time to heal,

    a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,

    a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

6 a time to search and a time to give up,

    a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 a time to tear and a time to mend,

    a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 a time to love and a time to hate,

    a time for war and a time for peace.

Let me pray for us:

God of the beginning and the End, Alpha and Omega, of yin and yang, everything is from you. We come into this place from many varied experiences. Our busy week, our worried minds, our aching bodies. Some of us feeling weak and tender, some of us trekking on cause we’re strong, some of us not sure what we’re doing, numb, or indifferent. Wherever we are this morning, God I pray that you meet us there, in each of our own unique places. For there is no place that is hidden from you. Look upon us with grace and convince us of your love, no matter what we may be going through. Would you do that for us now, and pour down your spirit and cover us we pray, in Jesus name Amen.

I was at Home Depot the other day. I like to go check out the outdoor garden area, where there’s all different kinds of plants and flowers. When all of a sudden I started hearing a man yelling, “I’m not buying that!” I looked over, a man was following a woman, probably his wife, with a loud voice for the whole garden to hear, “You and your mom look at the internet and get this idea but it’s not going to look like that. I’m not spending more money on something you guys think you can do.”

I could tell she was looking around, looking at her phone, looking at the flowers, and maybe even replying softly, but I couldn’t hear. He goes on, “You don’t know how to do it! It’s not going to turn out like what you think it’s going to turn out!” I was trying not to look, but listening in at the drama unfolding before me.

And then I was at Costco not too long ago, similar thing. A man points to the toothpaste and says, “It’s a good deal!” The woman walks away in a huff, turns around and says, “I don’t like that one!” The man says, “I like it!” The woman says, “I don’t like it!” The man says, “Well I can’t afford the one you like so I’m getting this one!” I stared at the shampoo on the other side of the aisle, acting like I’m like really looking at it, but I wasn’t looking at it, I was looking and listening to them.

It’s tough these days. And these people, fighting in Home Depot and Costco, yelling in public for the world to hear. I almost get it. People are angsty these days. I mean, as we should be cause it’s been a really tough last few years. We lost so much control and things happened, scary things happened around us that we couldn’t do anything about. Vacations and celebrations canceled. Can’t see friends. Can’t go to restaurants. You can’t hug. I mean what’s the point of even smiling under your mask!

I recently read a Washington post article titled: “After customers drove staff to tears, a restaurant closed to give employees a ‘day of kindness’”

It says

An “astronomical influx” of customers had been screaming at employees, dangling legal threats and driving team members to tears

the owners wrote on Facebook.

Apt joins a slew of restaurants across the country that have reported more frequent mistreatment in recent weeks. As customers clamor to resume their pre-pandemic lives, some have lashed out at an industry suffering from a shortage of workers, more costly ingredients and supply-chain glitches. Scrambling to stay afloat, overworked staff members often find themselves on the other side of customers’ irritation.”

When I read this text from Ecclesiastes today saying,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing

Ugh, dude! I’m sorry but I really do not like this time of refraining from embracing. And honestly, I want to act up a bit too, right here for church! Just break down before y’all cause I miss y’all, And I don’t want to elbow bump! I want to hug!

As I read this text, I was struck by how accepting it was, of all that could be going on and that’s why I want to share it with you today. It says there’s a time for everything. EVERYTHING! Really? No… it must not be true, cause there’s things you should do and things you shouldn’t do. That’s what I learned growing up. There’s good things and there’s bad things. This text was naming line by line, all the things, all the permissible and appropriate things. But it was interesting to me how I reacted to this list. It was almost like a visceral, knee jerk reaction, yes, no, good, bad, of course, oh no no how could this be okay?

I don’t know how it happened but somewhere along the way we did this with Christian theology and ethics too. This binary thinking. This “moral” thinking, of forever categorizing what is good and what is bad. And so here’s how I read this text:

a time to be born, good, and a time to die,

bad

a time to plant, yes, and a time to uproot,

maybe sometimes

3 a time to kill,

uh really? and

a time to heal,

oh yes always more healing

a time to tear down,

depends on what you’re tearing down and

a time to build,

yup build up and grow, expand

4 a time to weep,

ok well yes but not too much, and

a time to laugh,

anytime!

a time to mourn,

yes but not like too long, and

a time to dance,

always

5 a time to scatter stones,

I guess, and

a time to gather them,

yes gather as much stones as possible

a time to embrace,

oh of course, it’s always good to embrace! and

a time to refrain from embracing,

oh wow, that’s what we just went through with covid and it was so hard!

6 a time to search and a time to give up,

no you never give up!

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

no you always keep you don’t throw away things!

7 a time to tear and a time to mend,

no no you don’t tear, you MEND

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

no don’t be silent SPEAK UP!

8 a time to love and a time to hate,

what you can’t hate, ever!

a time for war and a time for peace,

oh no…. No war.

Now you’ve been invited to my inner dialogue as I read the Bible. But it was almost like, so hard for me to accept this very message this text was saying, that there is a time for everything. And I sat there looking at this text thinking, could this really be true?

I’ve been so used to binary thinking of things as good or bad. Well the reality is life is more complicated than that. The reality is, sometimes something can be good in one context but you do the same thing in another context and it can be bad.

There’s a show on Netflix called Working Moms, it’s funny. The mommy group has conversations like this. One mom says, “So apparently sharing is not a thing anymore?” Another mom says, “I don’t tell my kid to share. She can share if she wants to, and not share if she doesn’t want to.”

Whaaat? I did NOT grow up hearing that. You ALWAYS share! But I get it, why did we tell kids to always share before? Some things are yours and yours only and they can feel ownership of it.

Like it’s not always good to share, maybe it’s not always good to be nice. Or embrace, or heal. Maybe there’s time to be silent. Maybe there’s time to speak up and tear things down.

I think Jesus did this sort of expanding our minds about what’s right and wrong. The things that the religious leaders had taught and set, you can’t do this on the sabbath, you can’t worship with these people, you should only do this, I mean Jesus turned it all upside down and all around. I mean he always raises the bar, don’t commit adultery? Don’t even look at a woman with a lusting heart. You want to be good? Give all your money away. I mean I think it’s how some must feel these days, what there’s no male and female and now it’s a spectrum of gender whaaat? Yeah. Life is not binary. Don’t put people into boxes.

And I think we’ve done this with our modern day christianity too. We attached certain moral teachings to how you’re supposed to be, nice, and successful, and happy, and good. Like if you believe in Jesus, you’ll always be filled with joy. Honestly, sometimes I think, being a Christian, can be more disruptive to my life than productive.

There’s more mourning than laughter. I don’t always have to mend and keep, but I was thinking the other day, how covid impacted the church, and I thought, well there are some things that we are used to doing in church that might need to die. There are relationships that maybe need to be cut off, and offended, and strained for it to bring justice rather than for the sake of peace and reconciliation.

The thing is, none of us know and can say which is needed for which at what time. And honestly, we’re not supposed to tell each other what we’re supposed to do, but only create the space to see it through and be there right next to them no matter what they are going through without judgement. Can we lower the expectation of what we’re SUPPOSED to do, because we don’t really know sometimes?

Sometimes I feel like we’re trying so hard to be “good”, trying so hard to be “okay”, that we dont’ give space to what actually NEEDS to happen, which is maybe, be NOT Okay. Maybe it’s time to “not be okay” and that’s okay. I mean what does it even mean to go back to normal? I don’t know what normal is these days! And if I’m being honest, I don’t even know what time it is for me.

IS it time for me to mourn? Is it time for me to celebrate? Is it time to build or tear down? I don’t even know that! What time is it? Like literally, I hadn’t been in my office so long that when I came back, I kept looking at the wall clock that’s out of battery and frozen in time, and wonder, 8:25… that can’t be right… ugh I don’t have time right now to change that battery.

What time is it for you? Do you even have a moment to realize what you really need right now? To discern what the time really calls for? Or do you feel guilty or unsure about what you need? Or you’re not sure if God approves. Well, let me remind you, our text tells us today, there is time for everything. God see it, God see you. Do you need time to let things die? To uproot, to kill, to tear down? Do you need time to weep, mourn, and scatter stones? God says okay. I’m here with you. Let’s do it together.

And our church, we don’t have to have it all together to come together. We come together to do the hard stuff together. To come together to say, “this stuff is hard to believe!” or “I’m confused about my life!” “I don’t know what I’m doing.” “I’m a hot mess.” “I think I’m making a mistake.” Are we willing to make space and time for each other to do that for one another?

Whatever you may be going through right now, take the time. There is time for everything. Even what you’re going through. Identity crisis, depression, divorce, feeling ungrateful, distancing yourself from your friends, throwing away your career you’ve built… There is time for everything… If we don’t give time to such things, we’ll never really know if our confidence, joy, marriage, gratitude, friendship, career or whatever else is really true either. God is big enough. There is time for everything.

Let me pray for us.

Jesus, show the expansive view of life. Teach us to see that your love seeps into everything, everything we’re going through big and small, the tough and easy, the good and the bad. Would you invite us to that space and time to see how big and great and vast your love is for us, we pray, in your name Amen.

Becoming Joyful

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

Luke 10:21, 23-29

21 At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.

23 Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.

24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]”

28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Let’s pray.

So yes, Rainbow Jesus, we thank you for the way you showed us the fullness of life through your word and deed. Through you, we know God’s abundant love, extravagant grace, and mercies that are new every morning. This morning we pray that we may know and experience that fullness even now as we sit in prayer in worship, that you will bring rest to our restless souls, peace to our anxious minds, healing in our tired bodies, and joy to our aching hearts. Would you meet us here, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.

I know we keep talking about this, but it’s because it’s been a tough year! The pandemic, the racial injustice. So, I have been trying to find joy. So when I found this text, I was so happy that Jesus was full of Joy! Not that I doubted that he would be, but he did often rebuke, and fight injustice, and ultimately was targeted and scapegoated and killed, so when I found a text that showed Jesus full of joy, giving thanks and gratitude, I was like YES!

And then it quickly turned into a very mysterious text. Talking about how things are hidden from the wise and the educated. And that instead it’s revealed to babies. You’re like what’s he talking about? What is this secret he’s alluding to?

Over the pandemic, I know that many of you tried to find new joys in picking up a new hobby, getting a pet, or baking bread. Me, I got me a baby. And it’s true, this baby, while the world worried in fear, was the happiest baby ever. Literally I’d just look at him, and he’d go *smile smile* and just so joyful that I often asked him, Jesse, how are you so happy?

And maybe that’s true, that as we grow older, get to know the world more, see more news, we can’t help but see all the bad.

I was surprised, maybe not that surprised, to find out through Reservoir’s Equity Diversity and Inclusion survey we did last year that 80% of the people had graduate degrees. Well with the caveat that about half of the congregation filled out the survey, so maybe who’s more likely to fill out surveys, in any case. It made me wonder, what might be hidden from us?

As I read on the text, I began to realize, that it just might be that simple. The truth that will set us free, maybe even toward joy—maybe it is just that simple: Maybe it’s just love.

So those are my 3 points today – Loving God, Loving others, and Loving yourself. And I believe that these are the secret to joy. And sometimes we get them all wrong, even though they are so simple, almost too simple, so I’d love to talk through some of my own struggles in these areas, and see if we can find ways for us to find love and joy.

—

So first, loving God.

Love your God with all your heart, all your soul

is not just a commandment. You shall love your God! It doesn’t just mean you better listen to God. You better submit! As it might’ve been taught in some church circles. You better OBEY God! Loving God, is much more tender than that. Really. Loving God means to be in a loving relationship with God. It means having an open and honest relationship with God. It means you can receive love and learn about love, as you attempt to love and fail and love again. It means you can get mad, or misunderstand. It means you can be vulnerable with God.

For me, sometimes it’s hard to believe that God really loves the world. Sometimes I look around and there’s so much division, sadness, injustice, and suffering, it doesn’t really look like God’s love is prevailing but just the opposite. There are “proofs” of how much evil seems to be prevailing. And for me that’s one of my biggest obstacles of joy.

So in my search for joy, I picked up a book called, the Book of Joy, that I’ve mentioned in a sermon before. I was drawn to this because it had two characters, who first hand knew about pain and suffering.

The Dalai Lama, who’s literally exiled, pushed out from his own homeland, facing the erasure of his people the Tibetans. And Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who’s faced injustice and fought for the liberation of black people in South Africa. Look how happy they look. I wanted to hear about joy from those who’s been through injustice. Cause my first question to God and Jesus and love and joy is, but how when, there’s murder, disease, loneliness, sadness, anger, the list goes on.

Here’s what the archbishop Desmond Tutu said:

“And so I think we shouldn’t think we are superwomen and supermen. To hold down emotions in a controlled environment as it were is not wise. I would say go ahead and even maybe shout out your sadness and pain. This can bring you back to normal. It’s locking them up and pretending that they are not there that causes them to fester and become a wound. I’ve not read this in a book. It’s just how I have handled them.”

He gives permission to sadness. He also talks about righteous anger, in the face of injustice, not as just a reactionary emotion to get rid of, but a tool of justice that is deeply rooted in connection to humanity, which I think gets at the whole love of your neighbor that I’ll talk about in a bit.

For me, this is what it means to Love God and find joy in this world that sometimes look like a godforsaken place. That we can be honest about sadness. We can be honest about anger. We can be honest about suffering. Loving God doesn’t mean, always just God you’re awesome! But praising God when praise is due, but also going to God when things don’t seem right. That’s trusting God. There you find hope actually. You wouldn’t share how you really feel with someone you don’t care about. But when you love someone, you tell them what’s really bothering you.

So in that sense, pain and suffering are not obstacles of joy, but an access point for intimacy with God. Love the Lord your God with all your hurts, with all your pains, with all your struggles, with all your sufferings.

This naturally brings me to my second point, loving others. It quickly landed here for the conversation between the Archbishop and Dalai Lama.

The Archbishop talked about sadness like this,

Sadness is seemingly the most direct challenge to joy

but as the Archbishop argued strongly,

it often leads us most directly to empathy and compassion to recognize our need for one another.

New studies conducted by psychology researcher Joseph Forgas show that mild sadness can actually have a number of benefits that could reflect its value. In his experiments, people who were in a sad mood had better judgement and memory, and were more motivated, more sensitive to social norms, and more generous than the happier control group…

Sadness didn’t make people broken but it made them expand into the fullness of a richer life. As I read it, I found that to be true. My own sadness has given me empathy. And that empathy connected me to others. Which made me less lonely. Which made me more happy.

The man asked Jesus,

who is my neighbor?

And the next story that follows is the parable of the Samaritan, which essentially tries to explain that in fact your enemy, one who you disagrees with you, that you despise, the Samaritans that Jews often looked down upon, is the one who ends up helping you.

Sometimes I wonder why we’re so divided. We think we’re right and others are wrong. I wonder if we’re not happy because we know too much. And it’s making us into anxious people. We calculate. We weigh the odds. We get to the facts and debate. And yet sometimes I feel like with all the information out there in the internets, we’re more lost than ever. What is truth even anyway? Sometimes I feel like the guy, asking, “so what do you mean by this “neighbor”?” trying to break it down and understand, when really it is just that simple, love your neighbor.

One more story from the Book of Joy about loving your neighbor:

In the Book of Joy, the Dalai Lama shares a story about one of his friends, a senior monk, who was imprisoned for 18 years. He says,

“They had no shoes, even during the very coldest of days. Sometimes it was so cold that when you spit, it would land as ice. They were always hungry. One day he was so hungry that he tried to eat the body of one of the other prisoners that had died, but the flesh of the dead person was frozen and too hard to bite. Throughout the whole time, they tortured the prisoners. There is Soviet-style torture and Japanese-style torture and Chinese-style torture, and at this camp they combined them all into an immensely cruel kind of torture.”

he says,

“When he left the camp, only twenty people had survived. He told me that during those eighteen years he faced some real dangers. I thought of course he was talking about dangers to his life. He told me he was in danger of losing…his compassion for his Chinese guards.”

The narrator goes onto say,

“I could hear a gasp in the room at this extraordinary statement, that the greatest danger for this man had been the risk of losing his compassion, losing his heart, losing his humanity.”

The Dalai Lama continues,

“Now he is still alive, age ninety-seven, and his mind is still in very good shape, sharp and healthy. So as you mentioned, his spirituality and his experience reinforced his ability for compassion…”

Which I would go on to say, his empathy, his compassion, his connection to others reinforced his joy, despite of his struggles. And maybe some might call that foolish. Why would you care about someone who tortured you? I don’t know. But maybe that’s how he survived, his stubbornness to not harden his heart but keep it soft, even toward his enemy. It reminds me of Jesus saying,

“love your enemies”

Okay lastly – Loving yourself.

What does it mean to love yourself? I think personally, this is the hardest one for me. And I’ve recently gained a new insight that’s been helpful. Another book, called Self-Compassion, this time from the field of psychology. I guess I’m so educated that I need books and studies to help me understand the simplest of things. It lays out the difference between self-esteem and self-compassion. Self-esteem is “I’m the best!” But its pitfall is, if you’re not the best, then you’re a failure. Self-Compassion invites us to consider a more sober mindedness about ourselves. More realistic.

Loving yourself is not thinking I’m like the coolest hottest thing. Loving yourself is seeing yourself, as who you really are.

I’ll end with a story from this book.

“A Native American wisdom story tells of an old Cherokee who is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil–he is anger, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good–he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you–and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “the one you feed.”

Maybe this might be the reason why the LGBTQIA+ community, with stories of rejection, hiding, shame, and suicide rate, hang on to more than anything, pride and joy and celebration. I think we have a thing or two we can learn about truly loving ourselves from the LGBTQIA+ community.

Ophelia Hu Kinney – a queer Asian American woman I deeply respect wrote a poem about Pride. She says:

When they ask, “But isn’t pride a sin?” they lack what they too frequently lack: context, context, context.

Image is a solid background with the following text in front:

Pride, not like a lion of its claws or a hunter of its gun

Pride like a rose of its thorns, like a cat of its black, like a flounder of the way it meets the ocean floor, like a spider in the grass of its web lit up by dew

She’s saying pride in just who they are for just being who they are.

And this does remind me of many children’s books I’m reading these days. Books that simply say things like, I love you, not because you’re tall, but because you are just you!

And that’s it.

Loving God, Loving others, Loving yourself, are the ways toward joy. In other words I guess, the secret to joy is love.

God loves you, just because you are just you. Do you believe that? I hope so. May we find our joy in knowing that love, driving it down deep in our hearts and sharing with everyone around us.

Let me pray for us.

From Suffering to Hope

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

For this week’s Spiritual Practice, led by Ivy Anthony, click HERE.

Let me pray for us.

Loving God, you have brought each of us here today to this moment, for a reason. We come into this space from many different places. Some of us, rushing in to hear the word, some of us with open curiosity, some of us with much doubt or even suspicion. No matter how we may find ourselves this morning, we pray that we may be honest to our hearts in this moment, and discover the love that you have poured into our hearts, through the spirit. we pray, in Jesus name.

Amen.

Romans 5:1-5

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we[b] boast in the hope of the glory of God.

3 Not only so, but we[c] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;

4 perseverance, character; and character, hope.

5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

—
Peace be with you. We have here our text today, a life of peace with God. It lays out a life description of movement from suffering to hope. From Suffering to Hope is the title of my sermon today, but how? How do I take you through from suffering to hope? Shall I make you suffer first?

I’ve been reading a book called The Book of Joy. It’s a book capturing a five-day meeting between the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual and political leader of Tibet. For them, the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion is their utmost holy figure, a patron saint, a Christlike figure in the Buddhist tradition. Desmond Tutu is an archbishop, a Christian, in South Africa, a human rights activist and theologian notably during the time of apartheid in South Africa – which apartheid, literally meaning ‘apart-hood’, like neighborhood but ‘apart’. It “was a system of institutionalized racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s”. 90’s ya’ll, the 90’s.

After many seasons in my life of engaging suffering and grief, I needed some knowhow around joy. And not just fa-la-la joy, but true joy, deep joy. Grounding joy. Not busy distracting myself joy but peace-joy. And joy in the face of real injustice. Joy without ignoring the problem. Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it this way,

“Discovering more joy does not, I’m sorry to say, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreak without being broken.”

Hardship without becoming hard. Heartbreak without being broken. Ooh I want that.

‘Cause joy that doesn’t answer to real suffering doesn’t really matter. So this book I thought maybe could get me closer, through two figures who literally have been exiled and fought the oppression of their own people. I wanted the secret to joy from folks who have been through some stuff.

If you haven’t suffered, it’s not a good idea to give advice about how to deal with suffering. No one can tell another how to deal with their suffering. But we do this all the time, to try to be helpful. We often try to offer solutions instead of just listening and validating their pain. The biggest no no is trying to give meaning or purpose to someone else’s suffering. And that’s where I want to start, what not to do with this text we have today.

I have two points. Point one: let’s not use this text to tell someone how to cope with suffering. And point two: if you get to witness suffering turning into perseverance, and perseverance turning into character and character turning into hope–that is a gift and miracle from God.

So point one. Churches, especially from places of privilege and power, have used this verse and verses like it to those who are suffering as a way to placate those who are oppressed. And while I do believe that this text has some meaning or value to offer, to jump to it as a quick resolution to someone in pain is not helpful. “Glory in suffering?” You want me to be happy about this bad thing that happened?

It’s unfortunately reminiscent of other texts in the Bible, which also has been widely misused, like

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ”

in Ephesian 6:5, along with,

“Wives, obey your husbands as you obey the Lord.”

in Ephesian 5:22. Which, by the way, most biblical scholars are fairly conclusive that Ephesians is a “deutero-Pauline,” a fancy way of saying that it wasn’t written by Paul.

Ancient writings in the style of their teacher was not an unusual practice. It was actually a way of honoring, continuing the great ministry and theology of Paul. But I’ll be honest, when I first learned that the first five books of the Bible weren’t written by Moses himself, and Paul has pseudo writers, I did experience a level of losing my faith going, “What! The Bible’s a fraud!” But, after you get through the initial shock and learn from professors who’ve spent decades studying this explain in detail how they analyze and interpret ancient texts like this, your faith expands and grows to be able to hold the complexity, the depths of human history and traditions that try to contain the mysteries of God in their lives. This is all the more reason why we should not use random verses out of context and apply it to our lives.

Don’t tell me suffering produces perseverance. Do you know what I’ve been through? You would make me persevere in this maddening injustice? Don’t tell me it produces character. I don’t want character. Let me do it to you and see if it builds your character. They say it’s like a metal in fire, getting stronger. Really, God? Why do you keep putting me in the fire? It’s hot.

Instead of changing our world of eradicating systemic injustice, we say, “what doesn’t kill ya, makes you stronger!” But the thing is, sometimes, it doesn’t produce perseverance. Sometimes it produces cynicism. Sometimes, it just hurts and keeps hurting no matter how long it’s been. It doesn’t get easier. It gets harder. Sometimes the burden is so heavy, the suffering so great and the problem so sophisticated and complex that instead of building character turns a person to depression. Sometimes, the suffering is so crippling and the trauma upon trauma so insidious that there seems to be no way out. Sometimes, suffering leads to hopelessness.

What do we do with that?
I don’t know.

The formula makes it seem like I need to persevere, build my endurance, fix my character, and then I can obtain hope. But even Paul, he wasn’t offering this as advice. He said, “we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope.” It was a reminder of something they went through together. The whole text is in plural 1st person, we and us. He’s able to speak like this, because they know each other’s pain and have journeyed through it together.

If you happen to have experienced or know or have seen suffering producing hope, you know that it is not because of some straightforward formula, suffering + perseverance * character = hope. It’s because at every step of the way there was a thing called grace. In the midst of deep nonsensical suffering, a sudden gift of renewed strength. In the deep rock bottom of the void, a glimmer of a voice that said, “look up” that came from nowhere. In the places where you felt like you were just the scum of the earth, surrounded in your own filth with no motivation to pick yourself back up, someone came and grabbed your hand and lifted you up.

This is my point two. You know what stands out to me about this text? Not the formula part, that’s often most quoted and used. It’s the stuff around that text that undergirds it. It says “we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.”

All of it is by grace. Grace, something undeserving. Something that doesn’t make any sense. It defies cause and effect. It does not compute. It’s not calculated, it has no reason, it’s not supposed to happen but it does. Grace.

Hope? Hope is not a product of suffering. The product of suffering should be something bad but hope, hope is a miracle. Hope is a gift.

Whether in your life or another person’s life, whether the suffering was self-inflicted or inflicted on them, all we can do if we see the miracle of hope at work in the midst of suffering is, be in awe.

How did that hope come about? It says it is “because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” Not because we worked hard to get out of our suffering, but because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts.

We don’t get to tell someone to have hope in the midst of suffering because hope in the midst of suffering is a miracle and a surprise. All you can do is be in awe if it happens.

Again, it’s not a formula, but I will say, I have seen it. Suffering, that produces perseverance and stubbornness like no other. It’s almost scary to see, the drive in their eyes when you know they’ve known hunger. And character, whew the personalities that I’ve seen who’s been through some real crazy stuff, they are characters.

There’s a word I like in Korean, KKI. I’m not at all sure if this is at all the epidemiology of the word, but I think it defines the word well. It’s like, the Chinese word for energy, chi, which in Korean is gi, but KKI is like an extra cool factor energy, KKI. It’s kind of like the African-American culture of a thing called ‘swag,’ it’s just like style, like even in the smallest ways of how a person walks, how they carry themselves, how they talk. To me, that’s why I think of when I think of hope from suffering. Like where d’you get that? That kki, that style, that swag, that energy, I don’t recognize it, I can’t even name it, it’s just, you’re just in awe.

I love dance. Fun fact, I was in a hip hop dance team when I was in college. And in dance, especially in what you call street dance, these new moves that come out of literally off the streets like New York or the Bay area, that become so popular that they end up being picked up by pop stars years later. It happened with the “moon walk” with Michael Jackson and just about every other dance move you’ve seen on TV. The history of these dance moves many times come from, strife.

Take Voguing for example. You might’ve heard it from pop culture, Madonna had a song called Vogue. But it originates from Harlem dance clubs of Black and Latina gay and trans folks. The form is fun and powerful, drawing out so much confidence and strength when you try to do the moves. It’s a statement. It’s art. It’s defiance. It’s beautiful.

Another example is one called Turfing, from the Bay Area. Turf, which means Taking Up Room on the Floor. I can’t explain it. So here’s a clip. It’s four minutes but it’s such a beautiful embodiment and display of suffering producing perseverance and perseverance character and character hope that I’d like to yield my time of words and talking to just see it and feel it.
Take a look
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRRnAhmB58

Here’s one of the comments from the video-

This the stuff that make a real one shed a tear, this video ain’t about dancing, it’s about mentally escaping a place you are physically in. East Oakland is as tragic as it gets, they filmed this after one of their Patna’s got murdered, you can feel their pain. Oakland made me tough but I’m glad I don’t live there no more. If you from the hood, it’s the goal is simple, get out and give back

Your suffering, I’m sorry that it happened to you, and that it can be hard. And if it’s been too hard that you can’t just look around and find hope, that’s not your fault. But I pray, that the gift of grace will be upon you, taking you through, and that the love of God may be poured into your hearts, that you may indeed, experience endurance and strength, resilience, that will build you up and make you into a beautiful image of God at full display like these guys, that no may what may befall, you will have friends you can smile and dance with, with power and freedom. May this be our life in the spirit. Amen.

How to Live By The Spirit?

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

For this week’s Spiritual Practice, led by Ivy Anthony, click HERE.

Good Morning

Galatians 5:16-26

16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.

18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions

21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Holy and Loving God, we praise and worship you, for you are a good God. A God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in love. We thank you that you have poured your spirit upon us. Help us be aware and present to what you are doing in and through us in this moment now and today we pray, in Jesus name Amen.

We’re in a sermon series called Listening to the Spirit. It’s so elusive. The Spirit. Such a mystery. It’s difficult to know exactly how to listen to the spirit. And what does it mean to live by the Spirit?

I get this question often. How do you know when something is from God? Whether it’s a student facing graduation trying to figure out what to do with their lives, or someone trying to discern whether or not they should switch careers. Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly what you should do and what you shouldn’t do.

In today’s text, Paul is trying to give advice to the churches in Galatia about how they were to live by the Spirit. He gives pretty clear answers to what you should do and what you shouldn’t do. So it seems like a good text for us to look into, as we ask how we can listen to the Spirit. But I have to warn you, the process of application should not be direct.

You see, the text, it wasn’t written for you. It was written under great pressure in Paul’s personal and ministerial life, as his churches that he planted were being influenced by other teachings, and at the brink of all just blowing up. It was written in the face of a great controversy. Meaning? It was drama for your mama.

I mean even writing a text message in the midst of a minor fallout is so hard for me. When you are emotionally entangled, every word means a great deal. Some of you know that I have been going through some drama with my mama for the past few years. It’s been a strained relationship and we don’t talk often. A thorn on my side. I miss her dearly. When she does text me, I take apart every word and comma, and reply with careful word choices that try to convey and include all that I want to mean. And I don’t know if you guys know this but that feature on text messages that tell you when someone’s looked at your text, oh God, I hate it. It’s like, it says, “READ”, and you hold your breath, they read it! And then the three little dots, letting you know that the other person is typing, displays and you just watch the three dots blink waiting. You know? No, just me? Cool.

Well, Paul was very invested in this controversy about circumcision and who can eat with who. And very passionate. I mean his intro to the Galatians letter is,

“Paul an apostle – sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.”

I mean I know he was a man of deep faith, but who writes like that?! And that was his gift too. He was audacious with his words. A gifted writer that compels rather than just tells, with each sentence. And he meant the things he wrote. He’s blunt and often very direct. Like,

“The acts of flesh are obvious!”

“Obvious”, those are fighting words. Never use the word “obvious” in a fight. And he is a bit verbose. He likes to list and include a lot of things, with lots of commas.

I’m saying these things, bringing context to Paul’s situation and maybe even to his temperament and style because that is absolutely relevant. Because when we don’t, we misunderstand the text and I have seen Bible used literally without taking context into account that can really be harmful. And this text particularly has been sometime misinterpreted to be a comprehensive list of do’s and don’t, a litmus test of who’s in the spirit or not.

So let’s break it down a bit more to see if there’s more this text can offer about living in the spirit rather than just a list of things we need to check our lives by.

First of all, this concept of Spirit versus the flesh that Paul is using to convey his point, it’s a framework. A metaphor, try to get at describing something but isn’t meant to define. In fact, through historical critical methods we know that this is a common notion that was used in that day, which was a direct influence of a widely accepted thinking from ancient Greek philosophy. Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, ancient philosophers, had some really powerful thoughts, like the concept of how they understood the spirit versus the body. And it influenced ways we talk about religion and culture. And Paul, because he, as pioneering of faith as he was, was too a product of his time and culture, immersed in his days’ ways of thinking.

The concept of the either or thinking, the binary thinking of spirit versus body, is in one sense interesting, but we also know now that the two are more connected and integrated than the ancient Greek philosophers might have thought. The body keeps score. The body is intelligent, like a computer of its own, holding literally codes of information through DNA, we realize through science. So it’s not simply that the spirit is good and the body is bad.

So what I’m saying is that you can’t just apply his concepts to us directly and blindly. Whatever your flesh wants is not always evil. If your body’s hungry. If your body needs to shake in grief. If your body needs to stretch out and hug a tree. If your body wants to move around its legs because you’re restless. If your body is tired- you don’t have to say, “the spirit is willing but the body is weak.” and quote bible verses out of context. Maybe you need rest. Maybe you need a nap. Living by the spirit doesn’t mean ignoring your body or that your body betrays you.

One way I could offer that sort of reshapes the metaphor is, instead of saying the spirit versus the body, it’s been helpful for me to think about it as the True Self versus the Ego or the False Self. Again, this is just another framework. The True Self is that most authentic voice within, that is connected and curious and content. True self operates out of the gifts of human tendencies such as generosity, compassion, and love and acceptance. Whereas Ego, Ego is the exterior layer that came up to protect us against the dangerous world. It operates out of defensiveness and out of lack. Like, I’ll get them before they get me!

A helpful way to look at what I mean by True Self and the Ego is the Enneagram. I’ve talked about Enneagram before, but it’s an interesting tool to name how all of us have a tendency of the Ego that we end up defaulting to, that often isn’t helpful and even harmful. It’s categorized into nine different types and each type has a kind of its own preoccupation that ends up upholding and maintaining the Ego. For example, Type One called the Perfectionist thinks, Because the world is imperfect, I must do all that I can to make it right to fix it. Hence their tendency toward perfectionism rather than grace and understanding.

Or Type Two, called the Giver or the Helper thinks that because the world is in high demand of things that we need to do, to be recognized, one must help or give something. Hence their tendency toward always busily helping rather than resting and simply being loved fully.

I won’t go through all the numbers but every number, something, usually as a child, shifted in the world- the world demanded too much, the world was painful, the world was chaotic, and so all of us found ways to cope and work with that world, sometimes by overcompensating that fault.

For me, a Type Seven, my ego says, no matter what, let’s just be positive! So I often try to make things better by doing something fun to help forget the hurt, because otherwise it just hurts too much. But my true self is able to engage grief or sadness without being afraid. And my True Self leads me and guides me in truth instead of ignoring the problem.

I offer these words, True Self in place of the Spirit, and Ego in place of the flesh, because the war between the Spirit and Flesh has had a way of splitting a person’s wholeness, fighting within themselves, at odds with themselves. And that kind of teaching has resulted in sometimes even a betrayal of oneself that caused confusion about their identity.

I’ve gotten the question from a teen when I was a youth pastor, “why is everything God says is right but everything I do is wrong.” You’re not wrong. You’re not evil. Your body does not betray you. In fact, the spirit of God lives in you and works with you, the true you, who is connected, grounded, compassionate, and enough. There IS a false self at play, and we must know how to discern between the two. But at your core, your body, is not bad. To listen to the spirit does not mean you have to betray your body.

“So I say, walk by the Spirit of True Self, and you will not gratify the desires of the Ego. For the Ego desires what is contrary to the True Self, and the Spirit of True Self what is contrary to the Ego.”

Now that we’ve got a handle on the framework, let’s tackle the content deeper.

“ sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery;

20 idolatry and witchcraft…

and so on

Okay, so the list Paul gives. it’s not meant to be an exhaustive or a comprehensive list. I mean they all sound pretty bad but I’m just saying, he was writing his own list for the church of Galatia, not for you and your situation. This was simply Paul’s confession, his take of a life lived by the spirit. I’m sharing this text today, not to give you a list of things on what not to do and to do. There are some words of Paul’s that are helpful, but I’m sharing this text as an example of a man who really engaged himself to the situation, gave himself to the cause and named and called out things as he saw them. It’s an example, not a prescription.

In fact, Paul never meant for you to follow his lists either. The whole reason why he was writing all this was because he was trying to convey that you shouldn’t just follow things just because it’s the law.

“But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”

The law, he means the old testament. That was their big controversy, as some were saying you must do things this way or that because of the law, the old testament said so. Paul was saying, no, we live by the spirit. We aren’t supposed to follow lists from the Bible but listen to the spirit that is alive right now. And he goes on to list some he sees, things that they were particularly facing that were particularly in Paul’s hearts at the moment. He was showcasing how one does that.

So what’s your list ? What would you name as “The acts of the flesh” or maybe another way to think of it for us, “acts of ego” that we do? What are some ego tendencies that you’ve done or seen that are harmful and contrary to the spirit of one’s True Self?

Let’s practice this together now, as a community, as Paul meant for us to do.

Write some of your ideas in the chat. What are some words that you would say are not living in the spirit? Way of the Ego?

The acts of the False self/ego are maybe not obvious to some but here’s some according to our community: power hungry, addiction, busyness and productivity, perfectionism, assuming the worst about a person…

…I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

And so, for the fruits of the Spirit. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great list. But again it’s Paul’s. What’s yours?

The Bible and Paul’s words are not the final word. It is a living word, and our lived experiences that also confess to the truth faith. The Bible, in the Jewish tradition, they are meant to be in conversation with one another. There are texts that even contradict one another, like Deuteronomy laying out all the ways you stay pure and clean. And then in the book of Galatians like where our text comes from today, says you don’t have to be circumcised and you can eat with Gentiles. And so our faith, our community is also supposed to maybe not all agree on what we think is the right way or the wrong way. Maybe this is how we listen to the spirit. We disagree and listen to opposing ideas. Maybe we take into consideration Moses’ list, Paul’s list, Mikayla’s list, Jin’s list…

We get to proclaim our story and we are witnesses to life in the spirit.

So what is your picture of life in the spirit? What are your fruits of the spirit that you enjoyed? What is your understanding of what life in the spirit is, or life lived out of True Self is?

love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

23 gentleness and self-control

are pretty good but give me some of yours in the chat. What is your fruit of the spirit that you’ve tasted and seen? What, in your opinion, is the fruit of the spirit of our times?

The Fruit of the Spirit is freedom, collaboration, humility, rest, gratitude, resilience, boldness, vulnerability…

“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit”

This was the provocative message of Paul. That we are all connected to the Spirit. And the Spirit speaks through us all, even in the face of old traditions and texts and prescriptions. Even through Zoom chat. Spirit makes things new, through you. Do you know that? Do you believe that?

How do you listen to the Spirit? How do you live by the Spirit? Not by checking through Paul’s list. Maybe by coming up with your own list and sharing them with others. As you listen to your own list, may you be as audacious as Paul, passionate and bold. For the Spirit of God is upon you. Amen.

Spiritual Practice 4_25

Listening to Our Hearts

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

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

Good morning and Happy Easter to you.

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

Luke 24:13-35

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

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

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

16 but they were kept from recognizing him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s pray:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What are you discussing?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luke 24:49

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would you join me in prayer…

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

Love Mercy

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

For this week’s spiritual practice led by Ivy Anthony called “Micah & Rocks,” click HERE.

Micah 6:6-8 6

With what should I approach the Lord and bow down before God on high? Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings, with year-old calves? 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with many torrents of oil? Should I give my oldest child for my crime; the fruit of my body for the sin of my spirit? 8 He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God.

Let me pray for us… We walk humbly into this space of worship this morning. Longing to hear you, see you, to feel you. Give us your grace we pray.in Jesus name. Amen

It was a hard decision to become a pastor. I loved Jesus so much. He had changed my heart. But when I began to feel the call and eventually got to seminary, the rest of the 4 years of seminary was about becoming. A process. And a lot of unbecoming, what I used to be. Shedding and changing. My heart was changed but changing my life, took a bit more time. For one,I had a pottymouth. And I struggled with addiction. And though I had stopped as I entered seminary, the temptations were still there. I was still a work in progress.

And the fact that I was work in progress gave me a lot of doubt. Here I am, sitting in a seminary dorm. Ha! Who do you think you are? You’re not holy. You’re sinful! I said to myself. And the flashbacks would flood in. See? Remember what you’ve done? You? You want to become a pastor? When those voices would rise up, I’d kneel. I’d pray to that tender voice. I asked God, like the old Jennifer Knapp’s Christian pop song I grew up with, called Refine Me.

Lord, come with Your fire

Burn my desires, refine me

Lord, my will has deceived me

Please come free me, come rescue this child

For I long to be reconciled to You

Refine me, refine me

I prayed and prayed. There were so many things that I needed to give up. But the funny thing about doubt and the imposter syndrome is that it turns the idea that “there are mistakes I’ve made” to “I am a mistake”, or “I’ve done wrong” to “I am wrong”.

On one of those many nights where I battled with my own shaming voices, in prayer to God, a verse came to me. I have a vivid memory of this experience that I had forgotten about but recently came back to me with details.

And when I say a verse came to me, I just mean, I thought of it. When things like this happen, I think it’s God speaking to us, because it feels like a gift, that it just comes into my mind. I don’t know, maybe I read it somewhere earlier that week. Maybe I heard it somewhere. So it’s hard to say, exactly how God speaks to us, but nevertheless, it felt as though God gave me this verse. Jesus said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” It came to me as a mystery because I did not understand it. I googled it. Jesus said it in Matthews chapter 9, “But go and learn what this means: quoting Hosea, prophet we read last week, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’

I desire mercy not sacrifice. I desire mercy not sacrifice..

The statement confused me. Sacrifice was such a positive thing in my mind. Selfless. Pure.

It also happens to be high value in Korean culture. To sacrifice. How much our parents sacrificed themselves for the next generation. In fact, it’s a complement.

I remember growing up in church, and on Sundays, everyone served. Ladies cooked all morning to provide beef seaweed soup and rice with kimchi to the entire congregation. Men moved chairs, tables to set things up. Deacons cleaned. Elders arranged the flowers. People had meetings, babysat, sang in choirs, made booklets. Sunday went on from early morning set up to late afternoon filled with band practices and prayer meetings. At the end of the day we would part ways saying to each other, ‘soogo hetsuhyo!’ which means ‘you worked hard!” or ‘goseng hetsuhyo” which means “you struggled!” or “you endured!” And everyone responded the same, saying “oh no no no” denying their work. It’s like a competition to see who took on the most burden, which is another complement. Sacrifice is next to godliness. And I’ve been taught all my life to sacrifice, to thank those who sacrificed, how much others have sacrificed for me.

So when Jesus said, Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy, not sacrifice? I didn’t get it.

I marinated on it for a while. I journaled in my notebook. God, refine me. God, make me better. God, change me.

I wrote, God use me. And I started to play with these words, as I often do when I journal, where my thoughts become play, and I riff and roll around the words with ittierations, rhymes, and rhythms. Yes, I get a little poetic prose-like in my journaling sometimes. I wrote…

Use me. Useful. US…FULL. And then I wrote in capital letters, URS. Yours. And it hit me.

That I’m not supposed to be “useful” but “urs.” Your beloved.

It wasn’t about what I needed to do,

But who I saw myself to be

I don’t need to make sacrifices for God or to God

But simply, see the way God see me,

Which is full of mercy

I needed to have mercy on myself.

And it brought me to tears. I think I felt mercy. I felt the love enveloping me.

But still and again, I wrote in my journal. I asked God, what do you require of me? And I heard God respond to me with the same question, “What do you require of me?” God asked me. And I thought about that…. And I wrote “acceptance.” I asked God, “Am I good enough?” Do you accept me?

How could it be? That I legitimately questioned whether I was good enough to be loved by God. That’s why I was sitting there asking God to change me, so that I could be pleasing and acceptable to the Lord.

The questions of Am I good enough, came with a pang, like a sadness, to see my desperate insecure self in need of just love. I felt mercy toward her. Poor girl, of course, of course you’re good enough, Lydia! God loves you no matter what!

Jesus doesn’t ask us to make sacrifices. Jesus has mercy on us. Jesus loves us no matter what. Let me say that again. God doesn’t ask us to make sacrifices. Are you thinking in your head, well yes but there’s still some things I need to work on or things I need to clean up. Or Are you thinking about others, that one person, sure Jesus loves them but they’ve got some work to do. Sure the theological term sanctification has had much to expound on over centuries. But moral achievements are only meant to be the natural outpouring of the spirit through mercy and grace. Not by merit, through grace, GRACE, alone.

In 2010 Jennifer Knapp the Christian musician came out publicly sharing that she’s been in a loving relationship with a woman for 8 years. I can see why she might’ve been asking God to burn her desires and the song, not being about how God sees her but maybe more about how others saw her or how she saw herself and felt the need to be seen and accepted a certain way. She longed to be accepted and loved. And sadly, when she came out, many were shocked, even angry. This is not God’s way. It’s what we do to each other. We demand sacrifices from each other.

We don’t need to tell each other what to do, what to give, what to give up, and how to live. Like the question we’ve been asking this Lent “what’s the most important?” It says in our Lent Bible Guide, “Our church doesn’t try to define what should be most important for all of us; we don’t tell you exactly which way to go. But we believe that as we lean toward God in prayer and listen to the prophets, the Spirit of God will be our teacher and guide and show us each some of what is most important as well as show us the way forward.”

We only need to show one another, God’s love and how we walk in God’s love, and walk humbly together. Any sacrifice that may come, is not up to you or me, but it’ll come naturally flowing out of the life of love. That’s between them and God. And for everyone who struggles with something, we only need to show mercy.

So much guilt driven theology I swallowed growing up, that I needed to be cleansed, that I needed to be better. Sometimes “worldly” views come through the lens of “Christian values”. But at the core, there is only one message, God loves you. And not you should but you can have a loving reciprocal relationship with God. And love is not gained through a series of actions or sacrifices. You do not inspire God to love you by being good. What it means to love God isn’t to do things for God that is pretty or satisfactory to God. To love God is to receive and return love, delight and enjoy God. To know God’s heart and share your heart with God. To walk with God.

So this is my humble walk. It’s not perfect. I’m not that holy. But I need to walk really closely with others to remind me what this walk is like. That sometimes this walk can feel like a show. Sometimes I feel like I need my faith to be a certain way. Ya’ll, I have major baggage with this being a Pastor’s Kid. We publicly sacrificed everything for the show. Don’t. Don’t sacrifice your first born, or the last born.

With what shall I come before the Lord

and bow down before the exalted God?

Shall I come before them with burnt offerings,

with calves a year old? Shall we come to church to log in hours of prayer, with bank checks with a year of interest?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,

with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand committees working on stuff in our organization, with ten thousand staff members?

Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Shall I give up things that are most precious to me, even the good and beautiful things most near to my heart?

No, God does not require these things of you. Maybe church does. Maybe people do. But not God.

The only thing that we’re told to DO in this text is, actually, justice. While I was on maternity leave I discovered that I enjoy listening to audiobooks while I’m feeding and holding the baby. I got a chance to hear “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi and the main message of the book really took the whole book to drill into my head. He posed that being racist isn’t mainly about moral fallacy. In fact, when we dwindle down a thing like racism to moral or ethical failure, it fails to tackle the real root of the problem or more important the scope and power of the problem, which is how insidious and prevalent racism is, by chalking it up to almost excusing it as, oh that person is racist who is a bad person. When the reality is, racism is beyond personal individual moral failure, and plays out more powerfully as public policy. He says that it’s not ignorance or hate that fuels racism. It’s power. Power that’s carried out and implemented through racist policies. He says that ““Institutional racism” and “structural racism” and “systemic racism” are redundant. Racism itself is institutional, structural, and systemic.” He presents that it’s not moral failings of racists that we need to be working on but racist policies.

Stop focusing on moral failings. It’s not enough. It may be a part of it, sin, sacrifice, sanctification. But what’s more at stake is bigger than your moral failings.

Here’s what I read. Don’t worry about purifying your moral ethical failures through sacrifices. DO justice. Change racist policies. Even in the realm of race, as Ibram Kendi would point out, it’s less about individual righteousness but about implementation of justice. DO Justice. We don’t need to change the hearts of men, but change the policies that perpetuates and reinforces more racism at a systemic mass sophisticated scale, well beyond a hurtful racist remark. It’s less about personal holiness and piety, it’s more about doing public love and mercy, which is justice. It’s much more relational and community oriented, a thing like mercy, rather than transactional, like nullifying one’s sin through sacrifice.

Again from the prophet Micah,

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

And what does the Lord require of you?

To do justice and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God.

Be fair. LOVE MERCY. And just walk. That’s it. Step by step.

Let us walk together, doing justice, loving mercy. Can we?

Let me pray for us.

God of Justice, God of Love, God of mercy. Show us. Show us the way to not only fix ourselves, but love ourselves, and love our neighbors like we would love ourselves. Teach us we pray, lamp our feet, that we may walk, in justice, in mercy, in humility, with you. Help us. Have mercy on us Lord Jesus, Amen.