the eighth day

in the end   

when humans are no longer being

in spite of all there has been

let there be

let there be lichen climbing blistered stumps

                        let the rising fungi filter toxins

                                let ivy twine the tire rims

                      let slow roots reclaim old roads

let moss coat rusted beams   in beads of rain

let nature be lush      teeming     uncontained

                  let beetles be fruitful and multiply

                       let them draw the gun-shy birds

             let the megafauna holler their return

let the ancient adapt     let eccentric emerge

and if it be your will

let there be even one wide-eyed gardener

to behold your rewilding regreening earth

and call her good

THIS Bird Feeder

When my Mom died in February, most people offered me hugs, flowers or food (all very appreciated!), but one friend of mine went off the beaten track and gave me gift card for Wild Birds Unlimited. Last month I finally got around to using it, and bought this $40 window-suction-cup birdfeeder and a huge $7 bag of birdseed. It only took the chickadees, finches, sparrows and juncos 24 hours to discover it, and the periodic joy of having them distract me from my work has been worth so much more than $47. Once or twice I’ve even witnessed Northern Flickers attempt to brace themselves against the window to eat, though the feeder is definitely not built to support a bird of their size. It’s never too late to get yourself a bird feeder.

Couples Therapy (TV SHOW)

I initially thought this show would be the usual trashy reality voyeurism, watching couples emotionally striptease for a pretentious therapist who would delight in dropping truth bombs on them. From the first few minutes of footage in Dr. Orna’s office, you realize the tone of the show, and of Dr. Orna herself, is quiet, gentle, respectful, almost meditative. I have a full-on crush on Dr. Orna, who can somehow offer generous, embodied attention toward people who are acting like douchebags, and who always asks different questions than I expect. Each season, the show follows three or four couples through multiple sessions with her, and there’s always at least one queer couple, which is fantastic. The show also peeks behind the curtain and shows Dr. Orna’s conversations with her supervisor, where she further humanizes herself by sharing her uncertainty about how to best help different couples. My wife Danice and I watch the episodes together and usually talk at length afterward about our own relationship: it’s like free therapy (well, therapy for the price of a Crave subscription!).

“DRAGON NEW WARM MOUNTAIN I BELIEVE IN YOU” by Big Thief (ALBUM)

If you want an idea of the fantastic music playing at my home this year, you can head over to my wife’s Top 20 albums blog, where she writes eloquently about some of my favourite albums. Instead of rehashing those, I thought I’d write about two albums that didn’t make her cut, the first being this album with its endearing title and cover art (I want to know which campfire circle animal corresponds with which band member!). My cousin Lily introduced me to Big Thief a few years ago. Just months before COVID hit, we were lucky to catch their live show, which only increased my respect for their collective skill and humble, gentle attitude. Lead singer Adrienne Lenker has my whole heart, as a singer, as a songwriter; she is on my “I Recommend” page for a reason. I love the poetic intentionality and folky fingerpicking vibe of her solo work, but there’s a different kind of light-hearted improvisational joy that seems to emerge for her when co-creating with her band of quirky friends; you can feel their delight in one another when watching their most recent Tiny Desk. There are 20(!) songs on this album, and my favourites are in the first half - “Change” for its simplicity and the way the theme shifts through the lyrics, “Certainty” for weaving together quantum uncertainty with questions of love, and “Sparrow” for a meditation on Adam & Eve that will get stuck in your head (“She has the poison inside her/she talks to snakes and they guide her”). Ugh and the titular song is also such a mood...

“A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT” by Becky Chambers (BOOK)

I’m so grateful to Bailey, from my church, for introducing me to this refreshing oasis of a book. The prose was gorgeous from start to finish, the world-building was intriguing but accessible, the main character was queer and widely relatable, but it was the spirituality of “tea monks” that really drew me in. Unlike the space operas I usually read, this was a bite-sized science fiction story, a novella, almost a fable, but without any preachiness, about a monk and a robot who learn new things about themselves as they travel together. It helped me realize that a big epic universe-altering climax isn’t necessary for me to enjoy a work of science fiction. Now to read the sequel, along with everything else Becky Chambers has ever written (right now I’m in the middle of her book “A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” and also enjoying it).

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (MOVIE)

This was one of only 4 movies Danice and I watched in theatres this year, and I’m so glad we experienced it on the big screen. I’ve never seen another movie like it, with so much zany “everything” mixed in (hot dog fingers, googly eyes, The Bagel, a raccoon chef, butt plugs, and taxes), yet pulling off beautiful character development and a strong central message. It’s a surprisingly fresh use of the multi-verse device, done with both quirky humour and tear-jerking sincerity. It’s an action movie that resolves in kindness and nonviolence. There were some amazing performances, including Stephanie Hsu playing a deliciously queer villain, and her protagonist mother Michelle Yeoh, who had better win the Best Actress Oscar (I say this despite the fact that she’ll be pitted against my personal fave, Cate Blanchett). Just recently, I found this YouTube essay on how you could read the film as a commentary on the overwhelm of living in the age of internet hyperconnectivity, and I felt even more grateful for the movie’s hopeful conclusion.

SUSIE PALADINO (OUR E-BIKE)

In April, Danice and I invested in a RadRunner Plus from Rad Power Bikes. Danice was only half-convinced, but once we visited their Vancouver location and took her out for a test ride, she was sold. In the 9 months we’ve had the bike, we’ve ridden her 900 km, including almost all my work travel to officiate local weddings (because the electric part means I don’t need to show up sweaty!). On top of the gas $$ savings, and the joy of making choices in line with our climate values by leaving the car at home, riding her has been unexpectedly wonderful for our mental health. It’s so refreshing to feel the wind in my face and to more fully appreciate what’s blooming and growing along Vancouver’s incredible bike trails, all while efficiently getting where I want to go. Many thanks to church friends Carie-Ann and Sarah & Jonathan for inspiring us to take the plunge on one of our largest ever purchases; we have zero regrets. (Can’t remember why we named the bike Susie Paladino… though I think the “Susie” part was in honour of Sue Bird.)

A League of Their Own (TV Show)

Our friends Becca & Mylo visited us this summer just in time for us to binge this entire show together. We began by re-watching the 1992 film, which I didn’t have much nostalgic love for, despite it being the source of my grade 2 softball team’s rather uncreative name, “The Peaches.” The TV show can do so much more with the historical source material than the movie could do, really examining the pros and cons of expanding freedom for women to fill new roles at home while the men were overseas in WW2, and the limits of that freedom for queer, Black and trans people. I already loved Abbi Jacobson from Broad City, and had crushes on both D’Arcy Carden from The Good Place, as well as Roberta Colindrez from Vida, and I loved being introduced to more wonderful actors (particularly Chante Adams and Gbemisola Ikumelo). No love of softball or sports required to enjoy this show, just be prepared for it to become more and more gloriously queer with every episode!

“NOT TIGHT” by DOMi & JD BECK (ALBUM)

This was another album that didn’t make Danice’s Top-20 cut (though I think this groovy 7/4 earworm of a track will be in her Top 20 songs). “Not Tight” created the perfect chill jazzy backdrop for me while I typed away on my laptop this year, and I’m so grateful my sister Rachel introduced me to these two musical prodigies (JD Beck is a 19-year-old drummer, and DOMi is a 22-year-old keyboardist). They met just four years ago and now they have a debut album featuring the likes of Herbie Hancock, Anderson .Paak, and Snoop Dogg. My brain is constantly puzzling over JD’s drumming - it’s so agile and dry and the beats always land where I’m not expecting, yet it’s also somehow minimalist. Despite their collective genius, they both possess an “I couldn’t take myself less seriously” brand of intentionally immature Gen Z irony, which makes the high-brow jazz feel a bit more accessible to the likes of me. Their live performances are even better than their album recordings, so start with their Tiny Desk here and hopefully you’ll fall down a YouTube rabbit hole of recordings of their shows.

“THIS HERE FLESH” by Cole Arthur Riley (BOOK)

If I write a book (and that is the hope! come on creative 2023!), my wildest dream is to have it compared to what Cole Arthur Riley achieves here: an exquisite lyrical blend of memoir, spiritual reflection, and poetic prose. You may already know Cole from her gorgeous work writing Black liturgies (to find them, follow @blackliturgies on Instagram). This Here Flesh, her first book, is as finely and carefully crafted as her liturgies, with broadly themed chapters (e.g. Dignity, Joy, Belonging, Anger) each containing beautifully specific metaphors and stories from her life and the lives of her ancestors. She does not shy away from writing about trauma, nor does she shy away from the healing. It’s the kind of book you want to read slowly, to savour the elegant words and wise insights, and then you’ll want to start it all over again. So much richness here… can’t wait for more from Cole Arthur Riley.

C’MON C’MON (MOVIE)

I have my sister Rachel to thank for this recommendation, too. This movie (available on Crave) reminded me of the week back in March when Danice and I took care of my other sister (Sarah)’s kids. We hold on to so many beautiful moments from that week, but we also felt constantly “in over our heads” as we were trying to take care of children while we and the kids were all processing fresh grief. Joaquim Phoenix’s character is in the same boat in this film, caring for his young nephew during a difficult time. This concept could easily become cheapened with sentimentality, but it’s saved by a good script and nuanced acting - the child actor who plays the nephew blew my socks off as one of the most believable children I’ve seen in a film, and one of his last delivered lines, referenced in the title, unexpectedly brought me to tears. Gaby Hoffman also shows off her talent here, playing Joaquim’s sister. And because Joaquim’s character is a podcaster/interviewer who focuses on children, the filmmaker chooses to pepper the film with interviews with different real-life children, which carried surprising depth. I still don’t know why this movie is shot in black & white, but it does give it a kind of timeless quality. I love movies that make you fall in love with the people and world around you, and this is definitely one of them.

——

HONORABLE MENTIONS

ALBUMS - Beyonce’s Renaissance, Amber Mark’s Three Dimensions Deep, Anais Mitchell’s Anais Mitchell.

TV - Reservation Dogs, The Resort, Severance, The Vow

BOOKS - Gathering Moss (Robin Wall Kimmerer), The Wild Edge of Sorrow (Francis Weller), Pet & Bitter (Akweeke Emezi), Cloud Cuckoo Land (Anthony Doerr), Care Of (Ivan Coyote)

MOVIES - Nope, After Yang, Prey, Fire Island

OTHER - Miss Vickies’ Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar Chips, and Rockets candy. These are my emotional support snacks. I feel better about life when I have them on hand, and I almost always have them on hand.

——

Oh, and in case you were wondering, this is my favourite person. She’s held the title for the past 16 years. Quite the streak.

I’m honored to preach the last sermon in our Disability Justice series,
after a series of four fantastic sermons from Jess, Sonya, Robbie and Caitlin –
please watch them on our YouTube channel if you missed any of them!

My task today is to sum up their wisdom,
and to also draw links between Disability Justice and themes of Advent and Christmas.
I’ve often nabbed this final sermon spot in past “On the Way” fall series,
because I love the joy of making those connections –
like in our refugee series, where we talked about Jesus the refugee child,
or last year’s climate justice series,
when I preached about Jesus, the King of Kin, born for all of creation.

This time, I’ll be using today’s lectionary text
that so many churches are preaching on this Sunday,
and it’s given me plenty to work with.

Before we read this familiar story
of Mary and Elizabeth,
I want to name something that’s been coming up for me
as I’ve been listening to the stories
of disabled and chronically ill folks
in our church these last couple months,
and gratefully learning about
what it looks like do the work of allyship
as a temporarily able-bodied person.

 In a nutshell, I’ve been feeling super vulnerable.
Not just because I’ve become more aware of my ableism, which is a good thing.
I’ve also become more deeply aware of my own potential and actual fragility.
It’s that word “temporarily” before “able-bodied,” it’s our wider vulnerability as human beings.

Amy Kenny writes about this near the beginning of her book, “My Body is Not a Prayer Request”
which we studied together at Open Way this fall… she says:

“When we are young and nondisabled, it’s easy to buy into the myth that we are in control of our bodies, even though we know deep down that we’re not. Subconsciously, we realize that everyone’s physical ability is a temporary situation, and that frightens us… We, the disabled, bear prophetic witness about what is true about the fragile human condition. If only the church would listen to us.”

I wonder what you grew up learning about vulnerability.
I have grown up in a world that runs from vulnerability.
My White culture values perfectionism and rugged individualism,
my Evangelical church culture loves triumphalism and the spiritual bypassing of pain.
I am immersed in a capitalism that wants me to “live my best life,”
fearing scarcity and warding off insecurity through hoarding resources.

In that context, Amy Kenny is absolutely right, disabled people ARE prophets,
reminding all of us that we are worthy from birth,
and our dignity is not earned through some kind of self-sufficient productivity or so-called success.

The disability community prophetically reveals our shared human vulnerability,
and our deep need of each other,
revealing the more beautifully sustainable path of community care.

To be clear, I don’t believe disabled people exist simply to inspire able-bodied people like me to embrace vulnerability –
this series has reminded us to be wary of reducing disabled people
to the so-called “inspiration porn” they provide able-bodied people.
The truth is that disabled people don’t often get to choose their vulnerability.
And the people and systems they need are often fallible and broken, which turns their vulnerability into oppression.

But when able-bodied people do the work of ensuring accessibility
so they have the privilege of community with disabled people,
we all get the chance to build trust, to learn vulnerability and our need of one another,
and we can work together with the Holy Spirit to overhaul or overthrow those oppressive systems.
That’s my radical hope for Open Way.

With that said, let’s turn to this story of Mary and Elizabeth.
Even though it’s not specifically about disability, I’m going to examine at it through this lens of vulnerability and community care,
a lens this disability justice series has gifted me.
Just a heads up that I’m also planning on nerding out about the evolution of the octopus,
so prepare yourselves for that too.

Also just as a side note I was looking up “vulnerable” in the thesaurus and was struck by two synonyms:
one was “accessible,” and another was “pregnable.”
Two paths of vulnerable openness to the other.
This story comes right after Mary says “yes” to being pregnable by God, and the angel leaves her.
Let’s see what Mary does.

39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

46 And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.
    Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name;
50 indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
    and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things
    and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has come to the aid of his child Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
    to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

56 And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

So we’ve got Mary, this young teenage girl, who has suddenly become vulnerable not only to God,
but to community judgment.
At best, she will become the local town scandal.
At worst, she and her child could be exiled, left to beg on the streets,
or she could be stoned for adultery before her child is even born.

Thankfully, the angel’s visit to Joseph, which isn’t narrated here,
and Joseph’s belief in Mary and choice to stay married to her does protect her somewhat.
Still, though, Mary prepares to leave town – the text says “with haste” –
and travel to her cousin’s home in the mountain town of Ein Karem.
The journey, likely taken with a caravan, was at least 120 km – similar to traveling from Vancouver to Hope on foot –
and involved a 1300-foot elevation hike through the hills, where there would be significant risk of robbery and assault.

Now it’s possible Mary’s incentive for this arduous journey is just to ride out the first 3 months of morning sickness
with her cousin Elizabeth, miraculously pregnant with John the Baptist.

But I think Mary may have had other motivations.
I think she needed someone to help her ride out the experience of being shamed.
Someone to provide her sanctuary from the gossip and ostracism.
Someone older and wiser, who knows what it’s like to carry stigma.
Someone like Elizabeth.

Elizabeth had carried the great stigma in her culture and time of being childless and infertile.
(I personally think it was Zechariah who was infertile, but in those days it was believed to always be the woman’s problem).
As Elizabeth commented earlier in this chapter, in verse 25, this miraculous pregnancy REMOVED her public disgrace,
kind of an ironic reversal of Mary, whose miracle baby BROUGHT disgrace.

Despite the fact Elizabeth can relate with Mary around public disgrace,
Elizabeth is also a very privileged person –
she’s the wife of a priest in Jerusalem, she’s known as a righteous woman,
and having her social standing increased by this long-awaited pregnancy
may have made her hesitant to risk her reputation by offering hospitality to an unwed pregnant teen cousin from a hick town.

I imagine Mary finally arriving at Elizabeth’s door after this long journey,
taking a deep breath, tentatively peeking in and saying hello…
cringing lest Elizabeth take one look at her and send her right back on the road…
but instead, Mary’s simple “hello” sets off this chaotically joyful, very EMBODIED chain of events.

 As Elizabeth tells it: “as soon as my ears heard your voice, the baby in my womb leapt for joy.”
Then the Holy Spirit prompts a loud shout of blessing from Elizabeth!
(Has anyone ever shouted a blessing over you?)
Without even hearing Mary’s angel story, Elizabeth believes and understands it,
and treats this teenage cousin with more honor than herself, blessing her for her faith, for saying yes to God.

And Mary responds in song.
It’s almost as if Elizabeth’s blessing unlocks the song in Mary.
Mary begins by calling herself blessed – internalizing Elizabeth’s blessing and claiming her dignity with her own agency,
and then she turns the attention on God’s work in past and future.
More on that song in a bit.

But first, I want us to notice that both women are making themselves vulnerable.
Mary is risking being seen, risking asking for help, needing Elizabeth.
Brene Brown talks a lot about how being shamed makes us want to isolate,
when what we really need is to open up and share the experience with trustworthy people who will understand.

As for Elizabeth, she takes the risk
of believing and blessing Mary
when few other people would do so,
and gets to participate
in this burst of creative prophetic joy.

Two women two thousand years ago,
risking vulnerability,
acknowledging their need of each other,
pre-empting shame through empathetic community care,
and forging an essential connection across generations.

And of course,
they also became two of the first people to hold a bigger secret –
that their God was, like them,
embracing vulnerability and neediness.
Their God was willing to be attached
to the uterine wall of a rural teenage girl,
completely dependent on her body for nourishment,
a God protected only by amniotic fluid for 9 months,
a God risking travel through a birth canal
before the arrival of modern medicine,
a baby God who could not even hold up his head, threatened by a king who wanted him dead.

This God was demonstrating that love always requires mutual vulnerability,
even when one party is divine and one is human.
This Messiah was going to bring transformation not through triumphant violence,
but by becoming an embodied, vulnerable creature.

Immanuel, God with us, God in flesh, taking this risk of vulnerability,
putting Themself in need of their very creation,
unleashing creative and redemptive potential through empathy.

This is such good news, but it is also such hard news.
The word “vulnerable” comes from the Latin word for “wound.”
Vulnerability leaves us – leaves even God – open to being wounded.
Some of us have had our vulnerability taken advantage of.
I think of my queer community this past month, with the murders at Club Q,
drag shows and drag storytimes canceled over threats of violence,
and just weeks ago in Hamilton, at Redeemer University, a Christian college,
homophobia leading a Bekett Noble, a queer student, to take their life.
We feel so viscerally the dark painful side of vulnerability, the potential for wounding and abuse.
I do not believe Christ causes or endorses this suffering,
though he has felt similar wounds and is present with us in them.

In order to survive this pain of wounding, we might return violence for violence,
or we might numb and armor ourselves - putting up our guard,
never wanting to leave ourselves unprotected again.
These are understandable strategies in the short-term,
but over time, they end up damaging and diminishing us and others.

The hard truth is that vulnerability is the avenue for wounding
but it is also the only avenue for our healing.
After taking the time we need to rebuild trust, we need to open ourselves up again,
risking making ourselves accessible to God and to community
to allow our healing to happen,
whether healing looks like physical or emotional healing,
or whether it looks like restoration to community,
because Robbie and Jess reminded us that is also a form of healing.

Risking vulnerability,
acknowledging our need of each other:
the pathway to healing.

In hopes of my own continued healing,
I want to practice being vulnerable with y’all
and tell you about how vulnerable I’ve felt lately,
as I’ve been coming to terms with pastoring next year post-Mark’s-retirement.
As a queer female pastor,
I felt so much safer, less exposed, less fearful
when co-pastoring with Mark, this seasoned straight/cis man,
than I do heading into next year
without him as my partner in crime.

I still believe co-pastoring is the best model for us at Open Way:
it’s one way we live out our value of queering power,
and I can’t wait to team up
with more co-pastors moving forward.
AND I am realizing that co-pastoring
has also been a convenient way
to sidestep my big fear of vulnerability, critique and failure.
And that’s something I believe God wants to address in me,
regardless of whom is pastoring alongside me in the future.

I try to tell myself that y’all aren’t looking for an authoritative pastor
with all the right answers,
or with all the most visionary plans and strategies,
in fact, some of you are here because you DON’T want that -
but I still carry so much internalized patriarchy and homophobia
that it makes me feel like my vulnerability is a liability.

That’s why I’m grateful for leaders like Caitlin, whose sermon last time reminded me
that God “knowingly chose softness, weakness, frailty and pain,”
and called humans who regularly experience these things to be leaders –
women, gender non-conforming people, queer people, disabled people.
Caitlin, thank you for inviting me to “see [your] disabilities
as reminders of [my] own belovedness,” in the midst of my own fragility.

You and other folks with disabilities are retraining me to see my vulnerability
as the key to being receptive to the God who chooses vulnerable love,
as the key to being able to empathize and connect with all of you,
so we can co-create a community that’s joyfully aware of our deep need of each other.
Vulnerability as the pathway to joyful co-creativity.

It reminds me of the evolution of the octopus. Stay with me here.
I’m grateful to Andrea Gibson for reminding me of this recently.
The bigger family that includes octopi, known as cephalopods,
evolved very slowly for millions of years, because they had a hard protective shell around them.
Shells limit evolution – for example, turtles have barely changed in millions of years.
(Not that we hold that against them!)

Then, 140 million years ago, this shell-less cephalopod we now call the octopus
branched off the main evolutionary line with a soft, defenseless body.
To survive without their usual armor, they had to develop radical innovations,
like camouflage, huge eyes, and strong, flexible arms.
Creativity borne from shell-less vulnerability.

It reminds me of one of the cool things I learned during this Disability Justice series:
just how many technological innovations have resulted from assistive technologies
inspired by the needs and ideas of disabled people –
things we use every day, like bicycles, texting, touch screens, audiobooks.
Creativity for increased access that now benefits everyone.

Of course, there’s the other example of creativity in our text today –
and that’s Mary’s song, also known as the Magnificat.
As Mary’s vulnerability is met with the blessing and care of her cousin,
Mary bursts into what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called
“the most passionate, the wildest, the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung.”
Mary’s boldness reminds me of a disability activist slogan I saw this week:
“No spoons left – it’s all knives now!”

Her song is so radical that singing it has been banned by governments and militaries
at least three times in recent history –
during the British rule of India,
in the 1980s in Guatemala,
and during the Dirty War in Argentina when Las Madre (“the mothers”)
postered the capital plaza with the words of the Magnificat to protest their 30,000 missing family members.

In this dangerous song, Mary claims her inherent worth and blessedness,
again, much like the disability community has been doing for decades.
Then she names what God has always been like, what God has always done,
and spells out how God is going to show up,
braiding the past into the future.

It reminds me of the Syrophoenician woman
whom Jess preached about –
this song is definitely not “settling for crumbs.”
And to riff off Sonya’s sermon –
Mary isn’t singing about inclusion,
about marginalized people being welcomed to the table.
Mary isn’t even asking privileged people to let go of the table –
her song simply and boldly FLIPS that table.
She sings about God inverting power structures
in favour of the oppressed.

This God shows mercy
to those whose vulnerability has been abused.
God will make sure they are lifted
and filled with good things.
Even if they seem insignificant and small, like Mary,
they are valuable to God,
and their song will be heard.

And I believe Mary’s song shows the mercy of God
for the rich and overfed too,
even though it might not feel that way at first.
But being brought down from power, experiencing emptiness –
this is how we get in touch with our human vulnerability
and recognize that we really do need each other and God.

Of course, our identities are complex and intersectional.
In some aspects of my life, I’m the underdog.
I’m the one whose song needs unleashing,
who needs to claim the blessing and power of God.
And in other situations, I’m the one with more power.
I’m the rich one that will be sent away empty, the mighty cast down.
In those situations, I’m invited to be like my namesake, Elizabeth,
to treat the so-called lowly with honor, to believe their stories,
and to learn when to be silent
and make room to hear the song that needs singing.

I wonder… in what ways do you feel vulnerable this Advent season? this lifetime?
What part of that vulnerability do you feel invited to lean into?
Where do you hear the invitation to stop numbing and armoring yourself
and step into the “octopus creativity” and Christlike empathy that vulnerability can foster?
And on the other side, what part of your vulnerability is exacerbated by oppression
and longs for justice and liberation?

Is there anyone who is scandalized by you, like they were by Mary?
Perhaps even some family members you’ll see this Christmas?
Who are the “Elizabeth”s who are reminding you of your blessedness?
Who are the “Mary”s you can be an “Elizabeth” for, reminding them of their blessedness?
In the face of these attempts to shame you and those you love,
what radical, defiant songs are you singing?

This is my prayer for myself this Advent –
that I would become a pastor who leans into her vulnerability,
who learns to love her own vulnerability.
That this would create more safety for all of us to risk vulnerability
and practice needing and caring for each other,
following our vulnerable Messiah through the unavoidable pain
and into mutual healing and liberation,
following the way the disability community has modeled for us.

I am learning my main job is to believe your stories of how God is showing up,
and to bless each of you (maybe even with shouting!),
to remind you of your deep and unshakeable beauty and worth,
and then step back and get to witness first-hand the way you each creatively imagine and express
the vision of what the world looks like when caught up in God’s justice and mercy,
the way you prophetically resist perfectionism, triumphalism, capitalism,
and call out the broken systems that need repair…

If I could hear and amplify your own radical, vulnerable songs that need singing,
your own Magnificats of queer justice, of racial justice, of climate justice, of disability justice,
and the songs you amplify as allies,
if I could witness just how strong we are together,
caring for each other in our vulnerability, in this community of radical joy,
then I would consider myself very blessed indeed.
Amen, may it be so.

I began meeting and strategizing on Zoom with six other arrestees from the group, and as I did, many of them quickly became my mentors and friends. In the end, my own charges were inexplicably dropped. But as the rest of them have begun serving their prison sentences this week, I wanted to introduce them to you by sharing interviews I’ve done and photos I’ve taken of the Brunette River Six. My hope is to inspire more of us to follow in their footsteps, as they themselves follow in the footsteps of so many other Indigenous and non-Indigenous land & water defenders who have already walked this path.

Janette McIntosh

When I met Janette last fall at a Stop TMX potluck lunch, I was immediately taken by her hospitable warmth. She seemed so sincerely interested in getting to know me that it made it hard to find out about her! I’ve since learned that she’s 58, she is a Presbyterian, she grew up in Japan, and then studied environmental science and community health in Toronto. Since then, Janette has spent most of her life serving and advocating in three areas: Indigenous rights (through her work with KAIROS, the TRC, and Hummingbird Ministries), senior & elder advocacy (working for better access to public transportation), and the her extensive climate justice work.

Last September, Janette was arrested while praying in the path of a TMX excavator, and was charged with breaching the court injunction that allows TMX to carry out its work. Yesterday, on Valentine’s Day, I watched her plead guilty and explain the motivation for her action:

“Based on uncontestable scientific facts, I felt the deep moral and ethical compulsion to act… my prayers, hopes & actions had only one goal that day: for all life to flourish.”

Like most of the land and water defenders who breach this injunction, she was sentenced to 14 days in prison. You can read the short interview I did with Janette below.

Janette, what do you do with your time when you're not "doing time"?

I work with senior-serving agencies to help facilitate public transit literacy, active transportation, and driving cessation - staying active and mobile sustainably.

What do you remember feeling when you were arrested for breaching the injunction?

I felt at peace, knowing the love and support of the prayer circle friends present with me. The constable seemed really nervous. And I wish I could have stayed sitting longer to prevent the excavator from going into the work area that day!

What do you hope to convey in your statement in court?

That this was not a random impulsive act. This is something I did out of necessity, after years of working with the science, knowing the urgency, and knowing injustice and suffering, with faith, hope, and love.

What will focus and ground you while in prison?

Mindful of the suffering, I hope to be in love, stillness, peace, for climate justice.

Who are one or two of your climate action mentors or heroes?

Grand Chief Stewart Philip, the Late Dr. Sallie McFague, Seth Klein, Christine Boyle as mentors/heroes. But also with and for my adult children, nieces, nephews, and God  children. 

What advice do you have for those considering risking arrest for climate justice?

There is a time and season for everything. Discern carefully and be well-supported like through the prayer circle direct action group.

If you’re inspired by Janette’s actions, and you want to get involved, there are so many ways to do so, some of which involve risking arrest, and some that do not. Head over to the Stop TMX website for ways to join in on the action, and follow our work on Instagram and Twitter.

Stay tuned for 5 more feature interviews in the days and weeks to come!

Robyn was tall and lanky, unkempt, but in a way that seemed intentional instead of neglectful. He was usually clad in skinny jeans and a T-shirt, with a ball cap to cover his stringy hair. I never had any clue how old he was, but I remember his birthday was in mid-May.

It was impossible to find Robyn on demand, but you’d run into him everywhere. He made it his job to stay informed about every free event happening in Vancouver (especially festivals, and anything of a musical, theatrical, poetic or artistic nature). He’d plan to attend every one of them, including paid events, if he could score a volunteer role, like his annual stint at the Folk Festival. He was extroverted enough to want to be where the people are, and introverted enough to remain on the fringes of the action; he always seemed to have an exit plan and never stayed put for long. In fact, I have no memories in which he is seated. Maybe that’s why everyone called him “Rockin’ Robyn.”

He’d usually show up at Jacob’s Well five minutes before we locked up, and he’d follow the staff around as we cleaned up, leaving piles of papers on our freshly wiped tables. (In his omnipresent backpack, Robyn kept a collection of coffee-stained flyers and wrinkled copies of community papers, having pre-circled in ballpoint pen anything he found especially pertinent, including his own published poems in the Carnegie newsletter, or details about upcoming neighbourhood events where he hoped to see us.) He’d insert himself into our clean-up conversation with a non sequitur: “Wasn’t that an excellent concert?” What concert? “The one at the Carnegie yesterday.” I wasn’t there! “Where were you? Oh gosh you really missed out...” You had to get used to his gentle scolding about everything you’d missed out on; it seemed physically impossible to be all the places where Robyn was.

He was responsible for almost 90% of the clutter on my desk at Jacob’s Well, and it wasn’t just flyers… he’d leave miscellaneous gifts for me without explanation: a plastic toy cow, some colourful nurse scrubs, a small plastic head that looked like Bob Newhart’s, a book (possibly because the woman on the cover looked something like me?). I still have this art piece that my friend and Jacob’s Well colleague, Kat, made for me before she moved to L.A.; it was composed of all the random things she found on my desk, mostly left by Robyn, including the creepy severed head. She framed it with a compressed pile of flyers from my desk that had yet to reach the recycling bin.

Robyn had one consistent mood: erratically jovial. He had this kind of soft-spoken excitement. He was somehow both childlike and gentlemanly. He could be impulsive, but never in a scary way; his gangly, unpredictable movements seemed intended to inspire a delighted confusion, like when he pushed his empty Slurpee cup into Cara’s hands as a birthday gift.

He would call me “The Reverend,” or “Queen Elizabeth.” One time he found me on Granville, on the way to pick up Danice at Tom Lee Music, where she worked at the time, and he told me his theory that Tom Lee, the founder, did not actually exist, in the same way that Howard Hughes was a fake figurehead for a corporation. Another time he was preparing an entry for the “Hope in Shadows” photography contest, and he asked if he could take photo of me playing my guitar. He carefully staged the shot by placing a wagon, a bottle of oil, and a fire extinguisher next to me, ever the artist, never telling me what any of it was supposed to mean. Another night, he found me on the beach with some friends, and when I confessed that I was breaking the law by drinking a beer on the beach, he put his hand on my shoulder and told me he’d pray for me.

Robyn would give me beautiful cards for special events, handwritten in his scrawling, all-caps, ballpoint pen flourish. They were often archaically sappy messages, fitting for someone living up to a last name like “Livingstone,” for example, “Dearest Beth, Happiest of birthdays for ever, for eternity,” or “All my love, past, present and future,” or one time, in an uncharacteristically childlike turn, “You are one of my bestest friends of all time.” 

As he spouted his quirky stories, or hammed it up as a self-proclaimed tour guide when we were en route somewhere, you’d catch a half-wink, a twinkle in his eye, as if your entire conversation were an elaborate inside joke. He’d evade most questions about his upbringing, but if he had endured some unspeakable trauma (as so many DTES residents had), he had built a wall and found a surprisingly harmless, even benevolent, coping mechanism. It was as though he’d committed so strongly to the theatre that he’d assigned himself the part of “eccentric, loveable drifter” for life, and you’d only catch him breaking character for a millisecond here and there, with a sly half-smile.

Or maybe there was no deep pain for him to cover, maybe he simply felt his past life was irrelevant to the myriad of experiences awaiting him in the present, so he seized the day and kept moving his body to the place where he could witness and add to the creativity of his community. Sometimes I wondered whether every strange mannerism or off-hand comment he performed in my presence was crafted with the sole purpose of brightening and weirdening my day, a theory that I hope has more to say about Robyn’s overflowing generosity than about my own self-centeredness.

COVID brought the cancellation of most community gatherings, which meant that over the last 2 years, I didn’t have the pleasure of running into Robyn. I’m sad about that. I was so grateful to hear that last night, as he took his final breaths, he was surrounded by friends who read him poetry and sang his favourite song to him. (It was “Hey Jude” – he loved the Beatles. In his last card to me, he wrote out the lyrics to “Strawberry Fields Forever,” a reference to my strawberry blond hair.)

I wish I could have seen Rockin’ Robyn one more time, one more opportunity to share all my love for him, “past, present and future.” In my sanctified imagination, he’s throwing the door over me in the next life, eyes twinkling, scolding me for what I’ve already missed, backpack brimming with all the information I need to join him in making the most of every new day.

A reading from Matt. 2:13-23

13 When [the Magi] had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”[c]

16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”[d]

19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”

21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.”

“May You Find A Light”
(David Gungor)

Lost and weary traveler,
Searching for the way to go
Stranger, heavy-hearted,
Longing for someone to know

May you find a light
May you find a light
May you find a light to guide you home.

There are weary travelers,
Searching everywhere you go
Strangers who are searching,
Longing deeply to be known

May you find a light
May you find a light
May you find a light to guide you home.

There are weary travelers searching everywhere you go.

You can dig through the dirt of any country,
through the generations, through the memories,
and unearth story after story of weary travelers, longing for home.

This is the final week in our series about welcoming the stranger,
and seeing scripture through the lens of refugees and immigrants.
So I want open this sermon by telling you a few refugee stories I’ve come across.
Some names have been changed for protection.
Interspersed in the stories, I’ll include some stanzas
from Warsan Shire’s poem entitled “Home,”

Rahel lived in the Middle East.
Rahel and her husband Yaqub had several children.
But still Rahel longed prayed for another.
She gave birth to Yusuf.

 Yusuf was his parents’ favourite.
Yusuf loved to wear dresses.
Yusuf was a dreamer –
he liked to talk about his God-given dreams.
Yusuf wasn’t well loved by his siblings, to say the least.
When he was 17, they threw him in an empty well.
They sold him to slave-traders.
They told his parents he was dead.
Rahel and Yaqub wept and wept, and would not be comforted.

i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
     

Yusuf marched days and nights through the desert
and found himself in Egypt,
overcome with homesickness, recognizing nothing,
dreaming of being understood and truly seen by someone.
But Yusuf the Dreamer was resilient.
Slowly he learned the culture, the customs, the language.
God watched over him, and he made a life there.

 And when his brothers became the refugees,
desperately fleeing the famine that ravaged their homeland,
Yusuf became their savior, their rescuer,
welcoming them into Egypt, land of refuge.

the go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

Let me tell you about Musa.
Musa, like many refugees, had the great misfortune
of being born under the shadow of violent ruler
who himself was ruled by fear.
Fear especially of those “dirty immigrants, sucking his country dry.”
Fear that led him to enslave those immigrants,
and to order the murder of their baby boys, boys like Musa.

 There were those who resisted.
God whispered to the midwives of Musa’s country –
brave allies from outside God’s people –
and they quietly refused to comply.
So Musa was not killed at birth.

Musa’s mother kept him hidden for as long as possible,
but babies are uncooperative hiders.
Desperate, she put her son in a basket and floated him down the river.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.

Musa was plucked out of the river
by the king’s daughter.
Musa, crying in the basket, moved her to pity.
She wanted to keep him.
Musa had an older sister who was hiding nearby,
watching what happened.
Her name was Maryam.
Maryam was a quick thinker, and asked the king’s daughter
if maybe she needed help nursing the baby –
Maryam knew just the woman to do it.
So Musa was raised by his own mother
as he prepared to live in the palace of his people’s oppressors.

And from that place of privilege, when the time was right,
Musa became his people’s savior, their rescuer,
leading them out of Egypt, land of slavery.

and no one would leave home
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

We keep digging in the dirt,
we find another layer to excavate for stories.

‘Iiramia was a lot like Yusuf, from our first story.
Not very popular, because he liked to rant and rave about the future.
‘Iiramia was known as the weeping prophet.
He knew that he knew that destruction and war were coming.
‘Iiramia tried to warn his people,
but it was too late.

They were besieged by their enemies.
Many died in the battle, and ‘Iiramia watched in a city called Ramah
as families were rounded up and taken captive.
In his devastation, ‘Iiramia let his mind wander back,
and he pictured our friend Rahel, his ancestor, his people’s matriarch,
who was surely weeping again for her children,
as she had once wept for her lost child Yusuf,
refusing to be comforted, for they were gone.

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

‘Iiramia’s people marched for days and nights through the desert,
and found themselves in Babylon.
Overcome with homesickness, recognizing nothing,
they said, “How can we sing the songs of the Lord in a strange land?” (Ps. 137:4)

So ‘Iiramia passed on this message from God to his people:
”Build houses and settle down.
Plant gardens.
Marry. Have children.
Seek the peace and prosperity of this city where you have been taken in exile.” (see Jer. 29:5-7)

So the people learned to be resilient.
Slowly they learned the culture, the customs, the language.
God watched over them, and they made a life there.

And when a new king came to power,
he became their savior, their rescuer,
sending them back to the place they had once called home.

I have one final layer of story to excavate.
This one is difficult, because it has so many threads attached.
Some call them prophecies and fulfilments.
They’re running to the layers above and below, before and after,
and we don’t want to accidentally sever one of them.

We come to a place called Bethlehem, and find Maryam.
Attached to her name is a root running back to that quick-thinking sister
who once protected a threatened baby named Musa.

And we find her new husband Yusuf.
Attached to his name
is a root running back to that ancient dreamer
who saved his family by bringing them to Egypt.

And we come to their son, Isa,
barely 2 years old now,
who had the great misfortune
of being born under the shadow of violent king
who himself was ruled by fear.
This king was infamous
for having his own sons executed for “treason.”
When he heard that Isa might be the chosen one,
the true king of the Jews,
He ordered the murder of all baby boys around Isa’s age
in Bethlehem.
The roots here run deep, we find echoes of past horrors.

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

So again, we hear the matriarch Rahel weeping.
(Rahel’s tomb was less than a kilometer from Bethlehem.)
She grieved yet more children with lives cut short.

There were those who resisted.
God whispered to the magi –
brave allies from outside God’s people - 
and they quietly refused to comply with the king.
In a way, they midwifed baby Isa,
bringing his family provisions.

God also whispered to Yusuf, sending him dreams,
just like his namesake,
telling Yusuf to run, no time to pack,
leave now, in the night,
follow that path through the desert along the sea,
a 500-kilometer road,
well worn by now from all the weary travelers,
the back and forth along the road to Egypt,
that ancient place of slavery, place of refuge,
place that is not home.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.



Yusuf’s family marched days and nights through the desert,
until they found themselves in Egypt.
Overcome with homesickness, recognizing nothing.
Maryam barely 15, taking care of a toddler.
Yusuf the carpenter, stuck in a land of palm trees, no wood to work with,
forced to look for day work, to sell the gifts the Magi had given, to beg.

But Yusuf and Maryam were resilient.
Slowly they learned the culture, the customs, the language.
God watched over them, and they made a life there.

Until Yusuf was given another dream,
and saw that the wicked king
who threatened his child was dead.
Yusuf, Maryam and Isa would re-enact
their people’s famous journey out of Egypt,
but this time they would not return
to the promised land, to their home.
Another dream warned them the new ruler,
the king’s son, was just as violent.
They settled in Nazareth, in Galilee,
a place filled with foreigners
and looked down upon by most Jews.

When I tell this story,
I wonder why God didn’t intervene
to save all the other boys in Bethlehem.
Could God not have given warning dreams
to those other 20-100 families, as well?
Of course, there will be a time
only 30 years later in the story
when God will choose not to intervene to save Isa, either.

And for that reason, Isa, once the refugee toddler,
once the kid from the backwater town,
will become the new Musa of a new Exodus,
the Savior and Rescuer not just of Israel, but of all peoples.
leading them out of their slavery to death, and into life.
Leading us all home.

------

Rahel, Yaqub, Yusuf, Musa, Maryam, ‘Iiramia, Isa…
Obviously I changed their names
not for their protection,
I translated them into Arabic to protect us
from our overfamiliarity with the scriptural stories.*

Names like Rachel, Jacob, Joseph, Moses,
Mary/Miriam, Jeremiah...
those names sound a little too much like my own.
It’s all too easy to picture them
as white middle-class suburbanites.

It’s all too easy to let the centuries
and the influence of my white Christianity
drift their stories too far toward mine,
and too far removed
from the stories of the 26 million refugees
who fled their homes last year,
25 people for every minute of that year,
most of whom look nothing like me.                     

Half of those 26 million refugees last year
were child refugees, like Jesus was.
Their earliest memories were hearing their parents’ fearful warnings
not to play outside, to say nothing, to stay hidden.
followed closely by memories
of their father’s barely-perceptible tears,
the circles under their mother’s eyes,
eating unfamiliar food,
and hearing a strange language
spoken all around them.

This is not how we like to imagine
Jesus’ birth and childhood.
Especially at this time of year
when we crave the cozy familiarity of the story.
No one wants a Herod in their snow-globe,
or to be startled by screams
in the middle of a candlelit carol.
This is kind of a downer of an Advent sermon.

And what’s more,
no one wants a God who runs scared.
No one wants a God begging at the border
to be spared.
A God with bare and frozen skin,
utterly dependent on the mercy of foreigners,
a God needing to be rescued
before that God can rescue us.

Our world worships
the ones who stand their ground,
who won’t be moved,
who are strong enough to fight back.
But this God does not come
with armies or even shields.
This God knows violence is the failure of Love,
and this God is love.
This God needs to be Emmanuel,
the God who is profoundly with us,
and who is profoundly with those I call “them.”
Which means this God will come
as an undocumented child refugee
seeking asylum from the death squads hunting him.

I need to be startled by Isa the refugee,
to learn to see the face of God in the face of the one so unlike me.

Yet there is a danger I see in talking about Jesus the refugee,
and sharing biblical refugee stories.
The danger is that I will believe that refugees today
need to have Christlike, Bible hero innocence
to be worthy of my compassion or help.  

The danger
is that will still make a mental distinction
between the “good” refugees like Jesus,
the sinless, childlike lambs
running from certain death,
and the so-called “bad” ones,
who perhaps did things they now regret
in order to survive,
who have not followed all the rules
or waited long enough or checked all the boxes.
The complicated refugees.
The human refugees.                           

To avoid that danger, here’s what I need to do...
I need to take my safe, overprotected, white middle-class story
and search for the threads that connect to these ancient and modern refugee stories,
however weak or loose those threads might be.

I need to connect my story to theirs, to see how we ARE alike,
NOT in any way to equate my pain to theirs, or to say “I know how it feels,”
but in order to equate my humanity with theirs.

We need to walk in the knowledge that each of us could have been refugees,
that most of us did not choose
to be born or brought
to this country of relative stability.
And that even this Canadian stability is not guaranteed forever.

In the words of Benjamin Zephaniah,

“All it takes is a mad leader
Or no rain to bring forth food,
We can all be refugees
We can all be told to go,
We can all be hated by someone
For being someone.”

And if we were refugees, or if we ever are,
we will all bring our full humanity,
along with all our mistakes and vulnerabilities
... and we would still be worthy of protection.                                              

If you know your Bible, you know
there is no such thing as Bible hero innocence
and that there are details I didn’t include in my earlier stories
for example, how Yusuf, Joseph,
had an enormous ego,
and how Moses carried the shadow
of having committed murder.

We need to work to see the complexity of our common humanity
and the “nevertheless” reality of the image of God in all of us.
The resulting empathy might just move us to deeper compassion
at our borders, at our detention centers.
It might move us to find a light to guide them home.                                              

So as we close, I invite you to tether your imperfect human stories
to the ones I’ve excavated today, and to the millions of refugee stories
currently in progress around the world, even in our own city of Vancouver,
by asking yourself these questions along with me:

When have I felt trapped or unwelcome?
When has home not felt like home?
When have I left behind family, friends,
or other sources of security?
When have I been forced to venture
into the unknown?
When have I felt defenseless? Homesick? Unseen?
When have I arrived in an unfamiliar place
and wondered if God was still with me?
What aspects of these parts of my story
do I regret?
Who have been my unlikely allies? My saviors?
Can I imagine even a sliver
of a refugee experience?
Can I see our common humanity?                                                            

Even as we dig through the layers, as we follow the threads,
through the generations, we also uncover present-day refugee stories -
finding so many homes destroyed,
so many weary travelers trekking through the wilderness,so many children who do not survive,
so many mothers weeping like Rachel,                      

And we see scared little king Herod, followed by another scared little king Herod,
each wielding too much power for their own good,
death squads and armies and nuclear weapons at their fingertips.
Yet for all their threats and senseless murders,
they cannot prevent leaders of love from rising from the ash.

I want to close with a word of hope.
These verses are taken from the book of Jeremiah
directly after the verses quoted in today’s passage
about Rachel weeping for her children.
They’re words from our Refugee God
for every weary traveler trying to find the light to guide them home:

“Restrain your voice from weeping
and your eyes from tears,
for your work will be rewarded,”
declares the Lord.
“They will return from the land of the enemy.
So there is hope for your descendants,”
declares the Lord.
“Your children will return to their own land.”
(Jer. 31:16-17)

* I’m indebted to this article for the idea of translating the biblical names into Arabic.

Thanks to Rev. Beth and the Affirm team

for inviting me to preach

on this intriguing theme of “giving up silence for Lent.”

I considered beginning my sermon by coming up on stage

and just standing here silently.

For a long time.

And you’d all wonder if I was okay,

if I was overcome with unexplained emotion,

or frozen in fear,

or whether I’d tried to memorize my sermon (unsuccessfully)...

but slowly it would sink in

that it was just a pretentious attempt at a sermon illustration.

I know guest preachers can get away with all kinds of things,

but I don’t want to push my luck

with awkward silences.

Have you ever had something you needed to say,

but your body just refused to let you say it?

This happened to me the very first time

I attempted to articulate the words, “I’m attracted to women.”

 (At that time, there was no way I had the courage to say “I’m gay.”)

It was 12 years ago, and I was lying on my pastor’s couch.

She already knew from context exactly what I was trying to tell her,

and still, I couldn’t do it.

It felt like that scene from the Matrix where Keanu’s mouth vanishes.

Fear and shame had stolen my voice.

I didn’t want to use words to give tangible shape

to something that until then

had lived quietly, if uncomfortably, inside my head.

Once spoken, I would never be able to take those words back.                                                   

My pastor sat there patiently

for what seemed like an hour,

as tears streamed down my face,

until I finally wrestled the words from my throat.

Her empathy and refusal to judge me

took the shame that had me tied in knots... and unravelled it.

I felt one hundred pounds lighter as I danced home.

I had spoken, and I had survived.

If you were to ask God today

what silences God is asking you to give up for Lent,

what pent-up words you need to set free,

what would they be?

Maybe, like me, it’s, “I’m queer.”

Or, “I’m a Christian.”

Or, “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

Or, “I love you.”

Or, “I’m not okay. I need help.”

Or maybe it’s something like, “Black lives matter.”

Or, “That joke you told was hurtful.”

Or, “I’m sorry.”

Or, “I forgive you.”

There are so many silences waiting to be broken.

Why are we silent?

What holds our tongue?

Often, I think, it’s fear.

Fear is a powerful mute button

silencing us by making us captive to worst-case scenarios.

Audre Lorde, a queer black womanist poet and activist, writes,

 “When we speak,

we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed.

but when we are silent, we are still afraid.”[i]

“While we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness,

the weight of that silence will choke us.”[ii]

I think she’s right.

We can be so afraid to speak,

not realizing that silence is actually what we should fear,

that silence itself is the killer.

The psalmist writes in Psalm 32,

 “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away.”

I can’t tell you how many queer Christians I’ve met in my work

whose years in the closet have taken a toll on their physical health.

There’s a famous evangelical worship leader named Vicky Beeching

who was finally compelled to come out of the closet

when her body literally began consuming itself

with a stress-induced auto-immune disease.[iii]    

That’s why I’m so grateful that Canadian Memorial

has walked through the Affirm process,

creating a safe space where queer folks can find healing -

not from their queerness,

but from negative effects of the silences that stifled them.

Because for queer Christians like me, our default is to assume

that churches are unsafe for us,

that we will need to silence a key part of our being

just to walk in the doors,

to be welcomed and to belong.

One of my jobs is working for Generous Space Ministries,

supporting LGBTQ+ Christians across Canada,

and this year, we’ve launched a campaign for Lent

challenging straight, cisgender Christians

to give up their silence for Lent

and tell their pastors that they’re affirming.

There are so many pastors out there who have no idea

that there are allies in their churches who want inclusion.

Again, you’ve already surpassed that step here, which is fantastic!

I’m sure Pastor Beth already knows you’re affirming.

(Though if you still want to support and share our campaign online, we’d be grateful!)

Today I celebrate PIE Sunday with you,

as we remember that our affirmation of LGBTQ+ people

must be public, intentional and explicit –

must be spoken clearly and often

so that queer people know there’s no stained glass ceiling here.

Of course, there are still other glass ceilings in our world,

other injustices we need to address,

oppressive silences that need breaking.

I don’t know about you, but for me,

often what keeps me silent about matters of justice, is not just fear

but also the perfectionism

of not wanting to say the wrong thing.

“What if I use the wrong words, and people misunderstand me,

or worse, they mock me on Twitter!”

Or what if I speak up for someone who’s been victimized

only to find out that, like in the case of Jussie Smollett,

the story was more complicated than I thought?

But one of my favourite authors, Brene Brown,

will not let me off the hook here.

She says that “opting out of speaking out

because we may get criticized

is the definition of privilege.”[iv]

The risk of minor embarrassment is nothing

compared to the potential good our words could do

for people who daily risk so much more than embarrassment.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “in the end,

we will remember not the words of our enemies,

but the silences of our friends.”[v]

Recently a conversation with my wife helped me see

that I had been deliberately opting out

of conversations about trans people online

because I was afraid of getting into arguments

with some radical feminist friends

who do not see trans women as women.

I couldn’t see a good way to have that debate online

so I had just been choosing to ignore it.

Reluctantly, I acknowledged that my comfortable silence

made me complicit in the violence

that disproportionately threatens my trans friends.

But not every silence calls out to be breached on Facebook.

It’s okay to be creative and find methods of communication

that fit how God’s wired us.

As for me, I’m great at building slow bridges, and I really like food.

So I emailed one of my radical feminist friends

and we went out for an uncomfortable breakfast

where we hashed out our views and what was at stake.

It was awkward, but so worthwhile.

Next time we meet,

we’re each bringing another friend to the conversation.

If we need inspiration around the many ways silence can be broken,

we’ve got a whole Bible full of examples.

Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann

traces a pattern through scripture

of silencers and silence breakers.[vi]

He notices that the silencers are usually kings, priests, and scribes,

people of privilege who benefit from maintaining the status quo,

who muzzle anyone seeking change.

The silence-breakers tend to come from the margins of society.

They are often people of imagination,

performance artists and poets and storytellers who risk everything

by speaking the inconvenient truth to power.

God’s people cry out in slavery,

and to confront their oppressor, Pharaoh, God chooses Moses,

self-described as “slow of speech and lacking eloquence.”

God sends Nathan to break David’s guilty silence

by telling stories about sheep,

and commissions Elijah

to challenge and taunt the wicked king Ahab.

The Spirit touches Isaiah’s lips with fire.

She puts words in Jeremiah’s mouth.

and feeds them to Ezekiel in an edible scroll.

Zechariah is silenced by God,

then uses his first words to name his son John,

a son who was later killed after telling King Herod the truth.

(Silence breaking can be dangerous!)

But don’t worry, women are also qualified for this dangerous work!

Esther risks her life,

 “coming out” as Jewish to King Xerxes

in order to save her people.

The Syro-Phoenician woman talks back to Jesus

about deserving crumbs from his table,

and her faith is rewarded.

And then we have this parable that was read for us earlier from Luke 18

about the widow, perhaps the most marginalized person of all,

the original per-sister,

whose constant nagging changed the mind of a powerful judge.

She seems to be Jesus’ way of giving us permission

to be incredibly annoying when necessary.

It can be confusing to interpret this parable,

because Jesus says it’s a story about prayer.

This usually leads us assume it means we’re the widow,

and God is the judge we’re trying to convince through prayer.

And yes, there is precedent for crying out and making a case before God,

asking God to break God’s silence.

But in this story, I don’t think God is the judge.

After all, the judge is explicitly described here as “having no fear of God.”

No, in this story, I think God’s mouthpiece is the widow.

God is the sender of the silence-breakers.

And I think it’s a story about prayer

because every word spoken on behalf of justice

is itself a form of prayer -

no matter whether it’s spoken to God or to a human power.

Now I don’t think reality is so neat and tidy

as to cast each of us as EITHER a “silencer” OR a “silence-breaker.”

I think most of us are a complicated mix.

In some situations, we cry for freedom,

and in others, we can be indifferent in our privilege.

So we can’t romanticize things

or pretend that any speech is always better than silence.

After all, words can heal, but they can also dehumanize.

They can stoke fires and launch wars.

Even when our intentions are good in breaking silence,

sometimes we’ll do so in reactive or thoughtless ways

and end up breaking other things in the process.

Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time to speak,

and there is a time to remain silent.

There are some silences we need to resist giving up.

Silences that should be kept.

Before I close I want to mention the silences we should keep.

I give you permission

to keep the silence of survival.

There are some situations where truth-telling carries risk of physical harm.

For example, situations where coming out as queer

risks homelessness, imprisonment or death.       

If these are the kinds of consequences you face,

please don’t go it alone - wait and build a network of support first.

I urge you to keep the silence of listening to the margins.

Yes, please speak up for marginalized people

in situations where they would be abused or ignored,

and absorb the potential harm on their behalf,

but in situations where they could use their own voices,

instead, build them a platform,

pass them the microphone, and listen to them.

We need to keep another silence:

the silence of sitting at God’s feet in holy awe.

Contemplative silence is what grounds us for activism and speech.

When we sit quietly with God,

we become aware of at least of two things:

(first), that there is so much we do not understand,

which keeps us humble, teachable, and soft-bellied.

and (second), that our core identity is “beloved child of God,”

that with God, we belong.

This is what strengthens our backbone.

A soft belly and a strong spine is exactly what we need

to speak for justice in ways that heal instead of harm.

(Note: I’ve borrowed this idea from Brene Brown’s book, Braving the Wilderness)

At Lent we remember that Jesus remained silent when put on trial.

He did not defend himself.

His words from the cross were few,

but carefully chosen,

words like “Forgive them,”

spoken not with resentment,

but with a soft belly and strong spine,

carrying us way beyond “an eye for an eye,”

charting a new healing path for humanity.

So tell me,

what are you waiting to say?

Whether you write your words on a sign,

type them on the internet,

tell them in a story,

or air them over an awkward shared meal...

I urge you give up some silence for Lent.

First, find your muse.

Draw on the strength of those

who swallow their fear,

banish their shame,

accept their imperfections,

sacrifice their ego,

and speak up anyway.

Channel the courage of the persistent widow.

Or of St. Patrick, who spoke of God’s love to those who had formerly enslaved him.

Or of Audre Lorde, or Martin Luther King Jr, or Nelson Mandela.

Or of the sisters of the #metoo movement.

Or of the students who walked out of school on Friday to save the planet.

Or of the Muslim man who greeted his murderer with the words, “Hello, brother.”

We never know when death will come,

so let us not leave things unspoken.

Don’t let the words waste away your bones.

Instead, know deep in your bones

that your belovedness is unshakeable,

that no faltering word from your lips

can possibly diminish God’s love for you.

Let this strengthen your backbone

as you wrap words around your reality,

as you speak your loves and your losses, the things that break your heart,

as your truth becomes a prayer.

Your words might just pester their way to justice.

Your words might just unravel someone’s shame,

cushion someone’s fall, or help someone stand firm.

Your words might even echo those first words in Genesis

and speak into being a new creation,

sparking imagination for new ways to be human together.

So use the voice God gave you.

Tell it like it is.

If you don’t,

the very stones may cry it out.

Take courage, friends,

now is the time.

You were not born to be silent.

-------

A benediction from Proverbs 13 –

“Open your mouth. Judge righteously. Defend the rights of the poor and the needy.”

As you go, may your lips be unsealed.

In the name of the Creator who spoke everything into being,

the Son, who is the Living Word,

and the Spirit, who intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. Amen.

————————————————

[i] Audre Lorde, “A Litany for Survival,” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147275/a-litany-for-survival

[ii] Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” https://wgs10016.commons.gc.cuny.edu/lorde-poetry-is-not-a-luxury/

[iii] See Vicky Beeching’s book, Undivided: https://www.amazon.com/Undivided-Coming-Becoming-Whole-Living/dp/0062439901

[iv] From Marie Forleo’s interview with Brene Brown, https://www.marieforleo.com/2017/09/brene-brown/.

[v] Martin Luther King Jr, The Trumpet of Conscience, Steeler Lecture, November 1967.

[vi] Walter Brueggemann, Interrupting Silence: God’s Command to Speak Out, https://www.amazon.com/Interrupting-Silence-Gods-Command-Speak/dp/0664263593

Thankfully I meet monthly with my spiritual director, who’s excellent at processing these things with me. I told her about my most recent episode of insecurity, and, after some deep listening and clarifying questions, as is her practice, she invited me to take some time during our session to listen to God. The question she wanted me to ask was, “Jesus, what words would you use to describe me?”

I listened. The first word that came to me was “Beloved.” I instinctively dismissed it, listening for other words. When she checked back in with me, I briefly mentioned having moved quickly past “Beloved,” and of course, instead of letting it slide, she dug in and asked why.

Upon consideration, I knew it wasn’t because I believed it to be untrue. Some of us go through stages of questioning God’s love as we deconstruct aspects of our faith, but I felt secure in the knowledge that God loved me (sort of). It just seemed too obvious a fact to help with my insecurities…

(Head over to the original Generous Space blog post to read the rest!)

I went largely because a friend had asked me to help on the planning team for the retreat, but I wasn’t sure I’d get much out of it.

After hearing these women’s stories and reflections, and doing a lot of moving and praying and praying by moving, I left feeling much more in touch with my embodied self, with the body that I both have and am, and committed to loving this body.

As part of the retreat I got to creatively tell the story of the “woman with the issue of blood” from Mark 5:25-31. I’ve reproduced it here. I owe a lot of the inspiration (and one or two direct quotes) to Padraig O’Tuama’s reflections on this passage in his book In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World.

Word became flesh.

God became human,

Cells infused with Spirit,

DNA interwoven with the divine.

Jesus.

Jesus breathes

the salty air of the sea of Galilee.

Jesus feels

the jolt as his boat makes contact with the land.

Jesus

takes one step, takes another,

walks off the boat straight into another kind of sea,

a surging tide of bodies,

a tangled jungle of limbs, reaching,

trying to touch him.

Bodies pressing around him,

stealing every inch of his personal space.

As if he belonged to them.

As if they owned him.

Jesus is needed.

Immediately he is needed.

His hands are needed.

A man falls at his feet

and begs Jesus to put his hands

on his dying 12-year-old daughter.

The man is important,

his name is Jairus.

She

is never named.

We tend to call her “the woman with the issue of blood.”

A woman with an issue.

In this story, men have names, women have issues.

Women’s bodies have issues.

She

is swallowed by the crowd.

No one else in the story knows she is there.

She doesn’t matter.

She might as well not exist.

It is deeply strange for the gospel narrator to notice her.

She

is determined.

She is on a mission.

A woman on a mission to rid herself of her issues,

to rid herself of her issues with her body.

She

watches Jesus.

She slips through the crowd, behind him,

so as not to take up any space,

so as to de-emphasize her physical form.

Just the corner of his robe.

Just the fringe.

That’s all she believes she needs

That’s all she believes she deserves.

She doesn’t dare touch his body.

Only what loosely covers it.

That way she can slip away as unnoticed as she came.

As though she wasn’t

     even

there.

It’s not like she’s never touched a man,

or had a man touch her.

Doctor after doctor had put their hands on her.

One after another,

giving promises,

taking money,

until she was spent.

And in a cruel twist of the knife,

None of this had helped.

Her “issue” had only worsened.

Her doctors exploited, impoverished and failed her.

Her body unfailingly betrayed her.

Her womb, meant to nurture life,

dealt her only death.

For her people, the Jews,

blood was the same as life.

Her body was slowly draining blood,

draining its very life,

drop by drop, day by day,

more than 4300 days, in fact,

twelve years.

She had been dying the same number of years

as the important man’s daughter had lived.

And then there was the pain…

The gospel writer calls her disease a “mastix,”

Literally, a whip,

a many-stranded whip of leather with metal tips inserted.

Her experience of her body

is like that of a metal-tipped whip.

Her issue is that her body is self-flagellating.

And because she cannot hide the stains

or hold back the steady flow of gossip,

the torture does not end with her own body.

She has learned there are so many kinds of torture.

The eyes that stare and then quickly look away.

The whispering, half-covered mouths.

Faces twisted in disgust.

Women’s robes drawn back and held close

so as not to brush her.

Every one of those women bleeds, it’s true.

Every month they separate themselves from the men

and enjoy resting in one another’s company.

After seven days, they bathe in the ritual pool,

and they are considered clean,

they are considered fit to enter the sanctuary.

For her, it’s different.

She knows the scriptures.

She knows Leviticus.

“‘When a woman has a discharge of blood

for many days at a time

other than her monthly period,

she will be unclean as long as she bleeds.

Any bed she lies on will be unclean,

and anything she sits on will be unclean.

Anyone who touches them will be unclean;

they must wash their clothes and bathe with water,

and they will be unclean till evening.”

                                                                 [adapted from Lev. 15:25-27]

Twelve years of unclean.

Twelve years of carrying a curse.

Twelve years of embodying contamination,

her spiritual impurity treated as contagious

even if her physical disease is not.

She transmits her pollution to everything she touches,

everyone she touches.

(Though she has touched so few people in twelve years

that she could count them on her fingers.)

They rush to build walls around her,

walls propped up by their fear and disgust

and reinforced by her shame.

She is excluded not only from the holy,

but even from the ordinary.

Her body is boundaried.

She is segregated in her own isolation chamber.

She is utterly alone.

But incredibly, she has not given up.

She has one last hope,

One last healer.

Pushing down the voice of shame

and the constant background noise of her pain,

she grabs hold of her last shred of self-worth,

her last crumb of agency,

and she violates the code by which she lives.

Her fingers reach through a crack in the wall containing her,

and find the fabric of his robe.

Contact.

In that instant, their two bodies become aware of something.

Her body tells her that her pain has left her.

His body tells him that healing power has left him.

Who touched my robe?

Jesus, don’t be ridiculous - everyone is pressing in on you.

Hundreds of people are touching you.

But there’s touch, and then there’s touch, and we all know that.

Who touched my robe?

Jesus, we need to hurry; Jairus’ daughter is near death.

We can’t delay for something this trivial.

Who touched me?

She stands there, swept in a flood of conflicting emotion.

The immediate relief - life no longer draining from her.

The unbelief that twelve years of constant pain

could end in an instant.

The crushing realization

that she has not escaped unnoticed,

the rush of fear - this illicit healing may cost her her life.

It would be just her luck.

.

The choice - to run? To hide?

To make herself small as she was so accustomed to doing?

Or to violate another boundary

and presume to speak to this healer

who without his own consent

had done for her what no doctor could do?

The perpetually hidden woman

makes herself known.

The withdrawn woman

takes up space,

and becomes the second person that day

to fall at Jesus’ feet.

She speaks.

Her words enter the ear of the Word made flesh.

Another contact.

Fearfully she tells what the gospel writer calls “the whole truth.”

She places her body at his mercy.

And thankfully,

his mercy is wider than she could have known.

His mercy breaks through walls.

His mercy blurs boundaries,

undraws border lines.

This is key to his body’s work on earth.

His purity was never threatened

by her so-called contagion.

His life force has strength enough to reverse the flow,

to positively contaminate her with healing.

He chooses his words for her carefully,

each word targeted to undo the system of purity

that threatens to keep her suffering

even after her bleeding ends.

And so instead of receiving blame or punishment,

the woman without a name,

the woman without any evident connection to family,

receives from the lips of Jesus the name:

Daughter.

Daughter.

It’s a name that crumbles the walls propped around her.

It’s a name that picks up the stones from those walls

and builds a bridge of family.

It’s a name utterly free of disgust,

a name that sees her and knows her

and loves her.

Daughter.

It is as if she belonged to him.

As if she actually deserved to touch him.

As if her body finally had a home,

could breathe, could be safe,

could stop holding itself in

and holding itself back.

And maintaining eye contact,

with that steady gaze that infuses her with dignity,

he says,

Your faith has healed you.

You are the main agent in your healing.

Your healing springs from your own choice

to step past your shame,

to refuse to believe that the world can rightly name you

and to risk believing that I could love and heal your body.

“Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Receive wholeness in your body.

Now that I have confirmed your freedom, be free.

Don’t let anyone wield a whip in your direction.

And confident that you are worthy,

that you are beloved,

that you belong,

keep carrying your body

      into the places where they tell you

that you should not go.

And in that moment of resurrection, I wonder if Jesus foreknew

that after bringing his own body where it should not go

one too many times,

crossing one too many border lines,

he would one day let these crowds lay their hands on him,

that he too would feel that pain of metal-tipped whips,

that he too would watch his own life blood drain from him,

that this would open his way to dismantle that last wall,

the very wall between death and life.

His body carving a path

for our bodies to follow him further up and in,

to a world where all is whole and well,

where nothing is missing,

nothing is bleeding, nothing is broken.

Where all created things have learned their loveliness.

The crowd disrupts his momentary silence.

He continues on, his hands required

to break the curse of death on another woman.

She remains, letting it all wash over her,

         her true name, his embodied love.

                        His Word.

Her flesh.

I want to get very practical with this post, because I think privileged people tend to feel like they have no way to contribute positively to an unequal world except by feeling guilty and shameful for being privileged.  This shame only results in self-pity and stuck-ness, and is counterproductive to the work of justice. 

But by getting practical, by talking about what we privileged people can DO, we’re wading into tricky territory. We are conditioned for firstness, for the pursuit of success, power and upward mobility.  That means that even when we’re practicing being last, we’re in danger of doing it in order to be first. 

Here are some examples... once we become aware of our privilege, we might find ourselves jockeying for the position of “most socially conscious person” in our friend group.  We want people to notice the things we’re giving up.  We publicly shame people who aren’t as “woke” as we are.  We begin to see ourselves as martyrs and saviors.  Social media activism is a huge trap here – it’s great to share articles about privilege and signal-boost the concerns of marginalized groups, but it’s also easy for us to do so primarily to cultivate a particular public image, as a way to seek out “cookies.” 

So if we really want to practice being last, we have to be extremely vigilant so that we don’t unconsciously sabotage our own efforts.  This means doing things quietly and slowly and failing often.

With that in mind, hare a few ways to be last...

- Give away money.  Consider doing it anonymously.  Figure out how much you need to live on, and give the rest away.  Give it to organizations that promote justice for marginalized people.  Give so that more diverse parents and communities can give their kids the privileges you had when you were younger.  Support the education, health, and housing of marginalized groups.

- Leave your turf.  Step out of your comfort zone.  Experience what it’s like to be out of place, to feel like you don’t belong.  Put yourself in a minority position.  Spend a few months attending a church that caters to a different ethnic group.  Eat your lunch in a park in a lower-income neighbourhood.  Participate in a Pride parade.  Don’t Instagram or publicize your experiments, just let yourself learn to empathize.

- Do the hard work of learning about injustice.  Use Google.  Read biographies.  Watch documentaries.  Research the history of how power imbalances have developed.  You can also ask questions to members of marginalized groups, but don’t expect them to be your primary educators, especially since talking about their experiences of marginalization may be painful for them, and they are often unfairly expected to speak on behalf of their whole group.

- Name your privilege out loud and keep it on the tip of your brain.  Don’t be afraid to say things like, “As a white middle-class person, I’m treated better than my low-income Caribbean neighbours.”  Count the ways your privilege has benefited you.  Regularly imagine how daily work, school, or social encounters would change if you had a different skin color, if you were transgender, or if you had a disability.  Talk back to the TV when you notice the media stereotyping a group of people or failing to represent them at all.

- Show up, but stay at the back.  Make a priority of showing up at protests, rallies, and town hall meetings that relate to seeking justice for less-privileged people in your community.  Express your support with your presence, but don’t seek out the spotlight.  If the media or other privileged people draw attention to your presence, constantly point back to the marginalized people who are leading the charge.

- Volunteer to do lots of behind-the-scenes, un-sexy, necessary things, especially when hanging out in groups of predominantly marginalized people (in other words, when you’re present as an ally).  Set up chairs.  Make snacks.  Offer rides.  Suggest your home for a meeting space.  Do the dishes.  Refill the water jugs.  Stay late to clean up.  (At our annual New Direction camping trip that involves sawdust toilets, one of our straight allies literally hauls our shit for us – if that isn’t allyship I don’t know what is!)

- Practice listening without offering your own opinion.  Ask good questions to everyone you meet, but especially to people who are less privileged than you.  Ask about their experiences and opinions on things that relate to them.  Try to listen actively and curiously, and when they’re finished, instead of sharing your own story or thoughts, just say, “Thank you.”  Wait and see if they invite you to share your opinion, too, and if not, don’t offer it.

- Pass the microphone.  If you’re invited to speak or present at an event, and you represent the same demographics as everyone else who’s speaking, recommend someone from a marginalized group instead (or alongside) of you.  You’ll want to start assembling a short list of people to recommend.  Same goes for times when you’re asked to sit on a board, committee, or leadership team that lacks members of marginalized groups.  Actively promote people who are as skilled or more skilled than you but might not receive the same invitations or opportunities you do.

- See criticism as an opportunity to learn rather instead of defending yourself.  When someone complains in your presence about a majority group you represent (straight people, white people, men, etc.), or points out how you’re still operating out of your privilege, or calls you out on ways you’ve harmed them... choose not to respond defensively, even if it was never your intent to hurt anyone.  Own the harm, apologize, and do what you can to repair the damage. (For more on this, read this incredible article.) As Christena Cleveland points out, it’s a sign of trust when someone is willing to express their honest anger toward you, and depending on your response, it might be the gateway to a stronger relationship. 

- Surrender the moral high ground and refuse to tone-police.  As you hang out with people who have been oppressed, you’ll notice they don’t always agree with one another, and they might not react to injustices in the way you think they should.  They might be angry.  They might yell.  They might be disruptive.  Resist your inclination to calm them down or explain how to behave themselves so as to be better heard by privileged people.  Absorb the tension and discomfort as they express their valid emotions, and let them be the ones to define the terms of the conversation.

- Give away your inheritance as an act of restitution for ancestral injustices.  This one was suggested by Rene August in a workshop she led at the Wild Goose Festival.  Privileged people often argue that it’s not directly their fault that their predecessors stole First Nations land, or kept slaves, or oppressed LGBTQ+ people.  But privileged people rarely argue when offered intergenerational gifts like inheritances.  What if instead of using this unearned, undeserved money/property for ourselves, we redistributed all (or part) of it to an organization that works to right the wrongs our ancestors committed?  I love this idea.

- Help other privileged people learn how to be last.  You could be the most effective teacher for others like you.  They might not be willing to listen to marginalized people, but they might listen to you.  This means you must resist the temptation to cut people from your Facebook friend list when they make ignorant, hurtful comments toward minority groups.  Instead, face the awkwardness of engaging them in conversation about what they’ve said.  In my experience, “calling in” (patiently talking to them one-on-one) is much more effective than “calling out” (publicly shaming them).  You may need to publicly address comments made on social media, but try to do so without bullying or delighting in how much more socially aware you are than them.  Remember what it was like to be ignorant about your privilege, and talk about what you’re still in the process of learning on your own journey.

- Expect to always be un-learning oppression.  Just because you’re working on being last doesn’t mean you aren’t still benefiting from an oppressive system, and it doesn’t mean you won’t fail repeatedly.  As privileged people, it takes a lifetime to root out racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and all kinds of oppression from our everyday lives.  Part of being last is learning to accept our regular failures, and doing so without succumbing to shame, without forgetting that we are still works of beauty, made in God’s image.

-----

These practices might not sound like much fun, especially when we don’t get to show them off or take credit for doing them.  As I discussed in the last post, this is the path of the cross, the way of vulnerability, failure and powerlessness... it’s not really supposed to be fun.  But it’s also the path to freedom, and it’s worth it.  Like Jesus, we do it for the joy set before us, and we may find that some of that joy spills into the present – the joy of finding freedom from empty games of power and privilege.  More on this later!

If you have some other suggestions of good ways to learn to be last, please leave them in the comments!

When I heard Christena Cleveland talk about the call for privileged people to be last, it reminded me of a book I read years ago by Episcopal priest Eric Law called “The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb.” 

I read the book at the recommendation of my then co-pastor, Jodi, who had found it offered wisdom for us as white women who were attempting to pastor a church of mainly First Nations people.

As the book’s title suggests, Eric Law uses Isaiah's peaceable kingdom as a guiding image, asking how powerful “wolves” and less-powerful “lambs” in our society can actually coexist peacefully without simply following their fear-based instincts to devour or to run.

He notices that in the Gospels, Jesus tends to address privileged people (wolves) differently than he addresses less powerful people (lambs).   

Here are some of Jesus’ words to privileged people:

        “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.”
        “You are like whitewashed tombs.”
        “You unbelieving and perverse generation.”
        “Go and sell all you possess and give to the poor.”

And here are some of his words to marginalized people:

       “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.”
        “What do you want me to do for you?”
        “Where are your accusers?  Neither do I accuse you.”
        “Never have I seen such amazing faith in all of Israel.”
        “Your faith has healed you.  Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

His message to the powerful and privileged insiders is one of warning, challenge, and sometimes humiliation.  His message to the powerless and marginalized outsiders is one of blessing, encouragement and hope.

It might sound like Jesus is biased toward the poor and powerless, and in fact, that is exactly how some have described it. 

But what if Jesus is actually giving these two groups different ways to follow him, different focuses in their common journey of working out their salvation and conquering the power of evil in their lives? 

For those who are in positions of power and privilege, Jesus’ call is to follow him to the cross.  To choose a downwardly mobile and humiliating path of vulnerability and apparent failure.  To give up power and possessions to the poor.  To be last.  To die.  This is how they will be rescued from their power.

But for those who are poor or powerless, that same call would ring hollow, since they’re already on the cross, already vulnerable and humiliated.  Instead, their call is to follow him in resurrection.  To step up.  To be faithful.  To claim the hope and empowerment of the empty tomb.  This is how they will be rescued from their powerlessness.

Crucifixion and resurrection are both aspects of the Gospel, the Good News, so Eric Law calls this the “Cycle of Gospel Living.”  It’s a cycle with different entry points for privileged and marginalized people, for wolves and for lambs. 

Of course, there’s an important sense in which all of us, regardless of relative power and privilege, are called both to take up our crosses and to claim the power of the resurrection.  But those with more privilege will find themselves frequently empowered, frequently needing to walk the downward path.  Those with less privilege will find themselves more often in places of suffering and crucifixion, requiring the upward resurrection path of endurance, empowerment, and deliverance.  

Joyce, my colleague at Jacob's Well, made the interesting observation that the church has sometimes reversed these messages with disastrous effects.  Assuming that power and wealth reflect God’s favour, we preach words of blessing, encouragement, and hope to privileged insiders, only reinforcing a false sense of comfort.  Then we take mission trips to marginalized outsiders and preach a fire and brimstone message of the cross, reinforcing their sense of powerlessness before a harsh God who seems to think suffering is good for them.

I don’t think it’s God’s will for us to become further entrenched in these polarized places of power and powerlessness, in severe comfort and severe discomfort.  Instead we have a God who keeps us always on the move by giving us the particular path and focus we need for our sanctification. 

Eric Law writes, “The moment I am resurrected into new life of empowerment, I must begin to think about serving and giving away my power and take up the cross again, or I stand the chance of abusing my power.  The moment I take up the cross and become powerless, I must begin to think about faithfulness and endurance and look toward empowerment through the empty tomb.  It is in this dynamic of death and resurrection, cross and the empty tomb, Lent and Easter, that the Gospel comes to life in each one of us.” (43)

I believe this cycle provides a helpful spirituality for both the "first" and the "last," two ways of following Christ toward our mutual freedom.  It’s a beautiful thing when privileged people follow Jesus down, and it’s a beautiful thing when marginalized people follow Jesus up, all of us moving toward a time and place where wolves and lambs can dwell together in peace.

In my next two posts I’ll get more practical about some ways privileged people can “be last,” choosing the path of the cross, and how marginalized people can “be first,” choosing the path of resurrection.

It’s not like I’m lacking in material; over the last month, as I’ve hopped from Baptist Peace Camp to the Wild Goose Festival to Richard Rohr’s "Conspire" webcast to the Generous Space Camp-Out, the number of workshops, talks and sermons I’ve digested have left me feeling like a spiritual glutton. 

So much of the information and wisdom I’ve taken in has already faded into the background radiation of my mind, but there are moments and fragments that got lodged in the foreground. 

I wanted to take a few posts to tease out one of the weightier bits of wisdom I gleaned, which comes courtesy of Christena Cleveland, a sociologist and writer who spoke at Richard Rohr’s “Conspire” conference.  Her work centers on unity in the church, particularly unity across racial divides.  She’s working on a new book called “The Priesthood of the Privileged,” and it was her comments about privilege that hit me hardest.

During my time working at Jacob’s Well in Vancouver, I used to lead workshops about privilege.  Student groups would come, I’d pull my bag of little white fishbowl stones out of the cupboard, and I’d tell them to pick up stones if the statements I read applied to them.  (This was based on a popular exercise where people would take steps forward or backward, but our long narrow building didn’t have the space, so we improvised!)

     Pick up a stone if one or both of your parents had university degrees.
     Pick up a stone if you were never forced to leave your home/country because you were in danger.
     Pick up a stone if you grew up being told that police officers were to be trusted, not feared.
     Pick up a stone if you can buy Band-Aids that pretty closely match your skin colour.

Many of the suburban students could pick up all 25 stones, while our low-income community members in the Downtown Eastside averaged only 2 or 3.

We talked with the students about how each person’s stone tally was entirely outside their control; there were no life choices they could have made in order to pick up a different number of stones.  They did not earn the stones, nor were they somehow their “fault.”  Even so, having more stones seemed to have unfairly put them on life trajectories that brought them more status, more power, more opportunities, and more safety nets.

We talked about how having lots of stones (privilege) was kind of like starting a video game with the “easy” setting pre-selected.  People who are born playing the Game of Life on “easy” would still face some challenges (“bad guys”) over the course of their lives, but their chances of success were much higher than those born playing the game on “difficult,” who would have to work much harder and overcome more obstacles if they had any hope of succeeding.

The toughest part of leading those privilege workshops came at the end, when we tried to discuss what to do with our privilege.  We couldn’t change our privilege.  We couldn’t get rid of it.  We couldn’t transfer it to someone with less privilege.  So what positive steps could we take?

We agreed that feeling shame over our privilege wouldn’t help because it would only paralyze us.  We felt that it was good to at least be aware of our privilege, so we wouldn’t judge marginalized people so harshly.  Sometimes we talked about cultivating humility, lamenting inequality and working for justice.  But if I’m honest, those workshops usually ended on an unsatisfying note.

Now, having listened to Christena’s talk, I think I know how I’d answer the question.

Christena described being posed a similar question, mostly by straight, white, middle-to-upper-class men who would say, “I realize I’m among the most privileged people on earth... so what am I supposed to do about it?”

She did not tell them to pursue equality or fairness, because as a social psychologist, she had read studies showing that even when groups of unequal people try their hardest to operate in an equal way, the more privileged members eventually take control.  Privileged people are socialized to be in control.  Even when they try to seek equality, the status quo prevails.

Maybe this is why Jesus didn’t actually talk about equality or fairness.  He didn’t talk about leveling the playing field.  Instead, he spoke of inversion, of reversal.  He spoke of the first being last and the last being first.  

So Christena told these privileged men, “You have an important place in the Kingdom of God.  It’s necessary, noble and beautiful.  That place is last.”

If you’re privileged, your job is to be last.  

Last is the only place where people of privilege find real transformation and freedom.

I want to unpack this counter-cultural idea of pursuing last place over the next several posts, weaving together Christena’s teaching, the work of Eric Law, and the ideas some other wise folks I listened to over the last couple months.  Here are the topics I hope to cover over the next few weeks:

- The Spirituality of the Last and the First (the cycle of Gospel living)
- How to be Last (the way of the cross)
- How to be First (the way of resurrection)
- How it’s a Lot More Complicated than First or Last

Stay tuned!

Logic tells me that time and distance
have robbed me of permission for this pain;
lacking justification for a severity of grief
I did not expect
and cannot explain.

I never knew Angela the wife,
the mother,
the chiropractor,
the doula.
I only knew the Ange whose stubborn, unrealistic dreams of these things
made me worry she'd be crippled by the letdown
of the lesser life she'd likely find.

When you tenaciously defied my lack of faith,
I delighted from afar.

Self-doubt lurks in the spaces left by sorrow...
is this sadness merely a saccharine mask
for regret?
    (that we did not keep in touch)
for pity?
    (for you, for your husband, your two preschool girls)
for anger?
    (that the God you served and adored did not intervene)
worse, for self-concerned fear?
    (that my own life could be cut short without notice)

I believe no grief is completely uncorrupted
by the malignancy of self-centeredness.

But I also believe that I truly cared for you
and you for me
and that for a time, it was tangible - 

   me,
     sharing my flash cards in pre-biology-exam cram sessions,
   you,
     teaching me how to drain my blocked sinuses by running a finger along my neck,
   me,
     reassuring you that Bible heroes also smoke, drank and swore too much,
   you,
     after class, 
       voicing your childlike wonder at creation and her Creator
         unconcerned about who might hear your unscientific praise
           giving expression to my own silent, stuttering awe,
              transforming every lecture hall into a sanctuary. 

You gave me more credit
for your bachelor's degree
than I ever deserved,
though I took joy in your success all the same.

I never gave you enough credit
for preserving my sanity
for making me laugh at the absurdity of cutting open earthworms
    just to count their five hearts
for singing in the hallways and sharing your lunches
for asking for advice at least as often as you gave it
for refusing to resent me for working half as hard as you for better grades
for turning my focus to the quality of my character
for kicking open the door
    of my self-imposed prison of perfectionism
    and pointing to the light outside
        (though I still struggle daily to step out).

You burned through your 36 years
with more fierce passion than most who triple that time,
all or nothing,
unapologetically emotive,
loud and brash,
clumsy and unpretentious,
an open book,
a shitty note-taker,
a triple-exclamation-mark emailer,
determined to love everyone you met
by waking them to the stunning beauty of their existence.

Your death inspires me
(as did your life)
to seize the day
to grab life by the balls
to dance like no one's watching
to dissect every tired cliche
and find the seed of truth at its core
to honor your life
with the fullest living of my own.

https://www.gofundme.com/233hjdws

Speaker 1 – an enthusiastic, detached, excitable spectator

You know, I always thought he was the One, the next great King.
     Way back when he read that passage from Isaiah, remember that?
             when he said “this is about ME” and dropped the mic
                   and everybody freaked out, and then he vanished?
                          Not a bad opening act.

 And then all the healings, the exorcisms, the feedings,...
     he just started snowballing, getting more and more famous.
             My favorite was his showdowns with the Pharisees.
                   Some of the best comebacks and trash talking I’ve heard in years.
                         Pure entertainment.

 When I heard he was headed for Jerusalem,
      I knew it was going to be the most epic Passover ever.
             There was no way I was going to miss his big finale.

 I still can’t believe he just walked right into their trap!
            Anyone could have seen that coming!
                   And then he clammed up completely – didn’t even TRY to defend himself.
                          Almost like he wanted to end up… up there.  

You know, I’m actually kind of embarrassed for him.     
      I mean, I like a good death scene, but this is just pathetic.
             Really, though, I’m more embarrassed for myself,
                   for jumping on the bandwagon too soon.

                    I guess there’s still time before he dies; 
                           he could still pull one of his tricks
                                  and get himself down off that cross.
                                           I’ll stick around and watch for a while.  Just in case.
--------------- 

 Speaker 2 – a serious, business-like, authoritarian type

I always thought he was the One, the long-awaited King.     
      It’s like I’ve always said: we need a Messiah,
             but not these revolutionary wackos who keep claiming the title.

No, we need someone who can prove that we Jews are worthy of worldwide respect,
        Someone who can… Make the Jews Great Again.
                Great, like we were in the good old days - the time of David.
                      And Jesus is a blood relative of David,
                                so the birth certificate checks out.

It’s not only his lineage - he had had the charisma for the job.     
       He could command authority.
             Nothing fazed him.
                   He wasn’t afraid of being politically incorrect when he needed to be.
                         Granted, he wasn’t big on law, order, and tradition as I would have liked.

Actually, I started doubting him pretty early on.         
     He just didn’t maintain good boundaries.
            He kept associating with the wrong kind people.
                   you know, the ones who bring us down, who contribute nothing to society.
                         Troublemakers.  Criminals.  Deviants.
                                I hear they were even in his inner circle.

 Let’s face it - it’s a dangerous world out there.
      So if our omnipotent, victorious God were to send us a King,
            Wouldn’t he send the most powerful human being possible?
                   Strong enough to protect his chosen people,
                         someone who won’t hesitate to act forcefully and decisively
                                 to eliminate any and every threat,                                
                                               so we can continue in our God-given traditional ways?

And if some guy claims to be this God-Sent King
      but he shows himself to be nothing more than a loser,
             a soft, weak, forgiving pushover,
                   then I don’t care whom he’s descended from -
                         he’s an imposter,
                                and you’ve got to take him out before he does any more damage.

---------------

Speaker 3 – a passionate, eager, fierce revolutionary

I always thought he was the One, the true King.
      He was definitely not an insider – no, he was one of us.
            A man of the people – from Nazareth, of all places!
                  There was no way Jesus could be bought,
                  no way he would sell out and become another pawn of this corrupt Empire. 

Finally, I thought,
      here was someone who could channel the anger
             of the hard-working, hard-done-by underclass
                   into a revolutionary movement for social change,
                                and free us from the iron grip of Rome.

 He was witty, inspiring, great with a loudspeaker.
      He had creativity – did you see the street theatre he did the other day,
             riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey?  Genius.

He could have had a perfect record for justice,
   but he insisted on compromising his purity.
      Inviting himself over to party with those tax collector traitors,
         eating feasts paid for with the dirty money they exploited from their own people.
              Healing that servant of a Roman soldier – basically fueling their war machine.
                    He failed to fully separate himself from the death-dealing systems,
                        and didn’t have the political savvy to set up any life-giving systems
                                     that would take his healing to the masses.
                                                I mean, is there anything that will actually outlive him?

And just yesterday, when he had the ears of Pontius Pilate and Herod themselves,
       the perfect moment for some civil disobedience, some real action for justice,
             He lost his nerve. 
                   Couldn’t even get a word out.
                         His only accomplishment was strengthening our enemies
                                by giving Herod and Pilate a common joke to laugh at.

 Instead of challenging the oppressor,
      he stood there and let himself be oppressed.
             What a waste of potential.  Too bad he’ll suffer for it.

 I hate to say it, but after this brutal disappointment,
      I’m kind of happy we got Barabbas back.
             Granted, he’s no diplomat – he’s murderous and very likely insane,
                   but at least he won’t choke when there’s a chance to get the job done.
                         Desperate times call for desperate measures.
                               The people need freedom… by any means necessary.

 ---------------------

Speaker 4 – a disillusioned, bitter, deeply hurt disciple

I always thought you were the One, the King,
      from the day you first placed your hand on my head.
             You were the first person to make me feel chosen, important, loved. 
                   For three years, my life had purpose.

Three years rendered completely meaningless
      in light of this moment,
             staring up at your naked, crucified body,
                   as the crowds make a mockery of your so-called kingdom.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.
      Sure, I remember you hinting at your impending death,
             but you were always so cryptic and metaphorical all the time,
                   were we really supposed to take you seriously this time?

 And what the hell are we supposed to do now? 
      You conveniently failed to mention that.
            We’re almost certainly the next ones on the hit list,
                   are we supposed to turn ourselves in and jump up there next to you?
                
No, we’re left holding the pieces of your mess,
           with all of our confusion and unanswered questions,
                   in a world full of people you didn’t get around to saving,
                         diseases you didn’t get around to curing,
                               wars you didn’t get around to ending,
                                      a nation you didn’t get around to freeing. 

I’ve seen your power. 
      I know the miracles you’re capable of.
             You could be down off that cross and by our side in the blink of an eye.

      So if you’re letting yourself just go on hanging there until you strangle to death,
             it must be that you don’t actually want to help us.
                   You’re getting the hell out of here.
                         You’re ditching us, right after calling yourself our friend.

                         I gave up everything for you,
                                and you just… gave up.

 My hope, my dreams, my faith,
      they all die here with your very mortal body.
             Just collateral damage.

--------------------

Speaker 5 – thief - a rough-around-the-edges guy, joyful despite pain, hands bound

I always thought you were the One, the King. 
      but now, seeing you there, hanging between me and this other loser,
             I know it’s true.

He might be a torn up, bloody mess,
      But look at the love in his eyes,
             absorbing all their hatred,
                   whispering forgiveness
                         as he strains for breath.

I might not be the smartest guy,
      (I mean, look where I ended up!)
             But I know bullshit when I see it,
                   and I know the real deal. 
                       This is the real deal.

Any king who would stay up here next to the likes of me,
      suffer with me,
             die with me,
                   that’s a king I’ll proudly serve,
                         in this life or the next. 

Those idiots think they’ve got him beat
      but they don’t. 

That sign above his head?
      They got it right after all.

---------------------- 

Speaker 6 – Joseph - a sophisticated but humble man, sad, but with fierce hope

I didn’t always think he was the One.
      I didn’t always think he was the true King.
             Honestly, I still don’t know for sure. 

I didn’t actually run with his crowd,
      though sometimes I wished I had that freedom to follow him.
             I’m constrained by my own place in society,
                   by the honor and curse of my membership in the Sanhedrin,
                         the high council,
                                surrounded by fearful little bullies.

                                      Every day, I’m haunted by my own failures
                                                to leverage my power for good.   

But I’ve been looking for the kingdom.
      I’ve been eagerly waiting for the kingdom of God.
             And there’s just something about him.
                   …I mean, there was something about him.

I can’t exactly explain it,
      but I needed to put his body in the ground,
             I needed to show him that last kindness,
                   to restore some shred of dignity to this mutilated body.                  

It is not finished, not for the council.
      Fear and paranoia spread like cancer
            and that small act of burial may cost me my reputation, my membership,
                   who knows? maybe my life.

                         It doesn’t matter.
                         It had to be done.
                         I needed to plant that seed in the earth.

And now the sun has set.
Now it is the day of rest.
And I will keep on waiting.

But soon, I will brush my hair and teeth.
     I will show off my best face
           and my best work,
                desperately trying to prove myself to a world
                whose systems
                will eventually forget and replace me.

From dust I have come, and to dust I will return.

And that would be the end of my story,
      were it not for Your baffling love
      for my particular self,
      for my Beth-ness.

                When I die and decompose,
                      you will hold my memory
                      and breathe your Spirit into this dust again.

Your love for me -
     the only source of my true worth -        
       is also the only thing I cannot earn.

Yet I am hardwired for earning,
      for proving,
             for being needed,
                admired.

So, in this season,   
   on this day…

Strip away every distraction I use
      to numb myself from the failure
           of my every attempt to earn
                 what is already freely mine.

Keep me quiet and listening;
      adjust my rhythm to yours;
                work your patience in me.

Show me the cross I must pick up to follow you;
      show me how it is different from
                the burdens you wish to lift from me.

Teach me submission to the life-demands of love,
      teach me how you loved and forgave
           even when you were crushed and betrayed.    
 
             I want to learn to love
                    even when it looks like losing,
                           even when it feels like dying.

I know I am powerless
      to overhaul all the sin-systems of this world.       
              Heck, I cannot even prevent
                      the expansion of my own ego
                              as I pray this prayer.

Forgive me.

Help me.

Free me from myself.

 Empty me  
     so there is room
            for you to fill me.

----- >>> ----- >>> -----

Here's what I was pondering and learning in January 2016...

- If you ask God for the power to let go of resentment and forgive somebody, not necessarily expecting it to happen, you might just find your prayers answered, and your mood shifted.

- Jesus is the resurrection magnet, pulling the rest of creation toward resurrection like an irresistible beacon.  Love, not death, is the eternal thing.  Love is drawing the world into its fullness, and cannot lose.  This is summarized from one of Richard Rohr's daily meditations (which you should really sign up for if you haven't yet).  It's based on the thought of scientist/theologian Teilhard de Chardin, whose books I should really read one of these days.

- Often healing comes just when you think it couldn't get any worse. This is true of spiritual healing, as well as the common cold.  :)

- Cold FX is basically just really expensive ginseng.  I'm convinced it only works if you believe in it, and thanks to Danice and my brother, I think I've lost my faith.

- This year, I'd like to experiment with using the pronouns "they/them" for God.  Last year I tried using "she/her" pronouns, and I noticed it shifting my image of who God is.  Morgan Guyton's blog post got me thinking about this new experiment.  I've tried it this month, and so far I love how ambiguous the pronouns "they/them" are in terms of gender and singularity/plurality.  It reminds me that God is omnigender and exists in this mysterious state of both threeness and oneness.

- I'm starting to realize that my year-long attempt to record things I'm grateful for has actually started to shape me into a more perceptive, aware, awe-struck, grateful person.

- It is a beautiful thing to re-teach people their loveliness, like Francis did with the sow.  I preached on this topic at my church last week, addressing 1 Cor. 12:22-26: the "weaker" or "less respectable" parts of the body of Christ.  On a web search, I found this intriguing painting by Mollie Hosmer-Dillard, which I believe accompanies the gorgeous poem I read that Sunday by Galway Kinnell.

- I have had a great time getting to know one marginalized people group this year (my LGBTQ+ siblings in Christ) but I've realized how impoverished I become when I'm not also loving and being loved by local low-income folks.  So I'm grateful that the good people of The Dale are letting me hang out with them on Wednesday mornings this year.  I've only been to two Wednesday art drop-ins, but already I feel a dormant part of me coming back to life again.

- It can sometimes be challenging to reconcile our faith with new scientific discoveries, but there are two forms of spirituality that will endure and prove useful no matter what scientists discover: mystical spirituality and pragmatic spirituality.  This insight is from Science Mike near the end of a fascinating podcast from the Liturgists about the Multiverse.

With a question so divisive in the church today, it can be hard to know how to answer.  “What will they think if I say “yes”?  What will they think if I say “no”?  What assumptions have already been made about me?  What assumptions have I already made about the person asking?”

For some, all that matters is whether I answer “yes” or “no.”  But with that simple answer, how much have they actually learned about me?

We often behave as if there are only two types of people – group “yes” and group “no” – and that each group is homogeneous, uniform and unified.  In reality, we often have very different reasons for believing the things we believe, even though some of us might come to the same conclusions.  As a “yes”-answerer, my perspective on God and spirituality might actually be more similar to some of the people who answer “no” than it is to some of the people who happen to also answer “yes.”

In order to illustrate this, I’ve listed 23 different reasons why Christians might answer “yes” and 23 reasons why Christians might answer “no”.  This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but it does cover some of the main things I’ve heard in conversations between Christians.

Perhaps you haven’t yet made up your mind on this topic, or you’re caught in the middle, and that’s fine.  But for those of you who belong to either “group yes” or “group no,” as you’re reading the lists below, I challenge you to ask yourself these questions…

Looking at YOUR group’s list:

• Which reason best represents your main motivation for believing what you do?
• Which other reasons do you also nod along with and agree with?
• Which reasons do you disagree with, or find unconvincing, even though they have led other people to the same conclusion as yours?
• Which reasons are often unfairly or disparagingly generalized as being applicable to your whole group?

Looking at the OTHER group’s list:

• Which of their reasons do you immediately want to argue with or push back against?
• Which of their reasons do you understand and empathize with, even if they don’t convince you?
• Which of their reasons are often unfairly or disparagingly generalized as being applicable to their whole group?

_________________________________________________________________________________

GROUP “YES”
I support same-sex marriage…

… because biblical ethics don’t really apply today.

… because all that matters in this world, and in our faith, is love.

… because I believe God created us equal, and everyone should have the right to marry whomever they want to marry.

… because I want to be modern and progressive, not homophobic and bigoted.

… because conservative Christians are the ones who reject it, and I’m not conservative.

… because I think there were admirable same-sex couples in the Bible (e.g. David & Jonathan, the centurion & his servant).

… because it doesn’t hurt anyone.

… because homosexuality is rarely mentioned in the Bible, and we should focus our energy on more important issues.

… because none of us consistently follow all the biblical laws anymore (eating shrimp, divorce, etc.).

… because an authority I trust (e.g. my pastor, my favorite theologian) supports it.

… because church tradition has been wrong before (astronomy, patriarchy, slavery), so why trust it on this issue?

… because I think we should prioritize the voices of those who are marginalized and rejected.

… because I see broader themes and trajectories of kinship, inclusion and justice in Scripture.

… because our God is not gendered, and I believe our intimate relationships “image” or reflect the Trinitarian relationship.

… because I believe we are no longer under the Law, instead, we are guided by the Spirit.

… because I’d rather err on the side of showing too much grace, inclusion and love.

… because Jesus said nothing about homosexuality, and I base my ethical decisions mainly on Jesus’ teaching.

… because there was no concept of sexual orientation at the time the Bible was written.

… because God said “it’s not good for man to be alone,” and I don’t think he’d require lifelong celibacy of all same-sex attracted people.

… because I think biblical authors disapproved of exploitative, idolatrous, lustful same-sex sex, but NOT consensual, committed same-sex sex.

… because I think the biblical authors disapproved of all forms of same-sex sex, but they based their disapproval on ideas of patriarchy, purity, and procreation that are no longer accepted today.

… because I can’t see any valid moral reasoning to explain why it should be considered sinful or evil.

… because, like Peter with Cornelius in the book of Acts, I’ve seen the God’s Spirit work and produce fruit in Christians who have married people of the same sex.

_________________________________________________________________________________

GROUP “NO”
I don’t support same-sex marriage…

… because I find the idea of same-sex sex disgusting.

… because same-sex sex is dangerous and unhealthy, and we shouldn’t promote it.

… because supporting it would re-define and undermine the core meaning of marriage.

… because I think we’re called to take a courageous stand on this issue in a culture that is losing its moral footing and becoming more anti-Christian.

… because I think marriage and sex are intended for procreation.

… because liberal Christians are the ones accepting same-sex marriage, and I’m not liberal.

… because to support it would be to open the door to incest, bestiality, and polygamy.

… because same-sex couples are glorifying sin and calling it good, and I don’t support that.

… because it goes against the evident God-ordained natural order of things.

… because an authority I trust (e.g. my pastor, my favorite theologians, the Pope) is against it.

… because for me, to support same-sex marriage would be to reject the authority of Scripture.

… because I think the Bible should judge and correct me, instead of me judging and correcting the Bible.

… because we are all called to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and submit our sexual desires to God.

… because we shouldn’t give up on Christ’s ability to transform people’s attractions.

… because there is unanimous disapproval of same-sex sex in the Bible – male-female marriage is the only biblically-approved context for sex.

… because I’m worried that same-sex couples will be excluded from the kingdom for their unrepentant sin, and it would be unloving of me to approve of this, or to fail to warn them.

… because same-sex marriage can’t spiritually symbolize what marriage was meant to symbolize: Christ and the church.

… because I believe God designed men and women to complement one another in ways that two people of the same sex cannot.

… because although Old Testament ritual/purity laws may be culture-bound, laws about sexuality are part of Old Testament moral law, which should continue to guide Christians today.

… because Jesus clearly knew and followed Levitical prohibitions and reaffirmed marriage between one man and one woman as ordained at creation.

… because Paul knew about long-term same-sex relationships between adults, as reflected in ancient Greek and Roman writings, and he didn’t specify that these would be exceptions to the rule.

… because I’d rather err on the side of the simplest and most straightforward reading of Scripture.

… because who am I to argue with over 2000 years of Christian tradition on this topic?

If you haven’t already done so, take a moment to answer the questions I asked above the lists.

What these lists suggest to me is that the “yes”/”no” question isn’t nearly as important as the “why” question.  If we stop at “yes” or “no,” it’s too easy for us to make unhelpful assumptions and talk past each other.  Not everyone in Group “yes” arrived there because they completely rejected the authority of the Bible.  Not everyone in Group “no” believes in a “slippery slope,” or the necessity of following natural law.

Even people who come to the same conclusion might have different theological starting points, and different priorities in biblical interpretation.  They might put a different level of emphasis on Scripture, tradition or experience.  Unpacking the “why’s” behind people’s beliefs and convictions gives us the opportunity to transcend defensiveness and disagreement, and actually have the kind of dialogue that promotes respect, understanding, and grace between us.

So as we continue this conversation in the church, along with many other conversations related to gender and sexuality, let’s ask good questions and listen well.  Talking about LGBTQ+ realities might take us down rabbit trails about law, grace, sin, self-denial, transformation, patriarchy, and the larger purpose for sex and marriage… which is great!  Let this conversation become an excuse for unpacking all kinds of meaningful theological concepts.

How did reading these lists affect you?  Can you think of any reasons I missed?  Do you have stories of times when you made assumptions about other people’s reasons, or when they did about yours? Feel free to comment below.

I awake, and already
four gifts await me:
Light;
Breath;
Love;
and Time,
another 24 hours to savor them.

Thank You.

I am born again
the wide-eyed daughter
of Adam in Eden,
eager to perceive,
eager to name.

Let me not grow numb
to the countless traces
of Your beauty.

Slow the rushing stream of time,
that I might gather up
small moments of glory
like smooth stones.
I will fill my bag with time.

You have given me eternity.
How can I fail to respond
with ready love,
with sheer delight
in each creature,
in yet one more day
with You?

(inspired in part by the work of Ann Voskamp)
 

For anyone who could use a little post-election hope... read on.

Text: Luke 4:31-44

I have a confession to make.

If I came across this passage while reading the book of Luke, I would probably skim over it.  
I would move right on to the next chapter.

But Brian asked me to reflect on it this morning…so I thought I’d reflect on what makes this passage especially “skimmable” for me.

I’ve come up with a few reasons.

First - We ALL KNOW Jesus healed people and cast out demons.  The Gospels are full of these kinds of passages.  You know, “Jesus went to another place and healed another bunch of people and cast out this other demon and told it to stop revealing who He was.”

If you’ve grown up in Sunday school, you come to expect these passages. 
And you don’t necessarily expect to get anything new out of them. 
Healing and demon-casting are just things Jesus does. 
So it’s easy to skim over them.

I’ll come back to this point.

Second reason I would skim over this passage: The demon stories confuse me and make me feel like I’m naïve, like I’m missing something.

In the Gospels, demon-possessed people seem to be all over the place. 
So why have I never encountered one?

• Is it because I’m a Baptist and I have limited experience with the charismatic?
• Are the demons sneakier now?
• Maybe they’re not as active in a personal way today, but more in a structural way, within systems?
• Would what the Gospels called “demons” be labeled “mental illness,” “schizophrenia,” or “epilepsy” today?
• Do I need to start watching more horror movies?

I’m inclined to be slow to blame things on demons and skeptical of those who do.  I’m gay, and I have other gay friends who have actually had exorcisms performed on them, which I would call spiritual abuse.

But I also know that leaving room for some concept of the demonic makes us less likely to demonize our fellow human beings.  It lets us redirect our collective energy and anger toward resisting evil in all its forms rather than resisting the people who happen to be our enemies right now.

Anyway, can have some lively conversations about demons over breakfast later on.  I guess the point is, even if we end up disagreeing about demons, we can agree that in this passage, Jesus is liberating people from forces that seek to harm them.

Okay, here’s my third and last reason for skimming, and the core of my problem with this passage.

Everyone in Capernaum seems to love how Jesus speaks and does things with “authority.”

That word “authority” really grates on me.  
It actually makes me cringe.  
I guess you could say I have a problem with authority.
Negative associations.   
Especially after the eleven weeks of campaigning we’ve all endured.

In my experience, speaking with authority is speaking without humility.

Authority looks like an overconfident man in a suit, coming from a place of privilege.  
Someone who just loves to push his weight around.  
A self-interested, self-centred, and a so-called “self-made man.”  
Large and in charge.  
Assuming the world revolves around him.

To me, authority means preying on the fears of others.  
Pandering to the powerful.
Protecting the status quo.

And speaking with authority is using fancy words to hide the fact that you’re not really saying anything.  
It’s big talk and zero action.  
Empty boasting, meaningless promises.  
Hot air.

I have been disappointed with almost every person in my life who has spoken with authority and power.

Now, like many of you, I stayed up late watching election results last night.  And like many people across the country, I went to bed with a weary mix of relief and disappointment.

I was absolutely relieved that one particularly disappointing authority was dethroned.  This morning marks the start of the reign of “Mr. Anyone But Harper,” a new white man who now holds majority power, and while I think this is an improvement over the last ten years, I also know that Justin Trudeau will disappoint me.

And actually, I think that even Tom Mulcair – and maybe even Elizabeth May – would have also inevitably disappointed me as Prime Minister.

Each of these personalities has been built up as a potential Canadian Messiah, one who would save the day and set everything right, but in the real world, they’re just fallible humans like us, working in a very broken system.  Those structural demonic spiritual forces definitely come into play in politics.

So at risk of becoming cynical, what is the Good News this post-election day?  If you made it here at 7:22 in the morning after staying up late last night, you deserve some good news.

The least I can do is stop skimming long enough to find some for you.

The good news is that Stephen Harper is not in charge this morning.  
And the good news is that Justin Trudeau is not in charge either...

...because all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to someone else.

And when I look at this passage, I see that this “someone else” is actually busy redefining the very word “authority.”  He’s redeeming it for me.

Sure, he may be giving orders… but it’s demons, not people, that he’s ordering around.  
He may be rebuking… but it’s fevers, not people, that he’s rebuking.  
When it comes to leading people, Jesus is just beginning to demonstrate a radically new way, which Richard Beck, one of my favorite theologians, calls “the weak force of love.”

This is not an authority who prefers places of power and refinement.  He steers clear of Jerusalem.  He sucks at upward mobility, in fact, as we saw last week, he is prone to people trying to push him off cliffs.  This passage begins with the words “Jesus went DOWN to Capernaum.”  He likes to hang out among his fellow Galileans: the mongrels, the half-breeds, the peasants, the unwashed, the religiously uneducated.

And just when they want to make him famous, he moves on.

This is not an authority who campaigns on fear, who promises to protect the status quo.  Now, granted, he DID mention foreigners in his campaign speech that we heard last week.  But instead of framing them as terrorists with “barbaric cultural practices,” he talked about healing foreigners, and blessing foreigners.

Because Jesus is not an authority who comforts the comfortable.  Instead, as we learned last last week, he reveals their blindness.  He afflicts the comfortable with unwanted but necessary sight.  And in today’s passage, we see him very tangibly comforting the afflicted.

It turns out Jesus isn’t full of hot air.   He has big talk AND big action.  He says: “I’ll bring good news to the poor, I’ll release captives, I’ll heal the blind, I’ll set people free” … and sure enough, the next day, we find him doing exactly that!  Living up to those crazy promises that nearly got him killed.  Almost immediately setting people free from illness and evil.

Jesus is the Word, and it’s not an empty word, not a dead word on a party platform, but a living and active Word, a Word that actually effects change in real time.

Earlier I pointed out that Jesus is constantly healing, constantly casting out demons.  But I rarely stop and ask why.  Why does Jesus spend his time on these things?  It’s not like he can heal everyone.  And even those he does heal will still die later on.  So what’s the point?

Sure, he has compassion for these individuals he meets.  The man in the synagogue.  Simon’s mother-in-law.  The sick people in the crowds.

But beyond compassion, I think these healings and exorcisms are a sign of something bigger.  A tiny glimpse of what’s to come. An appetizer before the main course.

These miraculous acts of Jesus are the reassurance that sickness, evil, and death will not have the last word.

Fevers are not forever.
Depression is not forever.
Demons are not forever.
Structural evil will be shattered.
Racism will be banished.
Inequality will come to an end.
There will be a new world order.

With his acts of healing and liberation, Jesus grabs the dark veil of despair and cynicism hanging over all of us and tears holes in it, letting the light stream through.

His acts of healing and liberation breathe crisp fall air into our stale, stagnant places, leaving behind a taste of freshness, a lingering promise of more: more healing, more freedom, more love, life to the fullest.

This very morning, Jesus’ healing and liberation are ours to receive.  
And His healing and liberation are ours to give.  
We have the privilege of following Jesus, to become fellow healers, fellow liberators.  
He has given us this authority.

He calls us to follow him into the uncomfortable places, the places of conflict and sickness.  The messy places.  The deathly places.

And if we choose to go there with Him, our role could be as dramatic as rebuking a fever and seeing it disappear… or it could be as unimpressive (but necessary!) as being a silent, intentional presence in the midst of someone’s pain, restoring a little corner of creation, while we all wait together for the full and final healing.

Voting in the election yesterday was important, because we got to have a say in how we want our collective resources and energy to be used, hopefully to increase the good in the world.

But every day can become an exercise of our true citizenship.  This morning and every morning, as we follow Jesus to the bottom, to the margins, with healing and freedom in our hands and in our words, resisting evil with the weak force of love, every day can become a vote for the reign of God.

Today for the Kingdom, 
tomorrow for the Kingdom
…and the next day for the Kingdom.

The politicians will not heal us.  
The members of parliament do not know the words that will free us.  
The prime minister will not save us.

But we follow the only true public servant.  
We follow the man on the donkey’s back.  
The Rabbi who washes feet.  
The crucified and risen one.

All authority has already been given to Him...
and he is coming soon.