In my e-newsletter Field Notes, we have an “Ask Sarah” section where people can send in their questions to me and I try to answer them in future editions. Usually those questions are pretty simple and straightforward (i.e. what’s your favourite episode of Doctor Who?) but not always. The question that inspired this essay is one that I have been asked probably a hundred times in a hundred ways – not only through Field Notes but in my friendships, my churches, other believers, my whole life. Months ago, when this particular question came in yet again, I sat down and wrote this essay in response. But it was too long for the e-newsletter’s format and so I have simply waited, considering its inclusion in a future book perhaps.

But this past weekend, I stood in a roomful of people whom my friend Rachel Held Evans loved. (I can’t begin to write about losing Rachel, not yet.) Standing there, all of us gathered to mourn her and to be together, I was struck anew by how grateful I am for all the ways that she gathered us together. Too much of my life has been surrounded by people who were like me: they looked like me, experienced God like me, had similar stories to mine. And it was through Rachel and her work and her relentless habit of pulling up more chairs to the table that I was fortunate to stand in that diverse crowd as a sister and as a friend to many. I don’t take that for granted. One thing that Rachel did for me and many others was make us braver, she encouraged us to tell our stories, and to invite more people to the feast. I decided to publish this here for everyone to access now during Pride month in a small act of solidarity, in hope, in gratitude, as one small way to honour her legacy of inclusion and to hopefully add a few more chairs to all of our tables, too.

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Dear Sarah,

I don’t know how to begin this, and I’m afraid I’ll end up writing you a whole long letter. I guess the shortest summary of this is that I am feeling so torn and sick at heart about questions of LGBT inclusion in the church, and I don’t know what to do.

There is a part of me that wants to throw open my arms and embrace LGBT people into the church, fully and unconditionally (while still holding to more traditional sexual ethic about sex in marital context). And yet another part of me is incredibly hesitant and is much more comfortable arguing for celibacy, asking that other half of me if I’m being “conformed to the world,” rather than holding to the Gospel. I wonder if I am terribly blinded by deep-seated, centuries-old biases.

Then I question whether I am falling prey to “worldly” impulses and only trying to make Christianity more defensible in modern culture. I have prayed that I might discern. I have prayed that I might be freed from my troubled state and be freed from this burden I constantly grapple with. I have read essay after essay written by those advocating for LGBT Christians, trying to sway myself one way or the other, and I am still so, so stuck on the fence.

I have seen leaders and preachers like you, Jen Hatmaker, and Rachel Held Evans move to declare that love is love. And I admire you all so much. You have been incredibly influential in shaping (and, in some ways, saving) my faith, more than you will probably ever know, and in pointing me to the love of Christ. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are rooted in that love and that therefore your call for LGBT inclusion is also rooted in that same love. I know that this is not you abandoning the faith or abandoning Jesus, no matter what some critics might argue.

I suppose my question is this–how did you move to become LGBT affirming, and what did that journey look like for you?

From N. from Rhode Island

Dearest N.,

Thank you for your sincere and earnest question. You aren’t alone and I’m so glad that you’re wrestling with this. To be honest, Evolving Faith Conference grew out of our desire to get all of us wonderers in a room together so we could feel a little less alone! My inbox is overflowing with variations of the same question from so many people particularly church leaders all over the world. Your tenderness and care is obvious. And so I’m going to do something a bit different with my answer – I want to take my time here without being prescriptive. (This is my code for “get yourself a cuppa tea, this is going to take a minute.”) This is one thing I’ve realized about this journey: you can’t hand someone seven steps to a faith shift or change in theology – it is deeply personal. Thoughtful questions deserve thoughtful answers. I also want to acknowledge to you and everyone else that I – a white straight 18-years-and-counting married woman – am not the best guide for you. I can be alongside of you only. But if I can be one point on your journey, I’m happy to do that for you just as many others have done that for me. Just know that after you read this, I encourage you to turn towards the margins and to let them lead you further out into God’s shalom.

I can only tell you my story and hope that there will be something here to encourage or strengthen or instruct you as you continue  to journey with Jesus in these questions.

Many years ago, when I was reading through the Gospels in a last-ditch effort to figure out who Jesus was and if he was worth following (I talked about that a lot in my second book, Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith), I came across a particular story that made me angry.

And that shook me, right to my core, because it made me angry at Jesus. Yes, I was so angry at Jesus. I loved Jesus and this anger was a new feeling (also I’m an Enneagram 9 and so anger as a whole is a new feeling sometimes but that’s another conversation).

In this story,⁠ a woman is crying out to Jesus for help because her daughter is possessed and suffering. But Jesus ignores her. She continues after him, begging for him to help her. The disciples grow impatient – not with Jesus, mind you, but with the woman. They ask Jesus to send her away because she won’t stop shouting at them for help. He tells them he won’t deal with her because he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. She must have heard him say these words because she falls at his feet and begs again for help for her daughter anyway. Finally he speaks to her, saying, “Woman, it’s not right to take the food from the children’s mouths and throw it to the dogs.”

Ouch.

The penny is in the air.

Quickly she says to him, “Of course you’re right but even the dogs get the crumbs from the table.”

The penny drops.

Jesus praises her faith and heals her daughter.

Catch that? He ignored a desperate and pleading woman. He tells his disciples that she isn’t worth his time. He insults her by calling her a dog. Then he tells her she isn’t welcome to what he’s dishing up.

As if being a woman in this culture isn’t enough of a hill to climb, our girl was Syro-Phoenician (some translations refer to her as a Canaanite). She was from region called Tyre and Sidon which was despised by the Jews as enemies because they had fought on the other side of a long ago war.  She was a cultural outsider to Jesus and his boys in every way. She’s a foreigner, she’s a Gentile, she’s from a despised region, and she’s a woman – and she’s making a nuisance of herself in front of a crowd. This rarely endears vulnerable women to powerful men.

And rather than immediately leaping over those hurdles to welcome her and heal her daughter, Jesus seemingly ignores her, insults her, refuses her. There is no empathy, no compassion, from the way the story is written.

But she persists. What mother with a suffering child wouldn’t howl all the way down the road, too? She refuses to let these men talk about her as if she isn’t there. She gets in the way. She steadily holds her place. She doesn’t get angry, she gets clever. And Jesus throws up his hands, he knows when he’s beat. Perhaps he laughed ruefully – fine, you win. She gets what she wants: her daughter is healed.

It’s in this story that we are reminded – a bit too strongly – that Jesus was fully divine and fully human, too. Sometimes we lean so hard on the divine that we forget Jesus was also a product of his time and his culture. This passage reminds us in no uncertain terms that Jesus was a Jewish man in the first-century, conditioned to believe that Gentiles were dogs and outsiders to the promise. His response to her seems…well, prejudiced at best.  

It shook me. So I did what I always do when I don’t understand: I began to read. I learned there are many ways to interpret this passage – some believe that Jesus was simply play-acting a typical response to her pleas to demonstrate how heartless such an attitude of exclusivity is to his disciples, that he always intended to heal the daughter but was making a larger point in the process to those who were gathered to watch. I hope that one is true.

A few scholars have tried to downplay the word “dogs” – “maybe it’s the endearing word that means ‘cute puppies’ and that would make it okay?” – but the fact remains: “dog” was a pretty strong insult with racial implications.

Another interpretation holds that it was a statement of historical representation in how the saving of the world went down: Jesus came first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles.

Or this whole thing could have been a “test” of sorts for the woman: Jesus was setting her up to build her faith and her persistence, to strengthen her.

But one particular interpretation caught my own imagination: perhaps Jesus was taught by this woman. Perhaps we are witnesses to his growth. Perhaps he was deeply struggling with his Jewish identity and the attitude that Gentles were, in fact, dogs, that they weren’t in on it. Perhaps he was conditioned to ignore or disdain people like her. Perhaps it was because she was a woman or maybe her cultural identity or her race. After all, Jesus was as fully human as he was God, so perhaps he had the capacity to be challenged on his cultural prejudices and then to grow, to realize his mistake. In Mark’s telling of the story, this is Jesus’ first conversation with a Gentile. And it wouldn’t be his last but never again would he treat a Gentile the way that he initially treated this woman.  As Austin Steelman writes in the Harvard Ichthus,⁠ “Jesus shows us in this story that inheriting bias is inevitable, but holding onto it is a choice.”

However we interpret the passage or try to explain it, this woman shows up in the Gospels, twice, with her determined love for her daughter and her quick wit and her faith in Jesus and her belief that she belongs in the room even if she can’t be at the table. She also shows us that even the ones who should know this have to be reminded now and then.

I’ve thought of the Syro-Phoenician woman often since that first reading. It made me mad at Jesus the first time I encountered it but now I find it amazing and instructive, even convicting for us in the Church now: perhaps Jesus learned from this moment. A woman taught him and he responded. These sorts of stories in the Gospels can bother us if we believe that God is unmovable. But the whole of scripture shows us something so different: a God who is moved by compassion, a God who can be persuaded, a God who responds, a God who is moving towards us always.

Jesus isn’t the hero in that story even though he ultimately heals the child. Rather, the woman is the hero because she was persistent, she was unrelenting, she was clever, she turned insults into entreaties, she prevailed. She’s also an outsider who showed the insiders how it should be done in the Kingdom of God.

What does that have to do with your question? Well, a lot, actually.

Because some of the biggest issues of the Early Church were issues of inclusion. Who is in? Who is out? What do we have to do to be considered insiders? What makes us Christians?

Are we Jews? Are we Gentiles? What is new wine and what are old wineskins? A lot of the ink in the New Testament was spilled to answer these sorts of questions. There were councils and arguments, divisions and church splits, broken relationships and frustrations, too.

The Law clearly states Gentiles are outsiders! The Law has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ! We are better than them because we were here first! No, no, these outsiders were always part of the plan! Jesus came for the Jews first! In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile! If they want to be in, they have to be circumcised and become Jews! Over my dead body are you going to add anything like circumcision to the finished work of Jesus Christ! (That last one was Paul.)

To the Early Church initially, there was one way of doing things according to the Law, according to the customs of the day, according to the religious elite who interpreted the Law, according to the culture, according to our understanding of enemies, there are people who are clean and then there are the unclean. Everyone knew this.

And then came Jesus – the same Jesus who early in his public ministry encountered that Syro-Phoenician woman – and then came the Resurrection. And suddenly the old ways of exclusion must bow down to the risen King of Kings who calls everyone our neighbour.

Through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, God inaugurates a whole new world of open doors and generous tables. Second-class citizens belong. Outsiders belong. Despised, cast-out, refugee, immigrant, uncelebrated, oppressed, all find their place at this party. The food we never used to eat tastes good on our tongue, the people we never used to speak to become our dearest friends, the homes we wouldn’t enter become our place of belonging. This is reconciliation and we’ve only just begun.

The penny was in the air for me for a long time, much like it is for you over this question.

I spent a long time actively re-examining my beliefs and opinions about Christians who were queer. I wanted to know: all sorts of things: was it sinful? what is a path of flourishing for gay Christians? what does this mean for our churches? what about marriage? could LGBTQ+ people be a part of the Body of Christ, fully and completely? Would welcoming LGBTQ+ people into our community as fully functioning members be any different than welcoming the people who were divorced and now remarried – can a Plan B be beautiful? Is there a “foul line” of marriage and ordination? (Now it grieves me that this was part of my process, that bias was so implicit in my faith, but I am committed to telling the truth.) We aren’t alone – this is a question that a lot of believers are asking these days.

So, I read and studied the scriptures vigorously. I examined original languages and read testimonies from all sides of all issues. I studied hermeneutics from conservatives and liberals and those in the space between. I read books and had conversations, I weighed arguments. I listened and I learned. I prayed. I sought counsel. I waited, a lot. I listened to LGBTQ+ believers about their own convictions and experiences, several of whom had not themselves landed at an affirming position or were committed to lives of celibacy. I understood so much in my head, had all the arguments, knew all the verses and interpretations. This is good and earnest work – I hope you take your time to do it well. It’s worthwhile.

But I sense that this isn’t the question you’re asking me, not really. You have access to the same books and theologians as me. A quick google search gives you books to read, right? So instead I’ll tell you this: even after all that study, all that conversation, all that learning, the penny hovered in the air for me still.

Intellectually, I was mostly there. I became affirming of marriage equality in the civil sense, I understood that “gay” and “Christian” were not opposites. I moved forward in many ways. I publicly came out in support of marriage equality ten years ago and wrote openly about that.

But in my spirit, in my heart, I still sensed a barrier. And I also sensed somehow that the barrier was only the Holy Spirit’s to remove, not mine.

So I waited. I practiced inclusion from a practical sense and waited on God’s transformation for my heart along with my mind. My behaviour and practices were modified: I still needed God’s transforming power.

Then one day years ago, I was out of town preaching at a large church in the Midwest. The day was incredibly full with meetings and sessions, capped off with a crowded and noisy women’s event. Before the event began, I met a woman who came over to me with a warm smile who introduced herself as a friend of a friend.

Immediately, I was drawn to her warmth and her quick laugh, her obvious love for Jesus and the Church. She practically glowed with joy and radiated peace. I have met women like her in many places all around the world – to me, they’re women who know what it is to walk with Jesus. Have you ever met a woman like this? For some reason, we can just sense the presence of heaven on them and we are drawn to them. Whenever the Gospels talk about how people were drawn to Jesus, I get it because I meet people like this all the time, people who make me want to walk with Jesus because of how they walk with Jesus. They are winsome in the best sense of the word.

Anyway, I preached my sermon. Then I stood at the altar and ministered to women for more than two hours through prayer and conversation. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the woman I had met earlier in the night sitting patiently to the side, keeping an eye on me. Sometimes that sort of thing will make me nervous – is someone spoiling for a scrap? is this a stalker situation? But on that day, I visibly relaxed: I knew instinctively that she was praying for me as I prayed for others.

I don’t mind telling you that I was wiped out by the end of the night. I love what I do and it’s a tremendous honour, but this introvert was ready to fall to the floor out of exhaustion. There was nothing left in the tank, I was poured out.

When the last attendee had left the room, the woman who had waited came over to me and gave me a quick hug. Then she said, “I don’t know if you know this but I’m a pastor. You have prayed for so many women tonight and I would love to pray for you. Can I pray for you?”

Of course, I said yes but I was unprepared for what happened next. She reached up and placed her hands on both sides of my head, almost like she was anointing me, like an old Pentecostal preacher would lay hands on someone.

And she began to pray with such authority, such anointing, such tenderness, that I began to weep. She prayed prophetically and pastorally, identifying areas of exhaustion and depletion in me, speaking words of life and goodness and abundance to my parched soul. By the time she was done, I felt not only deeply seen by God but deeply loved. She was a conduit for the Holy Spirit that night. I left the event feeling incredibly grateful for that divine encounter. I have never before or since been so struck by the clear anointing of a “pastor” in the truest sense of the word.

In the years afterwards, this woman and I struck up a friendship of sorts, emailing occasionally to check on each other, praying for one another, becoming friends on social media, that sort of thing. My instincts about her were right on: she was an incredible woman of God and a good human being. Eventually I learned that in addition to being a powerful and mighty woman of God, in addition to being an anointed pastor, in addition to being a devoted follower of Jesus, in addition to being kind and bold, faithful and content, funny and compassionate and godly, she was also a lesbian.

And just like that, the penny dropped.

All the study, all the footnotes, all the scholars, went from being a jumble of intellectual opinions to a lived experience in one encounter with the Holy Spirit alongside a beloved sister in Christ. I was transformed. All of a sudden my arguments and thesis and references – while helpful to get me to that place of openness – became secondary to the obvious truth staring me right in the face and praying.

My own encounter there reminds me of something in Acts 10, an angel surprised an Italian centurion named Cornelius. Cornelius was a good man, a prayerful and compassionate and well-respected good man. The angel showed up in his home and told him that his goodness and faithfulness had caught the eye of God and so he had a message for him: find Peter and invite him to come over.

That was it.

Yes, our same impossible Peter, the impulsive speak-first-think-later disciple who walked with Jesus, had become an influential leader in the Early Church by now. The angel tells Cornelius to find Peter and even tells him where he’s staying – in a town called Joppa at the home of Simon the Tanner. So Cornelius does what he’s told, he sends his people to Simon the Tanner’s house in Joppa to find Peter and to ask him to come over to his house. We’ll pick it up from the author of Acts, Luke, right there:

“Peter went out on the balcony to pray. It was about noon. Peter got hungry and started thinking about lunch. While lunch was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the skies open up. Something that looked like a huge blanket lowered by ropes at its four corners settled on the ground. Every kind of animal and reptile ad bird you could think of was on it. Then a voice came: “Go to it, Peter – kill and eat.”

Peter said, “Oh, no, Lord. I’ve never so much as tasted food that was not kosher.”

The voice came a second time: “If God says it’s okay, it’s okay.” This happened three times, and then the blanket was pulled back up into the sky.

As Peter, puzzled, sat there trying to figure out what it all meant, the men sent by Cornelius showed up at Simon’s front door. They called in, asking if there was a Simon, also called Peter, staying there. Peter, lost in thought, didn’t hear them, so the Spirit whispered to him, “Three men are knocking at the door looking for you. Get down there and go with them. Don’t ask any questions, I sent them to get you.⁠”

The reason Peter is disoriented by this vision is because it goes against pretty much everything he has been taught about food as a Jew. Levitical law makes it quite clear what is clean and unclean: Peter, like most devout Jews, keeps kosher. He would never eat something that Almighty God had clearly stated was unclean.

So what was God up to here? Suddenly those laws are…what…up for debate? What could this vision mean?

Of course, this moment wasn’t out of character for how Jesus had interacted with the Law: after all, he often challenged strict Sabbath-keeping laws, pointing out that the Sabbath was for the people, not the people for the Sabbath. In one instance, he takes the Pharisees to task for being so concerned with the outside of the cup that they forget it’s what is inside the cup that actually matters⁠ implying that we could keep all the laws impeccably but still be unredeemed in our hearts and minds and souls.

The laws that matter so much to the religious elite and the culture at large is important to Jesus of course but not at the expense of humanity. Jesus often tells us, “You have heard it said, but I say…” He always takes us further into God’s redemption and holiness, love and peace-making than we are prepared to go sometimes.

In so many ways, Jesus reveals all the ways we had misunderstood and mischaracterized and misinterpreted God. He shows us what God is really like, what God’s heart truly is.

We thought God was one particular way: it turns out that God is a father standing on the porch, spotting his ungrateful and sinful son while he’s still far away.

It turns out God runs down the driveway with his coat billowing behind him, his arms wide open, his eyes full of tears, to throw his arms around the child who broke his heart.

Back to Peter. He greets the men, invites them into the home to stay, and the next morning, he goes with them to see Cornelius.

You see? Peter hasn’t even met Cornelius yet but already he is changing – the penny is in the air. A devout Jew never would have invited those three men to stay in their home. That’s a level of intimacy you can’t have with outsiders. Gentiles weren’t welcome. And a Jew certainly wouldn’t have gone into the homes of non-Jews. It simply didn’t happen.

So Peter shows up at Cornelius’ house the next day and after a while asks him what he sent for him. Cornelius tells him that an angel visited him and that the angel told him to find Peter. “So tell me your message!” he says to Peter, no doubt looking at him with expectation. You’re up!

That’s when the penny drops. Peter nearly jumps out of his skin with revelation.

The vision suddenly makes sense to him: the Spirit had set them both up!

The story says, “Peter fairly exploded with his good news: “It’s God’s own truth, nothing could be plainer: God plays no favourites! It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open. The Message he sent to the children of Israel—that through Jesus Christ everything is being put together again—well, he’s doing it everywhere, among everyone.”⁠

He goes on to tell Cornelius and his household – Gentiles! – the good news of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit falls on the whole room and all of the Gentiles are filled to overflowing – they are speaking in tongues, praising God, having their own little mini-Pentecost there in the home of a Gentile. It’s the craziest thing. Peter wants to baptize them with water so he turns to the other Jews in the room who also follow Jesus and checks with them: any objections? I mean, we don’t usually baptize these kinds of folks but what could they say? Between Peter’s vision and Cornelius’s vision and the obvious infilling of the Holy Spirit, let’s make what is obvious official, sure, and so everyone is baptized. As Lin-Manuel Miranda would say, the “experiment sets a precedent.”

This moment was not only for Cornelius’ sake: yes, he was saved; yes, he became a follower of Jesus and ultimately is baptized. That would be enough.

But this was also for Peter’s sake and for the sake of the Gospel and for our sake now, too: now we know God’s heart. The vision wasn’t just about clean or unclean food, the vision was about people!  Gentiles are in, we’re all in. The outsiders are now insiders, too.

There is no more “clean” and “unclean” – Jesus is Lord for all, not just some.

As Peter shouted in that room, God plays no favourites. The door is open. Jesus opened the door for everyone, not just the Jews. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life; he’s the gate and the latch is open. He’s doing it everywhere, among everyone.

I’ve always liked that story.

The more time I spent with gay Christians whose lives were fully submitted to Jesus just like mine, who were pursuing goodness and wholeness and discipleship, who were fully alive in the Spirit, the more I felt like Peter in Cornelius’s house, ready to explode with the good news that we are all welcome at the Table of the Lord! I have been hollering like Peter, “It’s God’s own truth, nothing could be plainer: God plays no favourites! It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open.” Hallelujah!

I’m foolish enough to believe that Jesus meant it when he said they – the world – would know us by our love. As Paul said, may our roots go down deep into the soil of his marvellous love. We may very well be surprised by who is bearing the fruit against which there is no law, by whose leaves are for the flourishing of the nations.

We might find ourselves on rooftops, dreaming dreams, only to walk downstairs with the scary opportunities to make those dreams come true.

The resurrection and life of Jesus Christ means that we’ve been grafted in, we’re adopted in, we’re all part of the family. The litmus tests from Leviticus or from a racial or cultural or ethnic grouping or perhaps another standard like circumcision or rituals aren’t a replacement for the finished generous work of Christ. God is gathering the family right in. The peace has been brokered: we’re at peace with God and now we’re also at peace with each other.

So much of the Apostle Paul’s writing was precisely because he believed in the welcome of God for everyone. He loved the outsiders because he believed with all his heart that they belonged, they were insiders to Jesus even if they were outsiders to the empire or to the religious elite, and that was what mattered. Paul is often the bible’s liberating voice of freedom and inclusion, determined to see the Church fully accept and integrate the very outsiders they were conditioned and taught to despise, to fear, to shun. Paul had a conservative sexual ethic, absolutely.

To be honest with you, I do still hold to a deeply Christian sexual ethic, an understanding of fidelity, faithfulness, purity, constancy, love, honour, concern, etc. far beyond mere consent. In my understanding and experience, it’s a path of flourishing. It’s just that I believe we’re all welcome to that ethic, it’s not just straight folks like myself. I believe that LGBTQ+ people are fully welcome to the life of Christ, to walk together with us, to lead us, to build healthy thriving marriages and families, to be discipled in the fruit of the Spirit, in prayer and communion and worship and community. Marriage, baptism, family, discipleship, communion, ordination, vocation, everything good about being humans following Jesus is open to us all without exception. And those who do not follow Jesus are also worthy of love, safety, security, respect, kindness, and full rights of inclusion, too.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes that we’re in it together. The old ways of division and separation and suspicion have passed away because Jesus has brought us together. We’re equals before Christ and so we’re equals with one another. The old prejudices and boundaries and privileges are meaningless to us, we’re renewing our minds to God’s truth: we share the same spirit of Christ. He writes to this church of Gentiles, “You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all – irrespective of how we got here – in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day – a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.”⁠

The Church hasn’t done this well. Sometimes we’ve been an utter failure at it. We’ve been complicit in racism, in sexism, in colonialism, in abuse, in war, in persecution. This should sober us and make us wary of any instinct we have to turn a neighbour into an outsider, any knee-jerk reaction we have to excluding someone else from the goodness of God we’re experiencing.

This is life of the resurrection, too: a life of welcome to outsiders. In a world of boundary markers and who-is-in-and-I-want-them-out, we are part of the new world. We know that we were outsiders ourselves – we all were. That’s the point. None of us could save ourselves. But Jesus inaugurates this new world where all of us outsiders become insiders. And we live in a kingdom of hearts and minds now where we embody that by gathering the very ones that no one else wants and pulling them in, whispering, you belong right here with us. Oh, following Jesus is inconvenient sometimes.

There is always a moment of invitation. The penny is in the air. That’s okay. We meet our own version of Cornelius or the Syro-Phoenician woman or whomever. People, relationship, listening, love, this is what causes the penny to drop. All the work God has done to prepare us for this moment, to prepare us to confront our own definitions of outsiders, our own biases, our own prejudices, our own “but not them surely!” collides with the real people right in front of us and our experiences with the God who plays no favourites.

Proximity changes us.

And besides, if someone draws a line saying, “you’re out” I think the Christian response is to go step outside of the line in solidarity with the ones we want to leave out.

If someone creates a wall and says “only insiders here,” a follower of Jesus sets up camp outside the walls.

Our place is with the outsiders, creating a home of goodness and welcome, hospitality and laughter, truth and kindness, love and gentleness in the wilderness. The song we’re singing is that we all belong in Jesus and we all belong together.⁠

I’m an imperfect ally but I’ve been learning and practicing, committed to this path for years now. It has cost me – it has recently cost me my church, it has cost me friendships, it has cost me professional opportunities – and I would pay every price over and over and over again to be in holy solidarity with LGBTQ+ believers (who suffer at the hands of our churches and our culture in a way that makes my paltry sacrifices look laughable) and to be alongside of each other as we all follow Jesus.

So remember to sit down at the feet of those who have suffered, those for whom this isn’t theory or theology, those for whom this isn’t an exercise in thought or opinion but their real lived life, the ones who, as Broderick Greer says, “engage in theology as a matter of survival” and I say, “I’m here to learn from you. Lead me. I will listen to you. I will respect your story. I will submit myself to the margins.”

I don’t write or speak or “lead” in this lane publicly very often because I want to centre the work of others and amplify their voices instead. There are SO MANY good folks to listen to but rather than overwhelm I’ll simply point you towards a few of my own favourite books and you can consider this a launching pad:

• Jeff Chu, my friend and brother. His book “Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Search for God in America” is wonderful.
• The Rev. Emmy Kegler‘s book “One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins” was one of my favourites this year.
• Matthew Vines‘ “God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships” (Matthew’s viral video sermon was the one that played a significant role in Rachel Held Evans’ initial exploration of becoming affirming)
• The one I most frequently recommend to people and churches as their first starting point is Dr. David P. Gushee‘s “Changing Our Minds.”
• And Vicky Beeching‘s “Undivided: Coming Out, Becoming Whole, and Living Free from Shame” is a memoir and a good read.
• One final one is based here in Canada but it’s got a lot of online resources if you wish to start there. Generous Space Ministries is a lovely community of people.

I hope that helps. This is just a snippet of the path for me, hardly the whole story but we’ll wrap it up – the Spirit has you on a path already. May you be accompanied by the Spirit as you keep walking in the fresh air.

I wish you well on your journey. There are many of us out here, waiting for you. I know the penny is in the air – that’s a holy space to be. When it drops, let me know.

Love S.

The post Penny in the Air: My Story of Becoming Affirming appeared first on Sarah Bessey. And check out Sarah Bessey's critically acclaimed new book, "Jesus Feminist." “I’ve read countless books addressing the place of women in the kingdom, and I have never, ever read anything so lovely, so generous, profound and humble as Jesus Feminist. If you’re expecting anger or defensiveness or aggression, move on. If you are looking for intelligence and warmth and spirit, read this immediately." - Jen Hatmaker, author of "7: A Mutiny Against Excess" and "Interrupted"

I’m a knitter.

Yes, I mean actual knitting – yarn, needles, piles of knitting pattern books based on literary heroines, fibre strands clinging to my black clothes, first-name-basis with the local yarn shop, Ravelry member kind of knitter.

People must love to shop with me because I go around pointing out everything I can make myself.

I’m a delight.

I began knitting as an adult. My granny attempted to teach me when I was a child but it was a non-starter. She didn’t like to knit herself, much preferring gardening or baking (she was my hero: when I’m 85, I hope I’m also subsisting on baking and strawberries while reading cowboy novels). Also she did not like teaching children to do things. So I squeaked some acrylic onto a needle for a painful afternoon: when I decided knitting was tedious and boring, she sighed with relief and went back to her garden. 

In what I can only now credit to a hormonal delusion, when I was pregnant with my second child about ten years ago, I resolved to take up knitting. I had a year of maternity leave from work ahead of me and I wanted to learn something.

I began the way we usually do in this age: YouTube. I watched tutorials and held my needles awkwardly in my hands, attempting to follow the soothing-voices and capable hands of the knitting teachers online. I never got the hang of it. It seemed impossible and hard – how could one possibly make lovely things out string and sticks and codes? I peeked into knitting pattern books and it was a foreign language of acronyms and numbers.

Sidenote: I bet that the reason the British government knew women would make excellent codebreakers at Bletchley Park during World War II is because someone high up in the military happened to catch sight of a shawl knitting pattern and thought, “Whoever can decipher that shawl pattern could probably defeat Hitler.” 

After my son was born, I took myself over to an elderly lady who owned a rundown hole-in-the-wall knitting shop in my neighbourhood. I signed up for a knitting class and – because this is what sisters do to each other – I signed up my poor sister as well. She was six months pregnant herself then. I am sure she was very grateful to me because there was nothing she wanted more for the last trimester of a cold winter pregnancy than to spend her Saturday afternoons perched on a metal folding chair in the backroom of a knitting shop, hunched over needles while Shirley rolled her eyes at our ineptitude. Bless my own heart. And hers.

Yet we managed to learn how to knit. Once I knew how to knit, all I wanted to do was knit. I confessed to Nancy, who worked in Shirley’s shop, that I didn’t want to do anything else. She nodded knowingly. “I’ve been knitting for fifty years,” she said, “and I would take it into the shower with me if I could.”

I’ve knit scarves and cowls, a tea cosy that looked like an owl and fingerless mittens, toques and baskets for baby soothers. I’ve counted stitches for countless baby sweaters and bonnets and booties for all of my own children as well as every new baby in our circle. I once knitted a cozy for our French press coffee which Brian thought was going a bit far. I make sweaters and shawls, cowls and facecloths.

Once I flew too high and attempted a lovely smoking sweater for my husband (who does not and never has smoked): I’m sure I followed the pattern properly but somehow he ended up with buttons popping off around the chest and oversized arms dangling down to his knees.

We never speak of it.

Knitting has become a joy for me. I love the work itself – it is tactile and it forces me to be present there in the moment, to pay full attention. It’s humble and repetitive, challenging and meditative. I love to create beautiful things that people love. I love seeing my daughters in the sweaters I knit for them (my son despises handknits so feel free to put him on the church prayer chain, thanks). I love sending baby sweaters in the mail to friends. I love to pray for people while I knit for them.

I also love the creativity of knitting – choosing colours, finding patterns, adapting them, the texture and feel of the yarn, the way certain colours look in the light. I find this liminal place of creativity and creation and work, all dancing together.

When I’m in a good writing stretch, I feel the same way I do when I’m knitting: at peace and fully present. I find that space between striving and resting where my mind is active and my hands are doing what they were meant to do and something that wasn’t there before is taking shape. I love my work and I can get lost in it, forgetting to eat, to drink, to stretch. When I finish a good stretch of writing, I feel spent and satisfied.

My husband says he feels that same way when he’s working on a house project. He loves to drywall, lay floors, cut baseboards, build furniture. He loves how he feels when he’s doing it, like he’s at peace in his soul and his mind because his hands are busy and he’s creating something good. The act of creativity is as much of a gift as the product of the creativity.

So much of our lives are what Eugene Peterson characterized as a “long obedience in the same direction” with no real finish line: parenting, marriage building, discipleship, friendships, growing up, making the world right. We simply keep going, building lives and worlds by the day.

But with writing and with knitting (and my husband would say with his projects), I feel the rare joy of completion. When I’m done, I step back and say, “Look at what I’ve created. It wasn’t there before but now it’s here.” This is immensely satisfying.

I’ve read that knitting in this day and age is a feminist act. We are reclaiming the work of our grandmothers, declaring it just as worthy as the work typically described as a “man’s work.” We are making subversive cross-stitch and opening bakeries and canning our own food as a big rejection of GMOs. Most of our mothers or grandmothers were set free from the obligation of these things – baking bread, knitting socks, sewing dresses, preserving, quilting – and for that I’m thankful. (I bake my own bread every now and again – I always end up proclaiming that the price of bread has suddenly become quite reasonable to me.)

But now that we’ve been set free from the drudge requirement of the work, we can return to it as empowered choice. We engage voluntarily, as a choice, eager to work with our hands again, to slow down, to create. Making time for that side of ourselves, loving and honouring our creativity also honours our mothers and grandmothers, our fathers and grandfathers. Knowing how to do things yourself honours your own capacity and the line of time that stretches back.

It’s an act of reclamation. Cooking, gardening, sewing, painting, writing, baking, quilt-making, preserving, handmade furniture: this sort of work isn’t menial or degrading but life-affirming and beautiful and necessary. It’s also a helluva a lot of fun sometimes.

We make things. We make them because perhaps we’re made by a Maker. My friend’s Coast Salish tradition refers to God as “Creator” which is so beautiful and invitational to me. Creator made the world and celebrated – “it’s good!”  

Madeleine L’Engle wrote in her excellent book Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, “The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.” We’re bringing order out of chaos, beauty out of emptiness, something out of nothing, and so we’re glorifying Creator, we’re reflecting Creator, we’re testifying to Creator.

I think a lot of people forget about creativity, about making things, because it seems easier to leave it for the professionals. Much like we’ve professionalized being a Christian, we’ve professionalized being creatives. Unless we are getting paid to do it, we’re happy to outsource it or accept a big-box version to fill the spaces – we’ve got bills to pay and laundry to fold and a world to save.

Who has time to knit a baby sweater when a store-bought one will suffice? Who bothers writing a book when everything has been written already? Who bothers painting a mountain when thrift stores are stuffed with mountain landscapes? Who dares to write a play while Lin-Manuel Miranda exists? Who sings around the campfire when you could watch The Voice?

It takes hubris and hope to create; the good news is that we all have it. It also makes us more human. We are conditioned now to be consumers: it feels good to be a creator in some small capacity.

Kurt Vonnegut writes, “They [the arts] are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

This reminds me of a story from almost a year ago, near Valentine’s Day. I am not that sort of crafty so we always pick up a box of store-made Valentines for my children to scrawl their friends’ names on and hand out at school. No mess, no fuss. This has worked for years now: we’ve given away little cards with Star Wars characters and Disney princess stickers.

But that year, one of our tinies was determined to make her own. I didn’t know that was her project when she disappeared to the art table with a stack of computer paper and the marker box. Two hours later, she appeared with mismatched squares of paper, each one with a unique picture on it and her childish printing. She had made a special Valentine for every kid in her class, based on what they liked. She drew the Minecraft zombie for Ethan, Moana on her boat for Avery. One after another, she had communicated her love for her friends and her own creativity and thoughtfulness in a deeply personal way.

Like an idiot, I said, ‘Oh, honey, you didn’t have to do that! I would have picked up the store bought ones.”

And she said, “Mum, don’t you know? making things makes me happier than buying things.”

Back to my sticks and string – one could make the argument that knitting nowadays is impractical. With cheap mass-produced goods at every box store or luxury brands in expensive shops, why bother to take the time and the money to create your own hand knits? Quality yarn can be a bit pricey and it takes time and attention to knit. Surely one could do something else with that time and that money.

One could make that same argument for writing. After all, the world hardly needs another book. My creativity isn’t likely needed by the world in the strictest sense. Or for the song you’re writing or the quilt you’re piecing or the chair you’re building or the poem you’re writing or the room you’re designing or the paper you’re writing or the meal you’re cooking from scratch. Why bother planting a garden when you can buy your food at the store? Why bother baking bread? Piecing quilts? Painting canvases in the garage while the baby naps? Coding a game? Making Valentines?

But we do it anyway. I think we were made for creativity by Creator and so the work brings us joy as much as the result. I’ve seen creativity in more than just fibre arts and the written word: I’ve met creative coders, out of the box business builders, imaginative project managers, doctors with ingenuity, resourceful teachers, pastors with vision for creative community. We were made to create, to make, to build, to love it.

Homemade creating teaches us something about being human that purchasing everything from someone else simply can’t teach. I want to make more room for creativity in my life this year – I want to prioritize it not only for my own fun but for my wholeness.

We aren’t fully practicing resurrection without the useless goodness of making things.

I’ve stopped asking whether or not anyone needs my writing or my knitting. Because I need it. I do it because I was made to it, because it makes me feel fully alive to do it. Because I’m working out what God has already worked in. Because I believe even a knitting pattern brings glory to God. Because this life was redeemed by Jesus and this is a bit of redemption right now. It’s a bit of beauty and wholeness, an act of discipleship to Creator, a resistance of professionalization and commercialization to simply take time to participate in the wonder of stepping back to pronounce something as entirely good.

Because we were made by Creator who delights in pine trees and primroses, people and purling.

The post Knit One, Purl Joy appeared first on Sarah Bessey. And check out Sarah Bessey's critically acclaimed new book, "Jesus Feminist." “I’ve read countless books addressing the place of women in the kingdom, and I have never, ever read anything so lovely, so generous, profound and humble as Jesus Feminist. If you’re expecting anger or defensiveness or aggression, move on. If you are looking for intelligence and warmth and spirit, read this immediately." - Jen Hatmaker, author of "7: A Mutiny Against Excess" and "Interrupted"

It’s been humbling and it has felt like nothing is working and it’s all uphill and you’re wondering why you even bother. It has felt like two steps-forward-one-step-back. It has reminded you over and over again that you are not in charge because if you were, you would surely run the universe better than this. It has swept aside your evangelical hero complex. It has disabused you of your idealism, leaving you a path only through reality. There is more grief than you thought you could bear. It’s messier than you thought it would be. It has proven more complex than you could have imagined. It has hurt like hell. And it has felt futile and ineffective.

People talk about “Victory!” but sometimes it takes all of our energy to just keep not quitting. 

Oh, there are days of hope, too.

There are days of excellence and abundance. There are moments of brilliance and flashes of renewal.

There are times when you get a glimpse – just a glimpse – of the abundant life you believe in so deeply. You are daring to stand between what is and what will be and what longs to be, you know this.

There are times when right in the middle of the hard and the impossible you find yourself thinking, “I’ve never felt more alive and I’ve never been happier than right now.”

There are moments when you feel the needle moving, when you feel the arch of the universe actually bending towards justice and love and shalom.

There are days when you feel like you’re in the right lane and you feel a whole cloud of witnesses cheering for the race you are running.

But other days….well, the heavens are rather silent and you feel like you are plodding along in a dirt track without an end game.

We know we’re more than conquerors. We should be strong and courageous. We know that we will reap a mighty harvest if we faint not. We know that with God all things are possible.

Those grand words can feel far away from our lived reality sometimes.

And then the greatest act of faith I have in my arsenal is my stubbornness.

Keep not quitting. 

Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep showing up. Keep praying, keep standing, keep working.

Even if there are days like today, days when you feel like the only success was that you didn’t quit, then you are still there – I call that a victory of its own.

You are working the muscles of perseverance and selflessness, of service and dogged hopefulness. You are a sticker. You’re not someone who shows up when it’s easy and leaves when it’s time to dig in. You are committed to seeing mountains move. You are not undone by powers and principalities. You are choosing life.

You are declaring in a defiant act of faith that there is no futility, not to God’s economy where nothing – not even our failures and our discouragement and our disillusionment – is wasted..

Victory doesn’t always look how we thought it would: sometimes the victory is the seed that falls to the ground and dies for new life to be born. Some rewards only come after faithfulness. An old preacher used to say, “Without battles, there is no victory.”

This is not the end. Keep not quitting for today at least.

Cultivate joy and rest and renewal as an act of resistance.

Don’t underestimate faithfulness – or stubbornness. 

Small acts of faith are still acts of faith.

Keep not quitting: holding fast in the face of the storms and the silence and the sorrow is its own sort of victory.

The post Keep Not Quitting appeared first on Sarah Bessey. And check out Sarah Bessey's critically acclaimed new book, "Jesus Feminist." “I’ve read countless books addressing the place of women in the kingdom, and I have never, ever read anything so lovely, so generous, profound and humble as Jesus Feminist. If you’re expecting anger or defensiveness or aggression, move on. If you are looking for intelligence and warmth and spirit, read this immediately." - Jen Hatmaker, author of "7: A Mutiny Against Excess" and "Interrupted"

Here we go, sister, let’s do this right from the start: I pray that Love will rise in you and through you. I pray for you to know Love deeply and intimately, that you will have a hunger and a thirst for the More of God. I pray that you would be satisfied by Love, that you would make your home in Love, that you would make Love your discipline, your resting place, your practice, your doctrine, your plumb line, and your identity.

I pray for you to have a finely tuned ear for the voice of the Holy Spirit. So that when you walk, you would hear that voice whispering “this is the way, walk in it” and so you would walk forward unafraid.” (Isaiah 30:21)

I pray that you would be a woman who celebrates other women. I pray for fancy champagne glasses filled with sparkling apple juice around your table and milestones to celebrate. May you push back on that old lie that women are insecure and jealous by how you love and champion other women.

I pray that you would be a voice of truth and boldness. I pray you would wrestle with your own story until you own it, body and soul, and have learned how to make it sing.

I pray for you to be a woman of possibility and hope, a woman who rises above cynicism and bitterness into a never-wearying never-backing-down resolution.

When you are distrustful of other women, I pray that you would be surprised by the sneaky goodness of God, that somehow real sisterhood sort of friendship would sneak up on you in a haphazard and organic way, without the striving and the organizing, without the Official Sanctioned Church Programs To Make Ladies Be Friends. I pray that the right women would come in your life at the right time, I pray you’ll stay open to finding them, may you always be watching for hints of your people.

I pray you would be surrounded by women who know what it is to love and to champion and to celebrate, by women who are dreamers and schemers, who live a bit outside of the Good Christian Lady Box. I pray someone clutches their pearls over you. May you be tireless and may you know what it is to rest well.

I pray for spiritual midwives in your life, women who will breathe alongside of you as you are giving birth to the new you over and over again. I pray for friends and for mentors, for authors and leaders, for preachers and policy makers, for mothers and a few saucy aunties, for the daughters of your body or of your heart, may you join hands in the rising. May you be alongside of women who invite you to go deeper, who make you more real, more honest, who know who you are without make-up or masks. 

May you learn and challenge and grow. May you reclaim curiosity and wisdom and knowledge. I pray for acceptance letters and scholarships, for opportunities to do the work you love to do and I pray for equal pay when you do it!

I pray for a long life of content for a page-turning biography to enchant and inspire and maybe scandalize the generation coming up behind you.

I pray that the women of your lineage of faith will inspire you. May you know their stories in scripture and in history and in your own circles: may you be curious about other women and amplify their influence. May you find good leaders to follow, good leaders who will influence you, call you out, mentor you, coach you, teach you, challenge you, push you.

We call out the sins of violence, rape, abuse, torture, against all women. No more. May you be a woman who is safe, a woman who does not fear, a woman who builds safety and security for other women, too. We call out the economic injustices, the educational inequalities, the maternal mortality, patriarchy, movements designed to baptize inequality in sacred language, the forced prostitution, the sex trafficking, all of the countless ways that the image of God in women is abused and mistreated and broken or diminished. We call it out and name it for what it is – sin! powers! principalities! systemic evil! injustice! – and we cast it down, in the name of Jesus. I pray that you would continue casting it down with your whole life. We pray that they will be weakened in the world, cast away, broken, and dismantled forever. May we work to call these things out and to dismantle them from our world … and from our own hearts.

I pray that the places where this world has broken you, where evil has left its mark, where you have felt abandoned and broken and hurt, where you are in pain would become a wellspring of healing and wholeness for you. I pray for the desert to bloom with flowers. I pray for the dry parched earth to be filled with cleansing rain and healing waters. I pray for your healing, sister, and I pray for your wholeness. I pray for your boldness, I pray for your voice to rise. May you witness a new thing brewing. And may your very place of death become a story of unexpected resurrection.

Right from Pentecost, the Church has known that the mistreatment and dehumanization or devaluing of women was not and never would be part of God’s plan and purpose for women and so may you be moved to act for justice in both big and small ways in your life. May you find your place in the big story of redemption, rescue, and renewal that God is weaving together.

I pray for you to remember the big story of women in the world and to pay attention to their voices, to elevate and empower and affirm them as worthy and valuable just as you are worthy and valuable. I pray you would become what N.T. Wright called a parable of hope, right in your life right now.

I pray you would participate in the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God, the setting things right of our co-creation with Jesus. I pray that you would rise up to prophesy to God’s new world with your words and your life.

Hear me now: you have not been called to the people-pleasing life, to the approval seeking life, to the bow-down-and-give-up life or to the sit-down-and-shut-up life. No! You have been called to the peace-making life, the truth-telling life, the mighty in words and deeds life, the fearless life, the she-who-the-Son-sets-free-is-free-indeed life. You have been called to the spirit-filled and God-breathed life so may you live out the ways of Jesus into every corner of your womanhood, always with an eye on who is alongside of you, ahead of you, and coming up behind you.

May you know how deeply you are loved by God. May you know deep in your lungs that every breath is carrying the mark of your the breath of God from the Garden to the Ascension. May you, as Paul wrote, firmly plant your feet on love, taking in with all the followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. That you would reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Living full lives, full in the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:18-19 MSG).

I pray that you would go further than we have ever gone, that you would be bolder than we have ever been, to be braver, to preach the Gospel of freedom and goodness and welcome fearlessly. You will go where we cannot go and we are praising God for you, sister.

I pray that you would remember the truth of who you are. That you would know you are valuable, you are loved, you are worthy – not because of what you do or what you say or what you accomplish, not because of how men perceive you or desire you, not because you of how you look or dress, not because of your income, not because you are (or are not) a mother – but simply because you, sister, you were made in the image of God.

May you turn to Jesus as your teacher and your shepherd. Don’t outsource the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. You’re not under anyone’s umbrella, you need no mediator or go-between, you are standing boldly before the throne of grace on your own soul’s two feet before God.

May you pay attention to your anger and to your joy. Your calling is hiding somewhere at that intersection. I pray you would be a friend to the poor, to the oppressed, to the marginalized – not just an ally, not just an activist, not just a listener, but a friend.

May you seek and create beauty – that’s Kingdom work, too.

Stop waiting for permission, sister: it’s time. I pray you would rise up with your gifts and your words, your passion and your insight, your skill and your brain, your perspective and your history, full in the fullness of God.

There is real evil in this world, may you be a prophetic outpost for the Kingdom of God, living into the abundance of God in your life. The resistance will come but you will stand.

And when you find the invitations from the Holy Spirit, when you feel Jesus alongside of you whispering “Pick up your mat and walk” I pray that you jump up and run after wherever he’s headed.

I’ll pray these words from our brother Paul over you, too, from his letter to the Romans: “Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.”

In the name of Jesus, I pray that you would have the guts to follow where Jesus is leading. I pray for freedom to reign. I pray for you to find your place in a sisterhood of grace and freedom.

May you relearn the ways you’ve missed it. May you be both the teacher and student, open to learning. May you be given opportunities to repent and to ask forgiveness, to embrace the hard blessings of forgiveness sought and received and offered.

I pray that you would cultivate joy and learn to embrace sorrow. Rather than trading shot for shot or rage for rage or despair for despair, you would step out of the cycle of death and walk straight out onto the water, eyes fixed on Jesus, making a way where there was no way.

I pray against the temptations of silence and despair and numb anger: I pray that you would run the race that is set before you, that you would flourish in your lane while cheering on every other runner alongside of you. I pray that you would look fear in the face and speak up anyway. I pray that you would look hopelessness in the face and be the voice declaring the hope of the Lord for the redemption and rescue and renewal of all things.

I pray for you when you are tired and discouraged, when you feel futile and small and ridiculous, when it is tempting to shrink back and give up, I pray for rest, I pray for renewal, I pray for faith, for fearlessness, for boldness, for new courage, for new vision, for new life to come to you in ways that surprise you and bless you.

And now rest in your God-breathed worth. Stop holding your breath, hiding your gifts, ducking your head, dulling your roar, distracting your soul, stilling your hands, quieting your voice, and satiating your hunger with the lesser things of this world.

You are set apart in your right-now life for the daily work of liberation and love. May you live your life in the cadence of the redeemed and resurrected: others first, pay attention, open heart, work well, rest radically, open doors, live prophetically, make room in your life to be inconvenienced, challenge, love well – be brave together.

It’s in the name of Jesus that we send you out to your right-now  life, sister.

We’re in it together. We’re headed towards the new city and we’re crying out in the gates for Love. May your life rise.

Amen.

Some excerpts of this prayer are found in my book, Jesus Feminist.

image source

The post A Prayer for International Women’s Day appeared first on Sarah Bessey. And check out Sarah Bessey's critically acclaimed new book, "Jesus Feminist." “I’ve read countless books addressing the place of women in the kingdom, and I have never, ever read anything so lovely, so generous, profound and humble as Jesus Feminist. If you’re expecting anger or defensiveness or aggression, move on. If you are looking for intelligence and warmth and spirit, read this immediately." - Jen Hatmaker, author of "7: A Mutiny Against Excess" and "Interrupted"

instagram image credit @kenberd

Jesus made a feminist out of me. 

It’s true.

I can’t make apologies for it, even though I know that Jesus plus feminist might be the one label that could alienate almost everyone. I understand that – I do.

I know the label “Christian” carries a lot of baggage, particularly in these times. There are the 81% of evangelicals who voted for a candidate who is racist, sexist, xenophobic, protectionist, a serial philanderer, and corrupt. There are the stereotypes: the ignorant, the uneducated, the angry, the anti-Muslim homophobes, terrifying us on our late-night television programs, deriding progress and climate change and women’s equality. Christianity has been blamed for wars, for abuse, for justifying evil like slavery and patriarchy, for fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia against refugees, for colonization, and spectacularly bad Nicholas Cage movies. Most of what has passed for a description of Christianity is fear-mongering misinformation.

I know feminism carries a lot of baggage, particularly within the evangelical church. There are the stereotypes: shrill killjoys, man-haters, angry nasty women, and rabid abortion-pushers, terrifying some of us on cable news programs, deriding motherhood and homemaking. Feminism has been blamed for the breakdown of the nuclear family, day care, physical and sexual abuse, hurricanes, the downfall of “real manhood,” the decline of the Christian Church in western society, and spectacularly bad television. Most of what has passed for a description of feminism is fear-mongering misinformation.

In some circles, using the word “Christian” is the equivalent of saying you’re a racist, homophobic, climate-change denying ignoramus ready to storm a women’s health clinic to murder a doctor.

In some circles, using the word “feminist” is the equivalent of  saying you’re an abortion-loving, man-hating, crude, obnoxious radical ready to tear down or mock or destroy everything you hold dear.*

***

Here you are. Stuck in the middle with me.

Maybe we have more in common than we think. Maybe.

***

I identify as part of a group of people who receive their fair share of criticism.

And to be honest I think a lot of the criticism has a grounding in truth.

There are things Christians do that I find wrong and embarrassing and unholy and counter to the Gospel.

There are things feminists do that I find wrong and embarrassing and unholy and counter to the cause.

But here I am. I’m a Christian. And I’m a feminist. 

I’m not fully represented by what those labels mean. They’re imperfect. And I know that the stereotypes of those labels cannot sum up the vast majority of the people I know who live within them.

***

I’m not an apologist for Christianity. I’m not an apologist for feminism. I don’t feel fully at home in either label as they are understood by most of our society these days. 

But here I am, a both-and and not an either-or. And I’m not alone.

The family of God is big and diverse, beautiful and global. So is feminism. So these dogmatic labels, while sometimes useful for discussion in books and classes (not so much on Facebook, tbh) aren’t always the right boundaries for a life or relationship. Most of us live somewhere in between them.

Let’s agree, for just a little while anyway, that both sides are probably wrong and right in some ways. I’m probably wrong, you’re probably wrong, and the opposite is true, because still see through a glass darkly. I want to approach the mysteries of God and the unique experiences of humanity with wonder and humility and a listener’s heart.*

***

There is so much good that Christianity has done and is doing and will do. And it’s fair to say the same thing about feminism. 

All truth is God’s truth. I think we can rejoice for any human flourishing, no matter who claims credit.

It is interesting how the first wave of feminism was deeply rooted in the Christian faith. It was precisely because of their deeply cherished faith that women were compelled to organize for the vote, for women to be declared persons under the law, for the rights of workers, for women to wear pants, for temperance even (because the victims of drunkenness were usually women and children), and so on.

Our roots are more tangled up together than we realize.

The term Jesus Feminist would not have seemed odd or note-worthy, not in the beginning anyway.

***

Confession time: There are Facebook posts by prominent evangelical leaders that make me want to personally organize a new Schism.

Yep, I get upset by people who I think are an embarrassment to the Gospel. I feel angry. I feel like they are doing damage to our witness in the world. I feel ignored and marginalized. I feel like they don’t know Jesus, not really. I feel like the Church is missing it – missing out on all the ways the very people whom they fear or exclude or deride or judge are often the very people with whom Jesus would be spending all of his time.

So I often feel like an outsider in Christianity – because of both my politics and my theology.

But I will always work and pray from within the family to see us rise to who we were meant to be all along, God’s glorious vision for humanity in full shalom. I will never stop working to amplify the voices and experiences of the people on the margins, the people whom Jesus loved: the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden, the sick, the curious, the ignorant, the disrespected. I won’t ever shut up about how much God loves us today in this moment.

And then there are people within the Church who think I don’t belong. They see me as the embarrassment to the Gospel. I make them feel angry. They think I’m doing damage to our witness in the world. They are pretty sure I don’t know Jesus, not really.

I have felt that way about feminism at times, too. I’m embarrassed by it, angered by it, damaged by it, ignored and marginalized. I feel like they don’t know feminism, not really, because it’s supposed to be big and generous and inclusive and welcoming.

So I often feel like an outsider in feminism – because of both my politics and my theology. And then there are a lot of feminists who think I don’t belong and want to keep me – and women of faith like me – out. And yet I will work from within to see more inclusion and more justice, I remain deeply committed to women’s issues and causes, voices and experiences.

I long to see women rise.

***

Our big and good God is at work in the world, and we have been invited to participate fully – however God has gifted and equipped and called each of us. One needn’t identify as a feminist to participate in the redemptive movement of God for women in the world. The Gospel is more than enough – of course it is! But as long as I know how important maternal health is to Haiti’s future, and as long as I know that women are being abused and raped, as long as I know that girls are being denied life itself through selective abortion, abandonment, and abuse, as long as brave little girls in Afghanistan are being attacked with acid for the crime of going to school, and until being a Christian is synonymous with doing something about these things, you can also call me a feminist.*

***

You don’t really know us. 

Oh, you think you do.

You think because you read some biased news stories on Facebook that you have us figured out.

You think because your friends laugh at the same jokes about us that everyone sees it the way you see it.

You think that statistics or the on-the-spot interviews tell the whole story.

You think you know exactly what we think, exactly what we believe, exactly how we vote, exactly how we move through our lives.

And you don’t know. Not really.

Because within us, there are multitudes. There is nuance. There is beauty. There is redemption. There is justice and laughter and community and goodness. There is intelligence and wisdom and knowledge. There is longevity. There is redemption. There is healing. There is history.

On the inside, you’ll find the best people you’ve ever known –  kind, funny, self-deprecating, gentle, bold, wise, peace-makers.

And we have a vast complicated middle who won’t make the news, who won’t write a Facebook rant, who don’t perch in tall stools on news programs; we’re quietly getting on with the business of what we believe and we yearn for love to be our name.

***

Being both a Christian and a feminist can be frustrating. But it’s also a gift. Because I don’t get to indulge in stereotypes. I don’t get to reduce people to caricatures. I have to embody the truth that people are people and love is love and we are all worthy and we all belong.

***

I’m a feminist, sure. But first, last, always, I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ. My first allegiance isn’t to feminism. My first allegiance is to Jesus and his Kingdom.

Some consider this a form of intersectional feminism, others not so much.

Yet I choose to be a feminist in the way that I believe Jesus would be a feminist. 

The ways of the Kingdom of God stand in direct contrast to the ways of the world and our culture. (Sadly, our churches can sometimes resemble our culture instead of Jesus – witness our fascination with militarism, entertainment cults of celebrity, power, materialism, and patriarchal culture and so on.)

When I decided to become a disciple of Jesus, it meant that I wanted to live into my right-now life the way that I believed Jesus would do it. That has led me to many changes in my politics and activism and opinions, how I live out my faith, my marriage and my mothering, my engagement with the Church and community, and all points between.

Because I follow Jesus, I want to see God’s redemptive movement for women arch towards justice.

We can prophecy a better world with our very words and actions.

The Spirit transforms our hearts and minds and then our lives: regardless of our past, regardless of our context, regardless of our privilege or lack thereof. If we are disciples, we are participating in the life of Jesus now. And the way in which we engage in our lives matters. (The way in which we engage our enemies matters even more perhaps.)

This is how we will be known: by our love.

***

I want my work and witness as a Jesus Feminist to be marked by who I build up, not who I tear down. I want us to be known as the ones who speak life, not death; the ones who empower and affirm and speak truth. I want us to be the ones who boldly deconstruct and then, with grace and intention and inclusion, reconstruct upon the Cornerstone. You will know us by our love.

I turn more and more towards the words in 1 John 4 when I’m working for justice for women: “Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.”*

***

I want to be outside with the misfits, with the rebels, the dreamers, the second-chance givers, the radical grace lavishers, the ones with arms wide open, the courageously vulnerable, and among even – or maybe especially – the ones rejected by the Table as not worthy enough or right enough.

I want to stand outside here in our Canadian wilds beside the water, banging my old battered pots and pans into the wind and the cold and the heavens, hollering, “There is more room! There is more room! There is room for all of us!”*

I wrote a book about this back in 2013 called Jesus Feminist. You can buy it everywhere books are sold. It’s not a perfect book but it might help you understand why following Jesus made a feminist out of me – and many others.

*Some portions here are excerpted from my book, Jesus Feminist, and this blog post. Aff links.

The post On being a Christian and being a feminist … and belonging nowhere appeared first on Sarah Bessey. And check out Sarah Bessey's critically acclaimed new book, "Jesus Feminist." “I’ve read countless books addressing the place of women in the kingdom, and I have never, ever read anything so lovely, so generous, profound and humble as Jesus Feminist. If you’re expecting anger or defensiveness or aggression, move on. If you are looking for intelligence and warmth and spirit, read this immediately." - Jen Hatmaker, author of "7: A Mutiny Against Excess" and "Interrupted"

Here begins the longest night. We wouldn’t see the sun here again for a long while. Of course, when I was younger and living farther north, the days were even shorter, the nights even longer. Up in northern Canada, friends report a never ending night on this day without even a glimpse of sunrise or sunset.

We turn on our lamps, we curl up with blankets and books, we light candles, we make friends with the stars, we put the kettle on. What has to be endured might as well be enjoyed.

***

We have had a busy week so we’re behind on our Advent candles. This sort of thing used to bother me a lot – if this is the way it should be, lighting one candle every Sunday before Christmas, then this is what it should be! But now I roll with things a bit more, I’ve learned that Advent wasn’t created for more stress and turmoil and frustration and feelings of less-than: it was inaugurated because we’re all tired and longing and a bit of a mess and broken-hearted. So if I don’t manage to gather everyone around the table until the Wednesday, it’s okay, really. We will gather, the candles will be lit, the point isn’t the ritual, it’s the truth the ritual preaches to us.

Our candles were all lopsided. I bought the wrong size this year and so they don’t fit snugly into our brass Advent wreath; the candles list and sway and drip gobs of purple or pink wax all over the place. But we gathered after a simple supper of farmer’s sausage and perogies because there are two things living in Abbotsford has taught us to eat and enjoy: Mennonite food and Indian food. We praise God regularly for our neighbours who introduced us to both the delicious comfort of cabbage rolls and incomparable joy of paneer pakora.

We lit our crooked candles for hope, for peace, for joy, and then finally for love. We read our Scriptures by candlelight from the phone screen, dirty dishes still on the table, the toddler hollering for more “tookies!” (her word for cookies) occasionally.

And at the end of the meal, our son Joseph prayed. He said, “God, we thank you for coming to us with love and joy and peace and hope you always wanted for us. We still want everyone to have that. Not just when you came then for Christmas but today and forever and for everyone.”

***

I know these days can be hard for so many of us – you may be tired, heartbroken, estranged from loved ones, yearning for more, settling for less, broke, afraid, betrayed, rejected, struggling, addicted, disillusioned, lonely, isolated, thwarted, doubting, numb, any or all sorts of things that aren’t showing up on the easily resolved Hallmark Christmas movies or the shiny-happy-Jesus-people. Or maybe they are just better at hiding it, who knows.

There is something about Christmas that makes the unbearable even more painful, isn’t there?

Last night, watching the candles burn on the longest night and hearing my son pray, I thought of you in particular, broken-hearted ones. I wanted you to know that I praying for you this Christmas in particular.

Your sorrow isn’t overlooked by God, I know that.

***

Years ago, when I was broken and burned out and exhausted, I remember my father calling me and telling me that he was praying for me. He sent me the bible verse that he was praying over me, it was Matthew 11:28 which is from one of Jesus’ sermons: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

I remember how it felt when he said, “Sarah, I know you’re tired and worn out and burned out on religion. I’m praying that you will recover your life. I’m praying you’ll take a real rest. I’m praying you’ll walk with Jesus and watch how he does it, that you will learn the unforced rhythms of grace. Remember that if it’s heavy and ill-fitting, if it’s a burden, you don’t need to hold it. I pray you’ll keep company with Jesus and learn to live freely and lightly.”

I’ve never forgotten how it felt to hear him say those words to me.

And I’ll never forget how long it took to live into that answered prayer.

***

So come close. Here we go. I pray that God would be near to you, a strength to you. I pray for comfort. I pray for a friend who knows, a friend who sits with you, a friend who doesn’t try to jolly you up.

I pray for endurance in your heart and in your mind and in your soul and in your strength, I pray for perseverance beyond what you think you can bear. I pray that you would be someone who does not give up but continues to take up the space you need. I pray you will know how to ask for what you want. I pray for a community that meets you where you are at.

I pray for comfort. I pray for warmth in your home. I pray for candles and for lamplight, for good books and for movies, for long walks in the darkness lit only by street lights or stars. May your voice crack with tears when you sing anyway how there is a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices because you are longing for a bit of rejoicing. May you fall asleep humming good songs of hope. I see you trying to sing in your sorrow and I think it’s one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen.

I pray for courage. No one ever told us how much courage it takes to have a broken-heart, did they? No one told us how brave we would have to be to simply carry on. And yet here you are. I pray for courage to rise up in you so that you can get up out of bed for another day and do what you need to do to carry on. I pray for an appetite to eat good food and I pray you’ll go to bed on time and sleep well, I pray you’ll be good to your own self in the midst of all this. I pray for your hands to find work you enjoy doing and for creativity to give you a respite.

I pray for you to find the intimacy of the Holy Spirit in these days. I have often found that it is in the wilderness and in the darkness and in the loneliness that the Spirit draws near. I pray for the active and intimate presence of the mystery of God to be close to you in ways you couldn’t name or explain or understand. I pray for dreams that will comfort the hours of sleep you are given.

I pray for peace in you and through you and about you. I pray for glimmers of reconciliation. I pray for bad jokes and for the kind of laughter that makes you want to whoop and pound the table a time or two. I pray for friends who become family and I pray for family to become friends.

I pray for God to be near to you in ways you never could have expected. I pray that this will give birth to a great compassion in you, a love for our suffering world like you’ve never known.

After all, now you’re in the company of the people of the unanswered prayers: we can hold both hope and grief together.

I know there is something for which you cannot even pray, there is no faith left in you: I pray for that unnamed thing, too, I have a bit of faith and you can have it. I don’t know what it is in you but I know you carry it and the better thing is that God knows.

I have always been so thankful that Jesus is described in Isaiah as a man of sorrows, a man acquainted with grief. This is a man I can let into that inner chamber of grief: he is acquainted with my sorrow and he will deal so gently, like a good mother, with our broken-hearts.

I pray for hope to rise, unbidden and unforced and surprising, like a flower breaking through the cement in a parking lot. I pray for you to tend that tendril of hope like a gardener, protect it, let it grow wild and unexpected into the places you least anticipated.

I pray for opportunities to serve others in your life. I pray for Jesus to bring you people into whom you can sow your inexhaustible love and your flagging energy. I pray for eyes to see the company of the broken-hearted around you and that you will become a place of rest for each other.

I pray you will find something or someone to love in these days.

I pray for real reciprocity of relationship – that for everything you receive, you are able to give someday. I pray for the prayers of children to be spoken over you. I pray for the love and joy and the peace and the hope of Advent to be yours. Maybe this isn’t your season for celebration but the good news is that Advent and even Christmas isn’t just for the ones who feel happiness; it’s also for the ones who are afraid and wondering, who are refugees and who are broken-hearted. You, as you are right now, were written into the Story from the beginning and you have a place here, you belong at this Christmas table.

And I dare to pray for joy for you. I pray that everything you are sowing in grief, you will reap in joy. It will be a different sort of joy, we both know that. There is the uncomplicated joy of those who haven’t suffered and then there is the joy that is born of suffering, the joy that is deeper for the loss that preceded, the joy that is in seeing redemption and yet knowing the scars you bear from the wounds are beautiful to those with eyes to see.

And may the Light break through the darkness to warm you and guide you somehow.

We have turned towards the sun now. The days will imperceptibly grow longer again. We won’t be able to notice the moment it changes over but now we know what we’re spinning towards, one day at a time, one morning probably sooner than we know, we will wake up to the long day of light.

Amen.

The post A Prayer for the Broken-Hearted at Christmas appeared first on Sarah Bessey. And check out Sarah Bessey's critically acclaimed new book, "Jesus Feminist." “I’ve read countless books addressing the place of women in the kingdom, and I have never, ever read anything so lovely, so generous, profound and humble as Jesus Feminist. If you’re expecting anger or defensiveness or aggression, move on. If you are looking for intelligence and warmth and spirit, read this immediately." - Jen Hatmaker, author of "7: A Mutiny Against Excess" and "Interrupted"