With this good news, although death has a word, to be sure, it’s no longer the last one.

Our perception of everything, therefore, has shifted:

~our concepts of what ought to be treasured, or abandoned, or feared;

~our definitions of power, or status, or the beautiful;

~our trust from our worthiness, to God’s;

~our distrust that we are worthy, to God’s resounding declaration that indeed, we are;

~the way we care for the earth, the creatures within it, ourselves, our enemies;

~whether we bide our time or steward it to love the world as God so radically has;

~our alertness to seeing God acting in the midst of despair, and our calling to do the same in God’s name;

~our courage to express righteous truth and righteous anger where unrighteousness abounds;

~our definition of what is righteous and what is not;

~our self-understanding as not just followers of Jesus, but ambassadors of Jesus the Christ.

His resurrection, you see, frees and compels us to notice where death threatens the world, so that both in spite of and to spite death in all its forms,  Christ-ians bring health, healing, wholeness, and hope into the mix—even our very own.

So.

Jesus is risen!

We are Easter People!

The boxes in which we’ve been put, the fences which we’ve put up, the walls that have been built, the tombs in which we and those whom we love lie: they are no more.

So go!

Live and love with the radical resurrection freedom that this day has gifted us all!

And to that, we ring out “Merry Christmas” and sing out “Joy to the world!”

New babies simply do that, we know: inspire laughter, smiles, and celebrations.

This baby, though, this baby ushered in joy of cosmic magnitude.

Jesus brought joy to bear not just on the woman who bore him, but to all who encountered him with openness to his presence.

His name, of course (Iēsous [Ἰησοῦς]) means “he saves.”

Of course, Christians believe that Jesus saves, but we’ve tended to tie that salvation to what happens after we die.

But wow do we miss a point, if not the point, with this take.

Think of the tangible salvation Jesus brought to the hungry, the sick, the lonely, the poor, the sinners.

And think of the joy the recipients felt in his wake!

For that matter, think of the joy that he felt, walking away from having just dropped salvation and joy in one fell swoop.

So I wonder whether this Christmas could mark a moment when we trust not just that the incarnate Jesus will save, but that he has and does in every moment.

And, given this season of joy, I wonder whether this Christmas could mark a moment when Christians see their calling as incarnating Jesus’ way of joy.

Perhaps we can see our ministries in the world as serving up joy where there is bleakness, grief, injustice, oppression, hate, exclusion, and despair.

Perhaps we could see joy as being not simplistic, but simply an antidote, not to mention an antithesis, to anxiety, apathy, and antipathy.

Maybe we could see our joy as a righteous retort to the ways and powers of death.

In the name of Jesus and in keeping with his calling, we too could drop joy when we feed, heal, attend, subvert, and forgive.

And we could, because this day, this Christmas Day, marks that Jesus is born, and Jesus lived, and Jesus is risen.

Joy to the world indeed!

Merry Christmas to you and yours from me and mine!

These good and faithful proclaimers were hoping I could perhaps offer a bit of an overview of the themes of this year’s Epiphany texts, and so I gave it a decent whirl; they’ll be the judge of whether the whirl was worthy!

I love Epiphany, as an aside, though I fear that it’s the season that, when we breezily rattle off the liturgical year, we say, “and…and…wait…there’s one more…give me a sec….”

Advent and Christmas we get, and Lent is easy.

It’s possible that we might overlook Easter as an actual season rather than just a Feast Day, but no one forgets Pentecost: its stretch is interminable.  I once knew a pastor who, at the tail end of the season, would give up the count and just date his bulletins with “The Umpteenth Sunday after Pentecost!”

But Epiphany…were it a person, I’d fret that it might have a complex.

It’s a bit ironic, because Epiphany is the season of God-Made-Knowings, of God Made Manifest, of catching sightings of God’s intention for and Word to the world.

Still, when we do think about Epiphany, we tend to think about miracles (as in our text tomorrow, the changing of the water into wine…though, not a minor quibble, the Greek does not call it a miracle but rather a sign of the reign of God, but that’s for another blog…) or undeniable bursts of God’s radiating light, as on Transfiguration Sunday.

But as I prepped for this group, the texts for next Sunday and the Sunday following (the Third and Fourth Sundays after the Epiphany, January 23rd and 30th, respectively) were the ones that particularly caught my attention.

The passages run from Luke 4:14-21, and then (interestingly, picking up again with the exact last verse of the previous week, but more on that in a moment) Luke 4:21-30.

Luke 4:14-21 tells us of Jesus, the rock star come home.  People were fanning and fawning all over the guy upon his return to Nazareth, and so followed him to his first stop, his favorite haunt: the Synagogue.

There, he was given a scroll from which to read.

Jesus’ eyes fell upon these words from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

All 21st century influencers should take note and pointers from what Jesus did next.

The guy rolled up the scroll, Luke tells us, and he handed it away, and he sat down.

He. Sat. Down.

And, says Luke, “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.”

Of course they were.

Jesus had them exactly where he wanted them and he knew it.

Over two thousand years later, our eyes are still fixed on him.

But Jesus wasn’t done.

“Today,” he announced, “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Mic. Drop.

In him, Jesus said, the expectations that the people of Israel had held all of these years, the words of Isaiah’s that they had treasured in hope, namely that the poor would receive good news, the enslaved would be released, the blind would be healed, and the oppressed would be free, were fulfilled and went down.

And that’s where the text ends.

With that line.

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

That’s all we’re given as an epiphanic moment.

Jesus is the one for whom we’ve been waiting, and Jesus brings equity, recovery, and freedom.

This sounds awesome, right?

Who doesn’t want that?

Well, our next week’s text tells us exactly who.

~~~~~

So the next week, namely the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany (January 30th), our Gospel reading begins with this same verse and these same words!

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

In a moment of wisdom, the creators of the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) made an overt point of linking the previous week’s text with this one. (Well done RCL!)

So, Luke goes out of his way to note that initially, “all spoke well of him.”

Heck.

Of course they did.

Christians, all of us, speak well of Jesus.

And so we should, right? After all, we say we follow him, and so speaking well of Jesus seems to follow too.

But then the well-speaking ceased.

Why?

Jesus began to tell of the consequences of this text from Isaiah, and the consequences for those who opt to throw their lot in with Jesus, the fulfiller of these words, the one over whom the crowd had just ooh-ed and ahh-ed while nudging each other saying, “I knew him when he was running around in swaddling cloths just around his bum!”

When they listend, really listened, this is what they heard:

The ‘outsider’ widow rather than the Hebrew insiders was visited by Elijah.

Moreover, Elisha didn’t heal a Jew, but rather a Syrian.

A Syrian!

And in a flash, dots were connected.

Jesus has no time for privilege.

Jesus rejects exclusion.

Jesus is beyond over the presence of hunger, unhealed disease, or loneliness.

Jesus would like a word with those—especially those who purport to be God-fearers—who foster or remain silent in the face of any of it.

Jesus has an eye turned toward systems which uphold inequity, and is here to take. them. down.

So.

From that point on, it pretty much went as you’d expect, especially these days:

“When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.  They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.”

No, keep in mind, right, that these were the very same people who had sat in rapt attention of Jesus’ words, believing him to be a righteous and holy man.

They leaned in to hear him speak the Word of God.

They said they wanted a revelation.

Yes they did.

But what they, namely the people who have access to money, to health, to privilege, to power—and therefore what a good lot of we—instead got was a revelation of a revolution.

See, who chased Jesus out of town and toward that cliff?

Everyone who was going to distinctly not benefit from his revelation, that’s who.

These (we) are the people who refused to hear or see God Made Manifest because to hear, see, and act on this God means that they (we) have to open up hands to release power, open up hearts to welcome the stranger, open up our minds to a new way, to new systems, and to an entirely new way of being that solely reflects the reign of God.

It’s not to be missed that these are pretty much a decent chunk of people who sit in the pews of most mainstream churches, or have crafted how denominations are structured, or who make up the rules and regulations of our nation.

When God’s revelation, it seems, is of a revolution, we tend to run representatives and representations of Jesus right on out of wherever he and we are.

~~~~~

So as I sat with these texts, and how his revelation—pronounced before people who asked him for it—played out, a couple of distinct but related thoughts occurred to me.

1) Although we think of Epiphany as a gentle season of illumination, of the presence of God appearing in our midst, of our lives being brightened by God’s Word, these texts from Luke suggest that we might not actually, when you get right down to it, want or welcome God’s revelation.

In fact, we’ve got a pretty good track record of doing everything we can to squelch it, ignore it, or kill it.

This Epiphany season, then, might be an opportunity to ask whether we really want an epiphany, like we pietistically say we do, or if, when Jesus enters our community, our room, our lives, we only want him speaking as long as his revelations are just manifestations of affirmations of how things are streaming along just fine, thank you.

2) It is possible that, despite the assumptions that the Epiphany of God comes with sweetness and light, an Epiphany of God might come in the form of us crumpled up in tears huddled at the end of a couch realizing we can’t do x, y, or z anymore; it might reveal itself in a fit of anger as we see for the first time an injustice; it might appear in the form of the dissolution of a relationship, a work relationship, an institution’s structure; it might occur in Sidon, in Syria, and in the secular streets (as my friend and former professor Dr. Don Luck, I believe it was, said, “Women’s ordination didn’t finally come about in the ‘70s because a bunch of male theologians gathered in a closed room to swill bourbon while they discussed the biblical and theologian reasons for ordaining women—though there are plenty of those. No, women were ordained because bras were being burned in the streets!”

Perhaps, that is, when we see the limits of structures we’ve known and loved, when we see our own limits, when we realize that whatever is burdening our spirits or others’ well-being is simply neither sustainable nor just, that’s not when we are being abandoned by God.

It’s when we are seeing God.

You say you want a revelation?

Get ready for a revolution.

Islam and Judaism, these great religious traditions, are strictly such, because each believe in one God.

Christians do too, of course, but instead, we are probably best understood as Trinitarians: one united God manifested in three expressions.

Now a person could be forgiven if the distinction seems to carry about as much real-life heft as the question about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, let alone that none of it seems to make any sense anyway.

But it does matter, actually, this fundamental Christian claim that God is One in Three and Three in One, and it matters that it is this one whom Christians are called to worship and serve.

My late mentor Walt Bouman even said that the Trinity is what we say if the Gospel is true.

While there’s more than one reason to nuance that take, there’s also more than one reason to take that take and run with it too.

For starters, if we say that we believe in God, we have to have at least some inkling about what we mean when we say ‘God.’

It’s too often that the things we want to say about God are the things we want, or feel compelled, to believe about God.

In his book Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah wrote a now-classic passage about a woman named Sheila Larson, who was asked about her religious faith. She said:

“I believe in God. I’m not a religious fanatic. I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way.  It’s Shielaism. Just my own little voice. It’s just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess, take care of each other. I think He would want us to take care of each other.“ (Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart, 221).

Bellah found Shiela’s response fascinating, not least of all because God turned out to be Shiela ‘magnified.’  What she thought should be the case is what God thought should be the case and oh by the way she had also, so nimbly that even she herself might have missed it, equated herself with God.

This Shiela-god was, fortunately, at least superficially benevolent—we are to “take care of each other.”

But it could have (and does) go the other way: there are those, overtly religious or not, private citizens and people in power, who ascribe to God traits which convieniently are awfully very much in keeping with their way particular way of viewing themselves, their world, and how things should shake out in the end (235).

At least, though, at least Shiela said something about her understanding about God.

God, however we identify God, is meaningless if God has no meaning.

Seems like a truism, but if I believe that God is an old red Toyota pickup (my beloved first car, so forgive me) or my dog Chutzpaw or my favorite tree under which I sit, I have some responsibility to explain why, and what difference it makes.

If I can’t, then although I can point to the thing I say is God, the question is whether God means anything at all if I have no idea who my God is or why my God is what I say that my God is.

So while it is true that it is impossible to comprehend God, something must be said about God, because otherwise God can become both something and nothing at the same time.

Given all that, if Christians say that we believe in the Trinity, traditionally understood as Father, Son, Holy Spirit (*note to self: must write a blog about the troubles, theological and otherwise, of using exclusively male language for God) then we have a responsibility to give it a whirl to say what we mean by that, not to mention spend some time grasping and living out the implications of our belief.

I’m mulling the Trinity because for much of the Christian tradition, today is designated as Trinity Sunday.

Any smart pastor takes the Sunday off.

Bouman joked that when he was in confirmation, he admitted in class that he still didn’t understand the Trinity. His pastor said, “Just shut up and believe!”

The really amusing thing is that his pastor was his father.

Part of the challenge of trying to make anything sensical out of the Trinity, says Bouman, is that we have a long-standing tradition within the Church of thinking about and accessing God primarily from an intellectual standpoint.

We want God to be rationally understandable.

So we come up with all sorts of formulae that substantiate a notion of God that is what we think of when we think of God, perhaps most often coming out as the Omni-God model: Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnipotent.

Zeus, really, when you get right down to it.

And so we are left with a God who is inaccessible except by some wild and crazy rational, logical gymnastics, and who is terrifying to boot.

Most of us aren’t theological Olympic gymnasts, however, and those who are might need to actually ground themselves rather than engage in jaw-dropping dogmatic twists.

And no matter how brave we are, if we believe because we are scared out of our skins to believe because if we don’t believe we will meet that Omnigod and we are petrified that will probably not go well, thennnnnn in point of fact our belief might not be that authentic and sincere anyway, because it’s eked out by way of threatened terror instead of invited and welcomed because of abundant love.

Faith stemming from fear runs the risk of coerced false adoration, making the adoration not only potentially false, but also (paradoxically) driven by selfishness: we might be praising God to save ourselves, not to worship with purity of heart.

A narcissistic God wouldn’t care—adoration is adoration and we’ll take it by any means we can get it—but a perceptive (and, a la Exodus 34:14, jealous) God would.

Moreover, it is no coincidence that, à la Shiela, those who have had the closest approximation to omni-anything have projected their notions of ultimacy onto God, and written the course of theological history while they’ve done so (add Omni-tasking to their tendencies).

Their concepts of power and authority are now writ large, as in Divine large, so God becomes not a God of love but of authoritarian capriciousness, enjoying power for power’s sake to those whom He (and it’s always a He) favors…that is, until they are no longer favored, for God knows why.

And so this sort of mathematical theologizing left most of us with either no way of accessing God, because God was left with no way of accessing us other than warnings and smitings, or because we can’t love a non-sensical formula (Three in One and One in Three), and we can’t love a threatening non-sensical formula, as those of us with mathphobia know in our very bones (though, to be fair, “non-sensical” and “math formula” go hand-in-hand for some of us. Ahem.)

But to the rescue is this truth: God acts in history, and therefore is relational.

That right there is a basic claim of the Jewish tradition, and, lest we forget, Jesus was a Jew, and all that he did occurred in the very center of the Jewish matrix.

Jesus was God in accessible time.

Jewish faith, and now Christian faith, believe that God is whoever acts in history with active presence and with finality.

That’s critical, because if we can pay attention to the revelation of God in history, and the way God reveals Godself in history, we have a better sense of who God is—that is, not a reflection of ourselves but a revelation of God—and how we are to act in history, if we follow God.

Christians believe that Jesus is the revealed God.

We believe that in Jesus, we see God’s agenda for the world: healing, feeding, welcoming, loving, forgiving, teaching, inviting, and rejecting the base claims and actions of those who amass power, wealth, and privilege for themselves at the expense of others.

In Jesus we then look back, and via his promises look forward, to see God’s inherent bent to create, and God’s perpetual deep love of creation, and God’s continual affirmation of its creatures, and extended invitation to enjoy it as gift.

The world is wanted by God, was intentionally created by God, is loved by God, and therefore is to be celebrated and cherished by God’s creatures.

We also believe that in Jesus’ death and resurrection we see that God is in the midst and mix of suffering, not causing it but redeeming it, and that out of it God brings new possibilities—including the new possibilities that forgiveness creates.

And we believe that the Holy Spirit is the “downpayment on the eschaton…the Spirit of authentic freedom for the world, not from the world. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love and laughter, of peace and joy, of hope and possibility.” (à la Bouman notes).

So if we aren’t monotheists, but are Trinitarians, why, what with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, is it that we aren’t Tritheists?

That Christianity comes out of the Jewish matrix is a fundamental piece of it: the word ‘Christ’ is the Greek translation of the Jewish word ‘Messiah.’

Christians believe that Christ is God made manifest in history, and that the Holy Spirit is the perpetual presence of God, surrounding, calling, luring, stirring us into participating in the ever new and renewing creation.

The Trinity is relational, three expressions of the one Creator God, none of which is subservient to the other, all of which interplay with the others, and invite creation to join the dance too.

There are heaps of models for the Trinity from which to choose, and most of them not great.

There’s the hot dog, bun, ketchup metaphor, one I’ve heard more than I wish, but that doesn’t work so fantastically: each part is independent of the other, and can stand on its own (though, granted, ketchup alone is blech, unless you ask my son Karl).

Water in the forms of ice, vapor, and liquid is another: at least they are the same substance, namely water, but water can’t be ice and vapor and liquid simultaneously.

I’ve gotten to wonder if another metaphor might be this: I am me, but I wouldn’t be me if I were not daughter, mama, and sister.

Each of these relationships shapes me.

I express my unified self in unique ways when I am relating with my daughter, my father, and my sister.

I love each of these parts of me, and each of these parts of me make the rest of me more me, and without any one of them I would not be me.

But left in a static way, those designations would mean nothing: it’s the relationship that makes them matter. That is, I am distinctly me in relationship as mama to daughter, daughter to father, sister to sister.

Too, how I relate to daughter/father/sister reveals something of who I am to those who watch.

And it is possible that how I am in these relationships might affect others too.

The analogy might be strained in the latter sense, but I mention it to say that Christians and the Christian church are called to be expressions of God in the world, a proleptic community—the word ‘prolepsis’ meaning ‘to take beforehand.’

We see in the Trinity an interrelationship emanating from and sustained by deep love and joy for each element of the Trinity, and we see within the Trinity a desire to vulnerably love and delight in creatures and creation, and we see in the Trinity an invitation to humanity to delight in creation and creating, to trust with freedom not least of all freedom from fear, and to act in ways that bend toward God’s presence and promises in every moment, knowing that all of these impulses are bound together by divine love.

All of these are elements of the revealed God in history and in relationship.

I’ve heard it said, often as of late, if people tell you who they are, believe them.

I think that the same can be true of the Trinity and those who worship the Trinitarian God.

If God tells you who God is, believe God.

If God acts in a certain way, believe God.

If God through word and deed God reveals Godself, and you call that one God, go and do likewise.

(Also, I’m pretty sure that God does not eat ketchup as a standalone, but in this case, you do you.)

In the name of the Trinitarian God, Amen.

P.S. Much of the thinking behind this blog can be gleaned in Walt Bouman’s compiled lectures, found here:

You can also find recordings of Walt’s lectures on the Trinity, along with a vast number of other topics on which he spoke from over the course of two decades at Holden Village here.

It has been far too long since I have blogged!

Covid—not the virus, but the consequences of its broad scale havoc played out in our little world—has claimed our family’s attention, complicated by a significant three-fer brain, spine, and abdominal surgery for my son in mid-July, which happily resolved issues that have been causing us consternation and deep concern for about ten months.

We’re just now catching our breath, right in time for the breathless beginning of school—however that will look!

While I haven’t been able to write as I’d like, I do have several blogs in my mental queue.

But the below is the first of several in the upcoming weeks that I’ll put forth.

It’s a sermon I preached last Sunday, August 30th, at my beloved home congregation, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church.

You can find the video of the worship service here, although it is a trimmed version of what I have written below.  The sermon begins at 33:30 into the service.

Here is also an audio link of the sermon, recorded while I was sitting crouched on the floor in a second-floor very Harry-Potter-esque and quite full closet, because my beloved 83-year-old father was downstairs, bamming nails into a floor he’s brilliantly installing for us, because he’s amazing.

So if you don’t watch the video, that scene can be your substitute visual!

In it, with great assists from Soroya Chemaly, Hannah Arendt, and, of course, the texts (found at the end of this blog, from Jeremiah, and the Psalms, and Paul, and Matthew) of the day and the contexts of the day, I fuss with the uncertain, uncomfortable relationship Christians have with anger.

Despite our reluctance to express, let alone recognize, our own anger, anger itself is a force for justice, a calibration to righteousness, and a rejection of acquiescence to the powerful and corrupt.

In the texts from the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, we hear that very notion powerfully expressed, in more ways than one, from Jesus.

With that:

~~~~~

Grace to you, and peace, from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Siblings in Christ, we Christians, we have an anger problem.

And our problem with anger, our anger issue, is that we have no idea what to do with anger.

And I am here to say that, at first blush at least, the texts for today are not in the least helpful to us to sort matters out.

Jeremiah, in not one of his most bright-spirited, optimistic moments, prays for retribution upon his enemies, and lays the reasons for his own indignation squarely at God’s feet.

And not mincing a single word or leaving anything to the imagination, the psalmist condemns the worthless—among whom, he makes a point of noting, he has not “sat” (using a Hebrew word which doesn’t mean, literally, to ‘sit’ with, like on a bus or park bench or coffee hour table, but rather “hung out with,” or, more starkly, “became like,”) nor did he cozy up with the deceitful, and moreover, the psalmist even ‘hates’—hates!—the evildoers!

That all seems to give anger some room to do its thing, and with some measure of divine blessing.

But then along comes Paul, far more placid, far more diplomatic—and far more pleasing to and resonant in our ears—who speaks not of hating the evildoers but of hating evil, and of living in peace, of feeding enemies and giving them refreshment, and of overcoming evil with good.

And yet along comes Jesus, who seems to have known the freedom of Jeremiah and the psalmist, and he steamrolls right in to our lectionary on this day, this paradigm of love, this model of benevolence, seen in our collective minds’ eye as laughing with his head thrown back, as gently carrying that lost and forlorn sheep, as gathering the (always well-behaved) children around him, we see this one whirling around to Peter, the one he’d just called the Rock, and up and call him a stumbling block, of all things, instead. 

Like, clever as that is, what an epic slam: from rock to block. 

But even more shocking, Jesus bellows out, “Get behind me SATAN!” 

Satan! 

He called Peter Satan!

Were Matthew to have had a wide-eyed emoji at hand, he would have totally whipped it out onto the sheepskin parchment, right here, I tell you what.

Yet as often as not, we hear the text read, “Get behind me, Satan.”

But if you have enough energy to say those sorts of words, you absolutely have enough energy to yell them.

Get behind me Satan, said our Lord Jesus, the Christ, to Peter. 

That is not Minnesota nice. 

That is not tactful. 

That is not “appropriate.”

How, we might wonder, as these days is often expressed with a shaking head and scolding finger and with wishes for civility instead of anger, how will Jesus win Peter to his side if he raises his voice?

If he speaks so bluntly?

If he speaks truth?

If he calls a thing what it is is?

He should just be nice.

~~~~~

So what’s the collective Scriptural take-away here?

Is anger ok or not? 

Is rage holy or unrighteous?

It’s a question, of course, that’s presently pressing upon us politically, culturally, socially, and even within our own families. 

En masse, we are in every one of those very spheres steeped in anger, like a bag of tea left too long in the cup, the hot beverage becoming thick and bitter.

But we tend drink it, we drink it anyway, lips pursed in both disgust and forced politeness. 

“No, no, it tastes fine, really,” we say, swallowing the sludge down with a taut smile.

Everything is fine.

Everything is awesome, we say politely.

In fact, of course, everything is everything but fine, and few things are awesome.

~~~~~

So our ambivalence about anger has to do with many things, I believe.

Politeness, for one: it is not polite to be angry. 

Anger is not nice.

And in the land famous (infamous?) for being nice, being angry is out of decorum, is a breach of ethic, it defies the code.

And anger causes conflict…though more precisely, this perceived emotional problem child is only recognizing and naming conflict.

Anger forces people to wrestle in the open with disagreement, to own what one says and to dispute that which is claimed by another.

Anger is neither pleasant nor pretty: red faces, raised voices, rapid pulses, and sometimes irreparable breaches.

And so it is better, we tend to think, it is in fact best, of course, to gloss the problem over.

To ignore it.

To pretend it doesn’t exist. 

But here’s the thing.

The reasons for the anger do exist. 

There are legitimate reasons, not least of all during these deeply troubled, troubling days, to be angry, and, like Jeremiah, like the psalmist, to be angry precisely in the very name of God.

See, I read Paul’s words and I worry about the women and girls who perhaps just last night, perhaps even this morning, have been abused verbally, physically, emotionally, sexually by men in their lives, by people who should be trusted but have squandered that privilege, and they come to hear the Word of God on Sunday which, they might think, tells them to bring their abuser another latte to them in the early morning and it will get better, promise. 

And I want to say to them: wait! Wait! 

No, no, that’s not what Paul meant. 

That’s not what God meant. 

You are not meant to be harmed. 

You, too, are to be loved, to be tended, to be safe.

Instead Paul’s words are, in part, a promise to not doubt that God knows justice, and will wield it.

It’s a reminder to, as Michelle Obama so famously said, go high when they go low.

Do not sit with them.

Do not become like them.

Do not let your anger be denied so that you lose hope and lose yourself.

~~~~~

It turns out that the more that we suppress our anger, that we gloss it over, that we stay silent instead of speaking up with righteous indignation at wrongs in the world at large or in our small, personal world, the more we end up protecting those causing harm rather than those suffering it—including ourselves.

We write them a carte blanche, we give them a pass, there are no repercussions for their actions, we allow it and thereby endorse, and empower, whatever it is that in fact is reason for, gives root to, legitimate, righteous anger.

But even that, even that, isn’t quite the full story, because a competing truth is that the more that we suppress our anger, that we gloss it over, that we stay silent instead of speaking up with righteous indignation, we even leave the harm-causers vulnerable to their own harm.

Our silence, our fake smiles, our let’s-pretend-that-didn’t-happens, our it’s-best-to-be-nice-s, it all continues not only to allow the sufferers to continue to suffer, but it continues the harm-inflicters to continue to harm. 

They never know it’s not ok. 

They never see the pain that they inflict on others and therefore that they inflict on themselves.

The “pinned tweet” on the ELCA Twitter page says about the rampant killings of black people, “This is an existential threat to people of color. It must be an existential threat to white people too.”

So who’s gonna tell ‘em?

Someone’s got to tell them.

~~~~~

Recently, for some research on a project I’ve got before me, I picked up Soroya Chemaly’s book Rage Becomes Her. Chemaly has dived into the study of women’s anger: the way we suppress it, the way it is disdained and disallowed by the world, and how instead we, and the world, ought rather to pay acute attention to it. 

In 2013, when George Zimmerman was acquitted after killing Trayvon Martin in 2012, Alicia Garza inadvertently founded the Black Lives Matter movement, simply by ending a Facebook post rueing the verdict with the words “black lives matter.” Seven years later, with the hashtag #BLM, adorned with T-shirts and pins and bumper stickers, people are walking the streets, kneeling in stadiums, postponing games, and, moreover, painfully, still needing to.

Chemaly spoke with Garza about her activism, and what inspires her to engage with the Powers That Be. Garza replied, “Anger at injustice is one part of what motivates me. But it is not a sustainable emotion in and of itself. It has to be transformed into a deep love for the possibility of who we can be. Anger can be a catalyst, but we cannot function on anger alone. When it’s not used properly, it can quickly become destructive. That’s why love is important: love connects us to what we most care about; what we yearn for,” (251).

See, says Garza, and Chemaly throughout her entire book, anger is an emotion that lets a person know that something is off: there is an unacceptable distance between what is and what should be. Justice is wanting, and righteousness is therefore too.

And anger is an indication that you care enough to notice, to react, and to do something about it.

But what is the ‘ït?’ 

What deserves anger?

Our texts today begin to give us some ideas.

The anger with which the texts dance is not capricious anger, is not petty anger, is not anger that is mistaken for aggression or unhinged, unfounded violence.

It is righteous indignation based not on our evaluations of what should be vs. what is, but on God’s.

Jesus hauled off and called out Peter, with the added nice-touch detail of calling him ‘Satan,’ because Peter didn’t believe that following Jesus means you’re going to run into discomfort, awkward moments, conflict, and even death.

He still didn’t grasp that Jesus’ ways are not the world’s, by and large.

Arguably, we who call ourselves Christians still don’t either.

For example: 

Jesus welcomed strangers, and exhorted us to too. 

Instead, we build walls. 

Jesus said to let the children come to him. 

Instead, we put them in cages and tear them from their parents. 

Jesus said to feed the hungry. 

Instead, we cut SNAP funding.

Jesus said to heal the sick. 

Instead, we scream at employees who insist that customers wear masks, and we create policies which make access to health care an impossibility for the poor and unemployed.

Jesus said to love our neighbors, and instead we segregate neighborhoods.

It is outrageous.

While Jesus was informed by his heavenly father, let’s be clear: his earthly mama shaped him too, this woman who declared in the name of God that the powerful did not deserve their thrones but deserved rather to be thrown from them, that the rich would learn of emptiness while the poor would learn what it is to be sated, that the proud would be humbled and the humble would know pride.

She understood the agenda of God. 

She spoke uncomfortable truth.

She lays out the grounds for righteous indignation: where you see disparity in any of these ways, there is reason to rise up in holy anger, because if you do not, you acquiesce to evil or succumb to a dangerous, willful obliviousness to it. 

Peter, of course, Peter knew the risks.

He knew that the powers that like things the way they are do not like to have holy, and contrary, truth pointed out. 

Peter knew that if Jesus felt it incumbent upon him to, as years later brother Martin Luther would say, “call a thing what it is,” he’d die.

And we can’t have that.

But here’s the thing: one of the most harmful tendencies of the Christian Church is to spiritualize death, or at the least, to restrict it to “taking a last breath.”

Any of us know, however, any of us who have an aversion to, say, anger, we know you don’t need to croak to die. 

Speaking out, calling out, being outraged at injustice will cause death. 

That’s a promise.

Righteous anger can and will cause the death of friendships, of love relationships, of familial relationships, of collegial relationships, of Facebook friends, of security on any number of levels. 

But here’s the freeing thing: naming evil can also bring death to evil.

You expose evil for what it is.

Rather than allowing injustice to prevail at the expense of the least of these, who depend on your voice—and let us not forget that you yourself might deserve your anger on your own behalf—, rather than trusting the power of death more than you are trusting the promise of life, rather than ceding death a win, your anger can recalibrate a situation so that it is aligned not with evil, not with death, but with gospel hope and life.

See, here’s the thing that Jesus knew, and what he longed that Peter knew, and that I long for Christians to know is this: the Gospel is not “be nice.” 

The Gospel is not “avoid conflict.” 

The Gospel is that Jesus is risen from the dead. 

And, if that is true, as my mentor Walt Bouman said time and time again, “Now that you know that death doesn’t win, there is more to do with your lives than preserve them.” 

“Now that you know that death doesn’t win, there is more to do with your lives than preserve them.” 

When, that is, when we refuse to give expression to our anger, we are preserving our lives, and we are preserving, we are protecting, the power of death. 

That’s no way for a Christian to be, for we are resurrection people. 

We live according to the call of Jesus, which, as this text makes clear, will call us to death, but which also calls us to life.

Jesus was angry with Peter because when push came to shove, quite literally, in the end, Peter trusted death rather than Jesus.  

When our mouths stay silent, when we let dysfunctional systems stay intact, when our silence, our our apathy, or our pleasant smiles allow leaders and those who support them to, for example, pass white supremacists as very fine people, we are no better than Peter.

And you can bet that Jesus is not saying to us gently, sweetly, nicely, “Get behind me Satan.” 

He’s bellering it out! To us! “GET BEHIND ME SATAN!”

Because Satan, the ambassador of death, lives off of benign silence and feigned politeness.

That’s how Satan gets its power.

 A Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt spoke of that very thing when she detailed the Nürnberg Trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of Hitler’s Nazis, and an architect of the Holocaust.

Arendt coined the term “the banality of evil,” as she mused about how ordinary people, folks like you and me, can empower totalitarian regimes of hate, racism, bigotry, and violence.

Evil can become, and in some cases arguably has become ordinary. The norm. Tolerable.

But not if you follow Jesus.

Chemaly writes, “Anger has a bad rap, but it is actually one of the most hopeful and forward thinking of all our emotions. It begets transformation, manifesting our passion and keeping us invested in the world. It is a rational and emotional response to trespass, violation, and moral disorder. It bridges the divide between what ‘is’ and what ‘ought’ to be, between a difficult past and an improved possibility.” (xx) “In anger, whether you like it or not, there is truth…Anger is the expression of hope” (295).

Anger is the expression of hope. 

Now there’s a plot twist.

Sort of like the dead guy rising again.

See, when we are angry, whether we realize it or not, we are announcing to ourselves and to the world both truth and that there must be a better way. 

And as Christians, we announce to ourselves and to the world that we know that there is a better way, for our selves, for those crushed by systems of violence, degradation, bigotry, racism, misogyny, classism, and self-absorption, and also by those who wield such things with finesse, willfulness, and neither compunction nor consequence. 

Anger, that is, is just as Chemaly, just as Jeremiah, just as the Psalmist, just as Jesus, and if you squint, even Paul in this text says, anger is an indication that something is not right. 

And if it is not right, it is not righteous. 

And if it is not righteous, it is an ambassador of some form of death. 

And Christians, in contrast, are ambassadors of life, are those who defy death, are those who call a thing what it is, are those who get angry, and in so doing, do not reward evil with evil, but rather reward it with goodness and truth and life.

~~~~~

The Texts for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, August 30, 2020

FIRST READING                                                  Jeremiah 15:15-21

15O Lord, you know;
remember me and visit me,
and bring down retribution for me on my persecutors.
In your forbearance do not take me away;
know that on your account I suffer insult.
16Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts.
17I did not sit in the company of merrymakers,
nor did I rejoice;
under the weight of your hand I sat alone,
for you had filled me with indignation.
18Why is my pain unceasing,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook,
like waters that fail.
19Therefore thus says the Lord:
If you turn back, I will take you back,
and you shall stand before me.
If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless,
you shall serve as my mouth.
It is they who will turn to you,
not you who will turn to them.
20And I will make you to this people
a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you,
but they shall not prevail over you,
for I am with you
to save you and deliver you,
says the Lord.
21I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked,
and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.

PSALM                                                                             Psalm 26:1-8

 1Give judgment for me, O Lord, for I have lived | with integrity;
I have trusted in the Lord and | have not faltered.
2Test me, O | Lord, and try me;
examine my heart | and my mind.
3For your steadfast love is be- | fore my eyes;
I have walked faithful- | ly with you.
4I have not sat | with the worthless,

  nor do I consort with | the deceitful. 
5I have hated the company of | evildoers;
I will not sit down | with the wicked.
6I will wash my hands in inno- | cence, O Lord,
that I may go in procession | round your altar,
7singing aloud a song | of thanksgiving
and recounting all your won- | derful deeds.
8Lord, I love the house in | which you dwell
and the place where your glo- | ry abides.

SECOND READING                                                  Romans 12:9-21

9Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

GOSPEL                                                                   Matthew 16:21-28

21From that time on, [after Peter confessed that Jesus was the Messiah,] Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” 23But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
24Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? 27“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

It can skillfully drape itself in righteous speech, all the while really cloaking its comfortable and contented status.

But privilege also cunningly hides, even from the people of privilege themselves, death-dealing anxious determination about maintaining societal advantages.

So with that said, and as a shining example, I bristle, truly I do, when I hear rostered leaders talk about needing to “meet my people where they are.”

I just heard it in a couple of private and distinct conversations the other day, as a matter of fact.

“I’ve gotta meet my people where they are.”

That’s the phrase, right there.

Now it -sounds- good.

It sounds righteous even.

It certainly sounds pastoral.

It definitely sounds like what a leader of a specific community is called to do, namely meet their people where they are.

And I do believe that for the most part, rostered leaders mean well when they say it.

But I’ve come to decide that there’s a decent shot that actually, it’s -not- always good, righteous, pastoral, or what at leader in a community is called to do.

Thing is, when we decide to “meet ‘our’ people where they are,” we can’t help but simultaneously (albeit cloaked in that wily-privileged way) leave -other- people, the very people who need the -rest- of us to move from where -we- are, well…we can’t help but leave them where -they- are.

So when we hear the phrase “I need to meet my people where they are,” I think what we should actually hear, especially these days, is less even-the-best-of-intentioned pastoral move, and more the hidden message—hidden even to the leader, I do believe—that we’re supposed to be ok with that, down with it, content with it, because those are not ‘our people,’ they are not ‘us.’

They are ‘other.’

The wretched thing of it is, -nobody- is where they are supposed to be.

Moreover, the white rostered tendency to want to meet people of privilege where they are is precisely what keeps the status quo, which is precisely that which keeps everybody where they aren’t supposed to be.

I will say again and again and again that the pastoral is the prophetic, and the prophetic is the pastoral.

Black.

Lives.

Matter.

Insular preaching and teaching, that which is offered to meet privileged congregants and congregations where they are, protects White Lives from knowing about and caring about Black Lives.

It shields White Lives from knowing about and caring about -and- -rejecting- -in- -the- -name- -of- -the- -Gospel- the White System of Privilege which contributes to the injustice, poverty, inequity that Black Lives endure.

It buffers White Lives from knowing and caring about the names of people who have died at the hands of their White Privilege, that which congregations and congregants, under the rubric of meeting them where they are, have been led to believe affords them the luxury of not knowing, because the time is “just not right.”

“They’re just not ready for that yet.”

“We have to meet them where they are.”

In the complicated book of Hosea, Israel had forsaken God by falling into a cycle of normalized lying, and murder, and violence, such that even the land and sea and the creatures upon and in it suffered.

After a long enough period of waiting for this situation to turn around, God’s response, albeit conveyed in troubling metaphor, was finally to call Israel Lo-ammi: not my people.

Remember, of course, that we hear God say, “I am your God, and you shall be my people” in any number of texts, like Exodus 6:7; Leviticus 26:12, and Isaiah 5:15-16.

But no longer, says God.

What you have done, God says, is enough.

The relationship is severed.

And what had Israel done?

Among other sins, Israel had opted to align themselves not with God, but with Baalistic culture, which included a nasty habit of placing economic success for the few at the expense of the many, and of the land.

So God abandoned Israel to its enemies, and to the consequences of their unfaithfulness.

Note that it was -they- and -their- actions which terminated the relationship; -not- God.

God did not decide against them.

The ones formerly known as the people of God decided -against- God, and -for- other gods.

It’s possible that in the same way, now, in our streets we are seeing the consequences of -our- unfaithfulness.

We have, of course, tolerated a corrupt, malicious, and weak-spirited president, and political leaders who abide, aid, and abet him, and the agendas which they push at the expense of others.

Some Christians have even voted for them.

But we have also aligned ourselves with other gods, including those in the headlines of recent days, most especially that of White Privilege.

And we as rostered leaders have all too often opted to align ourselves with the god of Meeting People Where They Are, which has enabled and unleashed many an evil thing at the now normalized expense of People Who Are Not Where They Should Be.

So back to Hosea, it turns out that God’s disassociation from Israel was temporary—not inconsequential, but not permanent.

God opted, and even in the very next verse of this judgment, to make us God’s people again.

The message of Hosea is of judgment, but judgment that sends us into a way of repentance -and- -then- -restoration.-

The ironic thing is that the same phrase which has allowed rostered leaders to dance around dicey subjects can in fact throw them right into the whirl of it all:

Meet your people where they are.

If you’re the leader of a white congregation, that’d generally be a life of white privilege at the expense of black lives which do, in fact, matter.

So go ahead.

Meet them where they are.

And when you do, meeting them where they -really- are as opposed to where they -think- they are, you help lead your people into repentance, you announce the possibility of restoration to -all- the People of God, and you help bring -all- the People of God to where everyone ought to be.

You’re not even conscious that you’ve got a song going on your soul, and then suddenly you hear your lips hum, your mouth sing, or even your fingers tapping out the rhythm of the beat.

I’m willing to admit that it happens to me, but I am not willing to admit how often.

On occasion, when I discover that I’ve got some notes and lyrics in my mind…and others external to me are noticing…it’s because a certain apparently random tune was in fact triggered by a word or a phrase or an event: when I’m standing before an open fridge, an exasperated, “I’m all out of milk,” becomes “I’m All Out of Love,” or while making stew I discover myself singing our family favorite lullaby “Little Potato,” or (back in the days when my beloved baseball was actually played), when I’m looking for the weather radio to take into my garden so I can hear the Minnesota Twins play (sigh), I discover that I’m humming “Brown Eyed Girl,” which, by all informed accounts, is the best song ever, and while it may have overtly nothing to do with a baseball (though I’m sure that the ‘stadium’ which is mentioned is obviously one built for baseball and no other) has everything to do with baseball, not to mention young love, the best of which has to do with baseball.

But the other day, I woke up with Tracy Chapman in my head.

 Straight away, at 5:37, eyes opened and there she was.

But because it was 5:37, it took me about 15 minutes into the day and a couple of sips of my coffee to realize that she was singing me into the day, and quite possibly into a new world.

It was released in August of 1988, and I was entering my second year of college at St. Olaf.

By that time, I’d fully embraced the Birkenstocks/head-wrapped-in-scarf/meeting-at-friends’-homes-to-make-broccoli-tofu-and-rice vibe, and therefore, in all of my hippy naïve whiteness, I loved Tracy Chapman.

I stuck her cassette tapes in the player of any car the driver would let me, I bought my mama a copy so that she could be enlightened like her daughter, and I felt so very very cool.

So, yeah; I heard her music all the time.

But I didn’t listen to her.

And I sure as the hell our nation is in right now didn’t understand her.

I’m also sure that by virtue of the color of my skin that I never entirely will.

~~~~~

Cities are in shambles, across the U.S., and I fully expect that more protests and destruction are in our collective near future, and our far future too.

Our President (may God have mercy on our souls) had his own peaceful citizens teargassed and shot with rubber pellets so that he could stand in front of a Church he never attends while holding upside down a Bible that is not his for a photo op that captured more of the moment and who he is than he intended.

~~~~~

“Thus says the Lord:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more.”

Jeremiah 31:15

“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe,” cried Mr. George Floyd.

And to whom did this child of God cry?

Not just to the white police officers who kept a knee on his neck while they turned their hearts away.

But Mr. Floyd cried out to and wept for his mama, his dead mama, who was no more.

~~~~~

White Christians, we are culpable for this chaos and for Mr. Floyd’s death in every possible way.

Etymologically, the word ‘culpable’ means ‘worthy of blame,’ and ‘deserving of censure.’

It’s a key point, one that we have shirked to own, itself a very sign of the privilege we are willing to own even less.

But, as Tracy Chapman says, the poor people are gonna rise up.

The tables are being turned.

People aren’t just talking about a revolution: a revolution is happening.

White culpability is being exposed, and the censure which is long in coming for whites is coming, and, in fact, may already be here.

~~~~~

All to often, Christians do not understand that our baptism and our faith change our allegiance and therefore change our lives.

As Father Robert Farrar Capon said,

“…it is not only that the human race’s business-as-usual desire to be on the side of a winner is inappropriate to Jesus’ mission: it’s that none of our usual bits of business, however virtuous or proper, has the last bearing on the mystery of redemption.

‘Follow me,’ [Jesus] says flatly. ‘…Nothing counts now expect being last, least, lost, little, and dead with me.”

I fret a lot that we don’t grasp that truth.

There is nothing of American culture, and what is indeed American religion, that emulates being last, least, lost, little, and dead with Jesus, or anyone else for that matter.

Trouble is for Christians, it is fundamentally impossible to both embrace the tenants of Christianity and the tenants of United States of American exceptionalism, and don’t even get me going on capitalism.

Can’t do it.

To be clear, it just can’t be done.

~~~~~

Christianity, turns out, is neither a social club nor a cultural norm, but is an upheave-your-life’s-identity-thing.

Christianity is not just about going to services on Sunday, but about being in exclusive service to the Lord on every day.

Christianity is more than bringing the lemon bars to church (bless those who do), and is more like bringing bottles of water or, as we’ve seen necessary these days, jugs of milk, to protests.

Christianity may be about belonging to book groups gathered in comfortable living rooms, but it is certainly about belonging to protest groups gathered at uncomfortable spaces in our society.

Christianity may move you to wear a cross around your neck, but then it should move you to walk the way of the cross.

Christianity, it turns out, may not be all that down with Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” but might hear Tracy Chapman’s “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution” as a modern Mary’s song, or the “Canticle of the Turning” as a hymn for the ages and the Church universal.

And by no means is Christianity about condoning, let alone supporting, let alone remaining mum about a leader who separates children from parents, who puts children in cages, who mocks people with disabilities, who disdains the care of creation, who removes protections from GLBTQIA people, who rejects policies which care for the rich over against caring for the poor, who lies faster than fact-checkers can keep up with him, and who uses the sacred word of God as a photo op which necessitated gassing and shooting his own peacefully protesting citizens.

Instead, Christianity is a way of life, not a way of condoning, ignoring, or dealing in the ways of death.

It certainly is not about self-protective life.

It’s about living life convicted by and living according to the conviction that now that we know that death doesn’t win, there is more to do with your lives than preserve them.

It’s about being neither quiet nor passive in the face of abominations or injustice.

It’s about rejecting anything and anyone who puts their agenda before Jesus’, including our own.

It’s about understanding that this Scripture passage below (that would be this last section from Matthew 25) is not a theory, but is the mark of those who follow Jesus.

Pro tip: after reading it, note that you can’t follow Jesus and follow Trump, or, for that matter, much of the agenda of the present day GOP.

³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’

⁴⁰And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

Christians, this is a moment that calls us to righteousness.

We are called as baptized people to renounce the Devil and all his empty promises.

Racism and systemic racism is a sure mark of the Devil.

Whites are called, therefore, to renounce it.

That means, of course, that we are called to renounce the privilege that we gain from it, and those who engage in it.

I renounce racism.

I renounce the racist policies and culture of policing in the US, and of the politics of the US.

I renounce Donald Trump.

I renounce the inexcusable repression of those who protested peacefully.

I regret the violence but I renounce that which led to its expression: when a word or a cry or a shout is not heard, even over centuries, sometimes, as Martin Luther King said, a riot is the language of the unheard.

I renounce what happened to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and Sean Reed and Tony McDade and a host of other names that must be said.

~~~~~

I imagine all of us have had an opportunity to wonder: if I’d been alive during slavery, during the Holocaust, during the Civil Rights moment—heck, even when Voldemort was on the run, what would I have done?

If I’d been alive when a black Jesus was being lynched by the authorities, what would I have done?

Now’s your chance to check it out.

Because finally the tables are starting to turn, and a righteous revolution is going down, right now.

These days, it’s sounding less like a whisper, and more like a holy clamor long in coming.

~~~~~

We have just entered the season of Pentecost.

Long has the Holy Spirit been imaged as a dove, also associated with peace.

She’s also, though, especially in Celtic traditions, been seen as a goose.

Geese are not pleasant.

They nip and attack and cajole you into doing what they want you to do and going where they want you to go.

They are neither peaceful nor safe.

Turns out that the same can be said of the Holy Spirit.

“Come, Holy Spirit,” we say and pray, but I do not believe we really mean that.

First thing that the Spirit did on Pentecost? Got the disciples in a mess of trouble.

We seem to forget that, we who tell children to not play with matches, and then gather these same children together for worship and pray “Come Holy Spirit, breathe your fire upon us.”

Of course, the Holy Spirit would never burn down our structures, we fool ourselves into thinking.

Just those bad ones.

Of course, the Holy Spirit would never blow away our ways of having done things, we lull ourselves into believing.

She’ll Just blow away the riff raff chaff.

Come Holy Spirit, we pray.

Just come, please and of course, and even stay, but in a respectable, predictable, controllable way.

We actually and intentionally and audaciously say that to the Holy Goose!

We audaciously say such things to the unquenchable, unrestrainable, Holy Fire.

~~~~~

I can’t help believe that the Spirit has been in the streets these days.

She’s not respectable, not predictable, not controllable.

But She is Holy nonetheless, and She is ushering in a Revolution.

~~~~~

Personal note: I very much should have written sooner about Mr. Floyd and the protests.

I am sorry.

These days have been full of heaps of personal commitments, and so I haven’t been able to string thoughts together—or, rather, amidst other clamors for my attention, there are so many strings of thoughts that I haven’t been able to pull them together.

This entry is but one of five or six blogs that I’ve set out to write, truth be told.

If you would like to follow my more…succinct and immediate thoughts, feel free to follow me on my personal Twitter @RevDrAnnaM, or find me on Facebook.

Peace, and moreover shalom, be with you all.

That’s embarrassing: three of the highest holy days of the Church, I’m a theologian of the Church, annnnnnnnd…..I didn’t get a blog done.

Turns out that the legs of my son Karl, who has a TBI, are acting up.

Happened in January, too. Then, the trouble stretched over two interminable weeks.

Gosh, I hope that we aren’t entering into a repeat of that: this poor boy, his legs bicycle, intensely springing up and down, and almost constantly, day and night.  Poor kid hasn’t had any sleep to speak of for the last two nights.

We don’t know why it happens, and we don’t know why it stops, but we do know that it’s all related to the brain injury of nigh upon 16 years ago.

When I asked Karl how he felt about this whole matter, and named a variety of possible emotions, Karl, normally happy, content, never one to want to cause concern, said, for the first time about anything near as I recall, “mad.”

Low. Whistle.

And who wouldn’t be?

I’m mad too. This son of mine suffers every day the unwelcome effects of a trauma he incurred by absolutely no fault of his own.

And I’m sad.  I’m sad that the three of us had been so looking forward to making our Easter feast—it’s one of our favorite family bonding times—and instead, I’m in the bedroom with my boy, trying to calm his poor legs down and help him rest, and my girl is in the kitchen, making our meal alone.

I’ve been through way worse.

Others have been through way worse.

But man, still and even so, it’s just not right, on so many levels, and we are beyond ready for a TBI cure.

~~~~~

In the seminary class I’m teaching on the Lutheran Confessions, we got to talking on Maundy Thursday about ‘atonement’ theories, the fancy name for the different, what…reasons…why Jesus died on the cross.

Traditionally, there are about three that are most often floated around, and naturally have labels: the Classic Theory, the Substitionary Theory, and the Subjective Theory.

In the Classic form, Jesus is considered to be a victor over death. It’s very dualistic, very bad vs. good, very Satan vs. God, and often very violent. It’s a way of thinking about the cross that informed C.S. Lewis’ notion of the White Witch and Aslan, and the Deep Magic and the Deeper Magic.

Jesus is Aslan, so to speak, who on behalf of the enslaved, in-bondaged humans, fights the good fight, and ultimately vanquishes the enemy and saves humanity.

It’s not like there aren’t Scriptural texts for it: Genesis 3, the tale of the servant who taught Eve and Adam the difference between good and evil, and tore their allegiance from God; John 8, especially verse 44, in which Jesus says that he is from the Father, but that our father is the Devil, for we do our father’s bidding, and not his; and Hebrews 2:14-18, in which the author tells of how we share flesh and blood with Jesus, who on our behalf destroyed the devil and thereby freed us.

The Easter human “Welcome, Happy Morning” expresses this theology: “…Hell today is vanquished, heav’n is won today….” and “Source of all things living, you came down to die, Plummed the depths of hell to raise us up on high….Died as a mortal man to save us by your love…” and “Free the souls long prisoned, bound with Satan’s chai; All that once had fallen raise to life again….”

For that matter, so is “A Mighty Fortress.” “He breaks the cruel oppressors rod, and wins salvation glorious…” and “No strength of ours can match his might! We would be lost, rejected.  But now a champion comes to fight, Whom God himself elected, You ask who this may be? The Lord of hosts is he! Christ Jesus mighty Lord, God’s only Son, adored. He holds the field victorious.”

So, as we’ll find in all of these forms of atonement theories, there’s scriptural tradition, and there’s historical tradition. But there are also problems afoot.

For example, we really don’t need to do anything but watch the battle from the sidelines.  We can be grateful to the vanquisher, because without him we’d still be the vanquished, but still, the change was made outside of ourselves, rather than within us.

Too, given that, we really have no motivation to change. “The Devil made me do it” cuts it, in this model.

So there’s neither much motivation to make structural and personal changes, nor, as far as that goes, much reason to form a framework of ethics.

Jesus’ got this one, and therefore we don’t have to.

But wait!

There’s more.

There’s the Substitutionary model too.

We might know this approach musically best as “Ah, Holy Jesus.” The folks at Live From Here did a beautiful rendition of it, which you can find here.

“Ah, holy Jesus, how hast though offended/That man to judge thee hath in hate pretended?” “Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee/‘Twas I, Lord Jesus/ I it was denied the/I crucified thee.” “Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered. The slave that sinned/and the Son hath suffered/For man’s atonement/while he nothing heedeth/God intercedeth.” “For me, kind Jesus, was thine incarnation/Thy mortal sorrow/and thy life’s oblation/Thy death of anguish/and thy bitter Passion/For my salvation.”

Roots for it are everywhere in Scripture. Mark 10:45, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many;” 1 Timothy 2:5-6 “For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all…” Revelation 5:9, ““You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation,” and that’s just for starters.

An infraction has occurred, and a price has to be paid.

It’s our fault, but Jesus takes one for the human team. (Here also Aslan can be a reference). For this reason, it is called the Substitutionary Model, because Jesus, pure and sinless, is substituted for sinful people.

It’s arguably the theological bent that has made the cross such an element of the faith of Christians, over against that of Easter: we are so horrible, Jesus is so pure, Jesus sacrificed himself for us, and we are (literally) undyingly grateful.

But it’s got troubles too:

God the Father (always the Father—I do believe we’d realize a bit more quickly the troubling elements of this approach if our primary notion of God were as Mother) is nothing but an angry executioner, appeased only by righteous blood. We have every reason to still live in fear, because that sort of divine being already has the street creds for capricious decisions.

Too, sin is nothing but immorality, and makes the reconciliation of it violence rather than mercy born out of love.

And again, because the change took place this time in God (rather than the devil), we don’t have reason to change, to do anything else.

It’s been done.

And last, the Subjective Theory of Atonement.

This framework has a different spin on matters, for here, the goal of Jesus’ death on the cross is that we are changed.

“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” is thoroughly grounded in this approach: “When I survey the wondrous cross/On which the prince of glory died/My richest gain I county but loss/And pour contempt on all my pride.” And “Forbid it Lord that I should boast/Save in the death of Christ, my God/ All the vain things that charm me most/I sacrifice them to his blood.” And “Were the whole realm of nature mine/That were a tribute far too small/Love so amazing so divine/Demands my soul, my life, my all.”

You can surely find textual basis for it in Scripture: John 13:15 says, “For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you,” and 1 Peter 2:21 “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”

Here, Jesus is a teacher, and we are the students.  We most of all have to learn to love. We have to learn because we are sinful, and weak, and thick-headed.  Jesus loves God this much, and so should we.

But while more liberal theology is more comfortable with some elements of this take on the cross, it is ultimately insufficient, just as the two prior atonement theories are.

Here, we are reduced to being blockheads.

The depth of sinfulness, therefore, is not just relativized, but is rejected.

So, all of these approaches: Classic, Substitutionary, and Subjective, have truth, and none of them quite do the trick, and none of them entirely quite tell my son whose legs are tremoring or my daughter who is in the kitchen by herself what the cross has to say to them.

~~~~~

I’m not audacious enough to say that I have it all figured out.

I definitely don’t have it all figured out.

But there are a couple of things that have bugged me about these three approaches, these three takes on the cross that get, in one form or another, or in a Venn-diagram-esque-y way, the bulk of attention in the life of faith.

All of them have to do with sin.

None of them have to do with my boy’s legs.

None of them have to do with my girl’s default love and default sacrifices for her brother.

None of them have to do with the immeasurable grief at the deaths of thousands of people who died because of accidents, of cancers, of Coronovirus.

None of them have to do with the starvation and the desperation of those utterly at the mercy of robber barons and base politicians and the voters who are down with it all.

None of them have to do with those suffering from depression, bi-polar, alcoholism, abuse, or prejudice.

These theories speak to sin, and only to sin.

But here’s the thing: there is suffering to be had, injustice to be had, victims of sin to be had, and sweet Jesus the cross must have something to say to them!

It must have something to say to my son.

And it must have something to say to my daughter, who rather than making a meal with her mama has been (and ever so gladly, for which I am so grateful) helping her brother by stretching his legs, by rubbing cream on his skin, by sleeping downstairs in case I need her in the night, and by readying for Easter in the kitchen alone while I sit with my spasmodic boy.

~~~~~

To write this blog, I flipped to my old, old systematic lectures, written by Walt B.

In them, he teased out all of these atonement theories, more or less as I have above.

At first, his lecture notes didn’t seem to notice this pesky detail, though, this piece that each of these theories, while decidedly different, reduce the cross just various ways of thinking through forgiveness.

That they speak to the sinners, but not to those sinned upon, nor to the sufferers.

That they don’t speak to the why of forsakenness felt not just by Jesus, but by people still, every damn day.

But then I came across these points, three of them, all under his Point D: The Cross of Jesus is something that happens to the world. He wrote:

1. The world—all of humanity—crucified the Messiah: religion and politics, Jew and Gentile, enemies and disciples, men—women—children.

2. Jesus’ death on the cross calls the whole world into question.  Jesus is, in some sense, vindicated in the resurrection.  But the unmasking of false gods is in the dying.  “Pilate and Herod are revealed” (Gollwitzer). The world is revealed as “old alone” IN the death of Jesus its oldness—its way of death-dealing in order to cling to the illusion of power—is revealed. The old has passed away; it has come to an end (II Cor. 5:17).

3. In the death of Jesus God has made a final and irrevocable decision about the world. He will not abandon the world.  He will not give up on the world.  Atonement means that the world has been changed by God’s identification with it in the depths of its oldness.

That, all three of those points, that helped me, as I sit in this bed mid-afternoon, my legs wrapped around my son’s, trying to press the tremoring muscle groups with my toes and knees, and by knotting his legs around mine in hopes that this odd position will perhaps break the tone.

At the very least, perhaps after two sleepless nights, he’ll rest?

But these points reminded me that God did not kill Jesus: we did with our quests for power and our fear of its loss; our hubris and our anxious unwillingness to transform hope into a new way of being.

I was reminded that death can come naturally or it can come with violence—and one doesn’t even need to lose one’s breath for this to be so.

And I was reminded of how easy it is to make despair the god, the thing I trust most.

I was reminded that death is real, and that God entered into it.

And I was reminded that the way of God is not the way of the world: We crucify. God raises up.

So as I sit here with my boy, yet one more twist of my ankle to help untwist his, all the while listening to my girl clatter away in the kitchen making the meal that we had so looked forward to cooking together today, I am reminded that that’s exactly what Holy Saturday is about.

Death is real.

God must not just know that, but enter into that, for I need God to ache with me as my son’s TBI-born muscle spasms tremor into my own heart, and I need God to ache with me as that same heart reaches to my girl in the kitchen around the corner.

And I know that my son’s tremors and my daughter’s loss once again of mama-daughter time is someone else’s virtual farewell because of COVID, someone else’s inability to access water to cleanse their hands, someone else’s frightened self behind a locked closet door of a raging abuser, someone else’s despair at being alone.

The cross must speak to that.

But there must, there must, be more to the story than that.

We can’t make sense of the cross if we don’t hold out hope for that.

If there isn’t reason to hold out hope for that.

If there isn’t the possibility that perhaps, though death is real, life is real-er.

Pancreatic cancer took her, it did, which is a horrible disease that wields no mercy and takes no prisoners.

She fought it, of course, even being willing to undergo the dire Whipple Procedure, an option for only a fraction of those afflicted with pancreatic cancer, and itself no summer stroll.

So the disease is wretched.

But to compound its misery, the initial resources for my mother’s palliative care were wretched as well.

Brad, for example (not his real name), Brad is forever seared into the memories of my father and me.

Brad was the nurse at the “Cottages,” a euphemism if I’ve ever heard one, where initially my mama was slated to go for hospice care.

Dad and I, of course, we committed to scoping out the place before we’d commit to settling on the place as being the spot where my mama would die.  We knew that we couldn’t protect her from death at that point, but we were bent on ushering her through it with as much comfort, dignity, and tenderness as we could.

But pretty much when the door opened, and there was Brad, dressed in a soiled white uniform, raised to his upper abdomen with his left hand which was simultaneously itching his hairy belly, while extending his right hand in introduction, we knew that these were no ‘cottages,’ and my mama was not going to make her entry into the beyond with Brad by her side.

Which anyway, would have turned out to be true, because when I asked Brad how often he checked on the patients, he promised us heartily that the nursing care always poked their heads in the rooms “every few hours or so.”

This was after he asked what was ailing my mother. When I said ‘pancreatic cancer,’ he said, “Damn, that one is a son of a bitch.’

That Brad was right, of course, was beside the point.

That Brad also said that they weren’t allowed to administer anything stronger than Motrin or Aleve was not beside the point.

After we left, my father and I decided that we needed something stronger than Motrin or Aleve.

So even though it was only 12:14, Dad and I made straight for the martinis at a local pub, which we lifted less to something, and more for balm of the liquid variety to help us cope with Brad, who became the personification of everything horrible about this spirit-ravaging, body-ravaging, energy-ravaging disease.

We even took a picture of the beverages to commemorate our moment of empty despair.

To this day, I will now and again tease my father that he needs to stay on my good side, because I still know where the “Cottages” are and therefore where Brad lives, and where Dad could one day too.

HOWEVER, after we left the brink of Brad, suddenly Mama was able to get into the most amazing hospice in the universe, Avera McKennan’s Dougherty House, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

It was perfection, and I wrote something about the experience, and its perfect timing with Advent, here.

All of this is a lead-up to the following:

I’ve made a habit of checking Facebook Memories every morning.

It’s a wonderful way to start the day, to anchor it in what happened years ago, to see the evolution of people and places and events, to be reminded of joys and laughter and moments with my children who were somehow so much smaller and younger once.

To be honest, I also see it as a cleanse of sorts: I’ve intentionally purged all sorts of unpleasant memories of people and places and events that have neither right nor reason to clutter up my mind or spirits, and it seems to me that there’s no reason why my Facebook account should make room for what in the name of self-care, self-respect, and self-love I’ve opted not to.

It’s a ritual of delight, gratitude, and self-affirmation.

So two days ago, up popped a memory of my mother, whom, for all the world my father and I believed was going to die on December 11.

She had been increasingly telling of the angels with “bony elbows” whom she could see jabbing each other in the ribs to move, to make space, to allow room for my mama who was coming soon.

Even her own elbow was often pulled straight up in the air, her entire bent arm, even when she was sleeping, jerking right on up to the ceiling and beyond. It’s an image I will never forget (and which I fortunately photographed), as if the angels themselves were tugging on her arm and the rest of her to come on home.

At one point, she even asked my father and me if we could also hear one of these impatient angels getting somewhat irritable, insisting in her right ear, “Come on, Marge, let’s get ‘er done!”

As a matter of fact, to honor these angels, these heavenly ambassadors who were clamoring with welcome for my mama, we opted for this image on her gravestone:

But on December  11, she quieted, and if there were any movement at all, it was of that right elbow of hers yanking incessantly toward the sky.

That night, when I left, I looked around, knowing that the end was near.

I figured, with resignation, that in anticipation of her clearly approaching death, I could just as well take some of her belongings, and our own accrued items, home.

So I did.

I packed almost all of it up to make our probable next day easier.

Among the random assembly of things to bring home was my mama’s gin.

Mom loved her gin.

That night, I hardly slept, waiting for The Call.

But amazingly, my phone stayed silent.

So the next day, I went back to Dougherty to see my mama, not knowing whether she’d be sleeping peacefully or being bothered by her angels.

I gently let her know I was there, and that I was going to make some press pot coffee.  Would, I whispered, she like some?

Yes, she said, yes she would.

So I made her some coffee, and offered it to her dipped in a swab, after which my mama opened her eyes, smacked her lips, and said how so very good that tasted.

And then, the next thing you know, my mama sat up, and she had a cup of coffee, and then had some lunch, and all the while Dad and I were looking over her to each other in amazement, totally having to switch gears of expectation.

“Well,” chortled my father, “next thing you know, you’ll ask for some gin!”

I shot him a horrified look, too, too late.

”Oh, that would taste soooooooooo good!” my mama said. “Could you pour me a splash?”

…

…

…

”So, Mama,” I said, gulping, hoping and trusting that even though her body was withering away, her sense of humor was still intact, “So, Mama…there is no delicate way to put this, so the upshot is that I pretty much was convinced that you were going to die this morning. You weren’t doing so hot, yesterday, to be honest, so I…I…I packed up your gin. Yes, yes I did.  I took your gin home because I thought you were going home too, and figured you’d have more than enough gin there, probably offered to you on the rocks by one of those angels of yours.”

She laughed.

I went home, and brought back the gin.

And the next day, she died.

As I wrote, then, “while I held my mother’s hand, Dad and I reminded her about joyful reunions, and we sang her Shalom, and Silent Night, and even warbled Willie Nelson’s “I’ll Fly Away,” and we told her of Jesus’ and the angels’ reassurances to not be afraid, and we made the sign of the cross on her forehead, and of course we raised our gin, each of us tipping our fingers in the libation to share on her lips our toast to her with her, and her breath became gentler, and lighter, and at 9:39, it stopped.”

~~~~~

The Psalm for tomorrow, Advent 3, is Psalm 146.

It goes like this:

Psalm 146

¹Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul!

²I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

³Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.

⁴When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.

⁵Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God,

⁶who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever;

⁷who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free;

⁸the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous.

⁹The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

¹⁰The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord!

“I will praise the Lord as long as I live.”

Advent is the season of the perfect fusion of the already and the not yet.

I love that my mama died in Advent.

She was already dying, but she was not yet dead! (Also, someone needs to do a mash-up of this scene from Monty Python, and this one from the Princess Bride)

And who among us is not, I ask, already dying, but not dead yet.

I do believe that there are two ways to protest death: joy and justice-seeking.

Death recoils from both.

For this reason, Psalm 146 is the perfect psalm for Advent’s perfect fusion of the already and the not yet.

I am still living, so therefore I am still praising God.

I am still living, so therefore I am still being faithful to God and God’s agenda.

The psalmist praised God precisely because God is not a God of death.

Instead, the psalmist’s God, our God, is a God of life.

The psalmist’s God is also a God who rejects death, and, in related news, ruins those who embrace it.

What does it look like to embrace death?

To withhold help to the oppressed, to withhold food to the hungry, to withhold healing from the sick, to withhold welcome from the stranger, to withhold sustenance to vulnerable children and women.

(Sweet Jesus I hope it doesn’t include withholding gin from one’s dying mama!  And if it does, I hope God noticed a) that it was a mistake; and b) I went back to fetch it!)

If you don’t see the political connections, and the partisan connections, then you are neither paying attention to the news nor to Scripture, and not just in Advent.

And if you don’t take the warnings seriously, well, I’m not sure what my mama’s angels will be saying to you, because the entire body of Scripture has not a single kind word or much hope to offer to or for people who oppress, who reject, who build walls, who withhold help to the Least of These, who are wealthy and see that as a personal accomplishment rather than random privilege and something to be stewarded and even given up, and I am so not making it up.

People like that really piss God off.

Now, free will and all, you can, of course, choose to “put your trust in princes” (and privilege and power etc), but, as the psalmist (and the entire body of Scripture) says, in them/that “there is no help.”

ORRRrrrrrr, you can be like those who are happy because their “help is the God of Jacob,” their “hope is in the Lord their God…”

Praise God.

Serve God.

That’s Advent in a nutshell.

There are so many ways to be happy (as defined by the psalmist) and to praise God: enjoying beverages and singing Willy and sitting by the fire as I am with my dogs while my children are playing together and laughing and listening to music and gathering with dear friends and lovemaking and good food and snow ice cream and sand in toes and simply savoring every breath you take.

And there are so many ways to serve God: writing letters to the editor and talking about difficult topics with family and friends and posting your refusal to accede to the powers that be and giving money to righteous groups and calling up and calling out your Representatives and if you are called to preach the gospel well then actually preaching it and refusing to stay silent.

Activities like that really piss Death off.

Praise God.

Serve God.

It’s the message of this Psalm.

It’s the message of Scripture.

It’s the message of Advent.

It’s the message of God.

And tonight, I invite you to raise a gin, or a beverage of your choice, to my mama, who did, indeed, praise the Lord as long as she lived, indeed right until her very last breath, one which carried the faint but wonderfully holy whiff of gin.

~~~~~

Anna’s new book, I Can Do No Other: The Church’s New Here We Stand Moment, published by Fortress Press, is on sale now!

~~~~

Consider offering a stay at the Spent Dandelion Theological Retreat Center, or consulting sessions with OMG: Center for Theological Conversation, as holiday gifts!  Follow the links on these sites, or contact Anna at anna@omgcenter.com, or at 605-521-6284.

We will be our Lord’s advocates for the powerless, the poor, the lonely, the exploited, the deprived, the rejected.

We will resist any governmental, social, economic, or ideological force which would blunt justice or demean persons.

We will work with those who will be helpful us to respect all, care for all, and aim at freedom for all.

Thus committed, we look to Almighty God for direction.

In Jesus Christ and through the prophets, God gives us the vision of a world made new for a life of social justice and mercy, of reconciliation and peace, of promise and fulfillment.

We rely on the Spirt to give us power to do that which a faith active in love demands us.

Our hope is in God.” Mandate for Peacemaking, 1982, American Lutheran Church

Last weekend (although not by any means for the first time) I mentioned Trump and the Republican Party and GOP policies by name in some presentations I gave at a synod assembly.

The bulk of the presentations, the point of the presentations, of course, was not Trump, and was not about the Republicans or their policies.

Instead, my keynotes (linked below) were about our interconnection with one another. I based them all on the brilliant and succinct mission statement of the synod, namely that we are called to walk together, to love Christ together, and to love all together, for the sake of the world.

Because I’m a nerd, I delved a bit into some lessons that quantum physics can offer people of faith. It’s a stretch of mind, not gonna lie, to think about quantum physics, but once a person does, it is not a stretch of the imagination to see how faith and physics play in the same sandbox nicely together: both concern our mysterious relationship with all people, all creation, and all things; both defy reason; and yet both depend on it too.

But most important to me was to ground everything I said (and say, and do) less in quantum physics, and instead all in the Gospel.

As I pointed out to those gathered, I am absolutely convinced that we in the church are facing a crisis of the First Commandment: who, or what, is our God?

I’m of the mind that as Christians, our God is to be understood by way of Jesus: his life, his death which came about precisely because of his life, and his resurrection, which confirmed God’s way of being in the world, as seen in Jesus’ life and death.

The gospel, as I understand it, is that Jesus is risen from the dead.

That is the Good News, and it is news that still affects us—if we let it, of course.

So in the course of those presentations, I said (as I have in blogs, and presentations, and will in the book to come out which you can happily pre-order here [granted, this theme is a bit of a present-day passion of mine]) that if we identify as Christians (aka, Christ-ians, to make the point that we believe that Jesus was the Christ because he is risen from the dead), we identify with all with all that Jesus was about when walking about on this green earth, because the whole of his way of being in the world—feeding, healing, welcoming, serving, forgiving, and even calling-outing—were affirmed by the resurrection as revealing of God’s agenda.

It was in a name-calling-outing mode that I named Trump, and I named the present day Republican Party, and I named some of their policies.

The first question thrown my way was great: with a smile, the guy more or less said, “You know that everything you said could get you thrown out of most churches, right?”

I laughed, and then agreed, and pointed out that for better or for worse, I know something about that from somewhat mind-bending personal experience (you can read about that saga in my blog “Spent Dandelion, and Truth Mattering.”)

But, mindful of the risks, the gospel up and calls a person forth anyway—and, in fact, precisely because of the risks.  If they weren’t present, of course, nothing would need to be said or done in the first place, right?

Now, it may surprise some people that I don’t, actually, have a lick of vested interest in and commitment to the Democrat Party, in and of itself.

In fact, although I admit that I’m registered as a Democrat, technically, if anything, were you to sketch out my views, I’m pretty much of the Democratic Socialist persuasion.

Also, in fact, I have a record of calling out my own people, as you see here, and here, and as I did in letters to President Obama when he let down Standing Rock during the Dakota Access Pipeline matter, when he and the Democrats snubbed single-payer health coverage (a review of his evolving ideas on the matter here), when the Obama administration initially made horrible decisions regarding immigration (a review of which you’ll find here), didn’t raise the minimum wage, didn’t close Guantanamo, didn’t enact tougher environmental taxes and regulations, didn’t close the income gap…well, you can find a bunch of the disappointments and my-ire-inducing decisions of his administration here.

The point for me is not, that is, to be an unflinching Democrat.

The point for me is to be an unflinching Christian.

What that means is gleaned from the life of Jesus.

To paraphrase a contemporary line from political activism, I’m with him.

Everything about my politics gets is grounded not in party identity, not in national identity, not in self-interest identity, but in this question: given the messiness of matters, who or what will bring about the closest approximation to Jesus’ way of being in this world in this moment?

It’s basic Lord’s Prayer, stuff, right?  “Hallowed by your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…for the kingdom, the power, the glory are yours….”

But in a very under-appreciated way, part of Jesus’ way of being on this earth was spent calling people out.

Like, take a look at Matthew 23, when Jesus called out, by name, people (arguably his people).

Moreover, not because of what they were teaching, but because what they were teaching and purporting to believe wasn’t consistent with what they were doing, he up and called them snakes, hypocrites, and fools.

Yep, why yes he did. (Also, to refer back to my first question, he too pretty much got thrown out of that place, when you flip to the end of the gospels…)

In fact, the Greek word used here for fools is where we get our word, wait for it, moron.

Not making it up.

(Also, for the record, not advocating.)

He also called out by name the ruler of his day, King Herod (the one from whom Jesus and his parents had to flee and find asylum in another land: fortunately, they, in contrast to present-day refugees here at the borders of the US, were let in) a fox, which would have been heard as a weasel, which would not have gone over any better with Herod (and his supporters) than it would Trump (and his supporters).

He also called a woman a bitch, which completely rankles me, and so I wrote a blog about it.

Jesus, in other words, Jesus himself called religious and political leaders alike out by name and just up and called them names!

Luther had a knack for doing the same thing, as it happens. In fact, I even pointed out this website where, for free, you can be insulted by Luther, 500 years later.  It’s really quite impressive, the names and slurs he came up with for those he believed were against the gospel.

Now, in 1518, Luther wrote a little ditty called The Heidelberg Disputation.  In it, he objected to people who believed that God was seen where there was no suffering, and where all was apparently good and merry.  Instead, Luther made the case that where you see—and, in fact, only when you see—suffering, you see God.  He drew up several “theses,” the 21st of which said, “A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing [by name] what it actually is.”

(Also, again to refer to my first question, if you take a peek at the whole Diet of Worms escapade, thereafter he pretty much got thrown out of church, and the town too….)

Jump forward to the days of Hitler, the days when Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others whom we laud as courageous saints of the church took this sort of calling-out mandate to heart.

The Barmen Declaration (linked to here on the Lutheran Church of Germany’s website—in English) was written by Christian leaders directly to address the crisis created by the threat of Hitler and the Nazi party. It’s worth noting that Bonhoeffer felt as if the Barmen declaration did not go far enough, saying “This is the capitulation of the church to politics!“

Willing to go further, just days away from only age 27, he criticized Hitler by name on a radio show…and was, unsurprisingly, cut off.

Of course, for these sorts of naming-words—and for the fact that he participated in an assassination plot to end Hitler’s life—Bonhoeffer not only was thrown out of church and town: he was killed.

Turns out that this naming-habit, this calling-a-thing-what-it-is habit, it’s a long-standing heritage, you see: a religious, a Christian, a Lutheran, a rostered-leadery sort of heritage.

So.

With all of that, as I see it, these days, mindful of the risks, a Christian perspective—one defined by the life of Jesus, and his death due to the threat he posed to the authorities by way of his social, political, and religious statements and actions, and by his resurrection, which frees us to no longer fear the risk of calling a thing what it is—leads a person to not really run out of things to criticize by name about this current administration, an administration which itself has a name: the Trump administration.

As but a brief summary:

• Its persistent rejection of immigrants.
• Its animosity toward refugees. This distressing, disheartening NYT article, just published, references not just my state, but my congressional district, CD8!
• Its commitment to a wall which Mexico, USMCA, US taxpayers and military will fund.
• Its creation of hurdles for all people to access affordable health care.
• Its  consistent and subtly wielded racism.
• Its  bigoted views on Islam.
• Its mocking and threatening the livelihoods and security of disabled people.
• Its creation of policies that harm impoverished people.
• Trump’s incessant lying.
• A litany of sexual assault allegations against Trump, and derogatory (and recorded and broadcast for all to hear) comments made by him about women from decades back.
• Its abominable track record of curtailing, rescinding, and removing rights and safety of the GLBTQIA community.
• Its separation of children from parents, guardians, and adults, holding them in what many—including Holocaust experts—are likening to concentration camps (the youngest prisoner is now believed to be four months old), and neglecting their care.
• The felonization of humanitarian aid.
• Its rejection of science to fit its own policy and economic needs.
• Its refusal to care for creation.
• Trumps incessant bullying (despite his wife’s “Be Best” efforts) which is only creating and condoning widespread bullying.
• Its economic policies which harm the middle-class and poor.
• Its equation of Christianity with nationalism and vice versa (in fact, studies show that the highest indicator for support for Trump was just that: Christian nationalism).
• And, in this article from Slate Magazine, you can see its dismissal of stunningly long survey of Christian moral tenets (all linked) which are pooh-poohed by Trump and his white evangelical supporters.

Now, some people, compelled by their faith to object to abortion, see Trump’s views on abortion as worth the scandals above.

But on several fronts, that is a questionable pass.

Women who are forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term suffer extremely adverse health affects; suffer far more tendencies toward suicide, depression, substance abuse, and mental health issues when the pregnancy is due to rape or incest; and bring their child into a world shaped by GOP policies which are bent against poor and single mothers.

Too, if abortion is the key GOP platform plank, then clearly all life is valued, which means then that clearly the GOP ought to be in radical favor of health care for all (not least of all to attend to the health care of women who do carry a baby to term), a living wage (not least of all to attend to the financial needs of women who do carry a baby to term), equal pay for women (to attend to the financial needs of women), paid maternity and paternity leaves (to attend to the financial and mental-health needs of women and the children whom they bear, and as do, say, European countries [I know: I received them]), not to mention be for welcoming all lives who are desperate for help and safety (even the babies and grown adults seeking protection at the border were, presumably, once sought to be protected in the womb) and be against the death penalty (the mass murderer was once an unborn child).

Right-to-life must mean right to all life, and secure, healthy life at that, right?

But, alas, nope.

(It is why, even though I disagree with the Roman Catholic stance on abortion, I respect its theological consistency, for in contrast to White Evangelical Protestantism, you generally see Roman Catholic social justice policy fighting for human rights and against the death penalty.)

(Also, the ELCA has a marvelous, sensitive social statement on abortion, which you can read here.)

Now, circle back to the quote at the top of this blog.  It is excerpted from a 1982 document of the old American Lutheran Church (ALC), the equivalent of our present day ELCA social statements.  It is called, “Mandate for Peacemaking.”

Just the word “mandate” alone ought to catch our attention: it comes from the same word from which we get “commandment” and, not to be missed, “Maundy,” as in Maundy Thursday, as in the day when Jesus broke bread and gave wine, and not only said that we were to do that in his name, but also “Love One Another,” a commandment which did not go unnoticed by the crafters of the synod’s mission statement.

In this singular paragraph quoted above, we get the whole schmear: An acknowledgement of the risks of prophetic speech and action, a centering of the faith in advocacy for the Least of These, a call to be involved in the dismantling of systemic oppression, an affirmation of resistance, an exhortation to network with others who care about justice and compassion, a reminder of where our trust is to be located, and a naming of this way of life as a mandate.

A mandate! And not just for rostered leaders, but for all people of faith!

That said, if you look at the ELCA Visions and Expectations (a document not without its troubles, to be sure, and notorious for its Page 13), you see another series of mandates for rostered leaders in the section under “Faithful Witness:”

Compassion
Christians are called by God to participate in compassionate care for those in need. This church expects its ordained ministers to follow the example of Jesus and to lead the church in compassionate care of the suffering….
Hospitality
Just as Jesus received sinners and ate with them, the church is called to welcome the stranger and to open its life to those who are “outside” and alienated. This church expects its ordained ministers to be models of ap- propriate hospitality in their personal lives, to preside at the Eucharistic table where God welcomes sinners and to lead the church in its witness to divine hospitality.
Peacemaking
The culmination of God’s eschatological salvation will be the overcoming of every enmity and the reconciliation of the whole creation. Yet even in the present time, God’s peace is a reality. This church expects its ordained ministers to be witnesses to and instruments of God’s peace and reconcili- ation for the world.
Justice
The church is to witness to God’s call for justice in every aspect of life, including testimony against injustice and oppression, whether personal or systemic. This church expects its ordained ministers to be committed to justice in the life of the church, in society, and in the world. The ordained minister is expected to oppose all forms of harassment and assault.
Stewardship of the Earth
The people of God are called to the care and redemption of all that God has made. This includes the need to speak on behalf of this earth, its environ- ment and natural resources and its inhabitants. This church expects that its ordained ministers will be exemplary stewards of the earth’s resources, and that they will lead this church in the stewardship of God’s creation.

Rostered leaders agreed to this as a recognized mandate of their rostered leadership.

And, insofar as congregations call rostered leaders, congregations should expect that their rostered leaders engage actively in the above, even and perhaps most especially in the pulpit.

You see, the Gospel is not partisan.

But it is political.

Just today, I came across this quote by Richard Rohr, from his book The Universal Christ.

“There is no such thing as a nonpolitical Christianity. To refuse to critique the system or the status quo is to fully support it—which is a political act well disguised.”

Or, what John Shelley wrote in the preface to the late German theologian Dorothee Sölle’s book Political Theology, “Thus the question of meaning—What do we mean when we speak of God?—must be supplemented by the more practical question: ‘What are the social and political consequences of speaking of God, or remaining silent in a particular situation?’”

Or, as Desmond Tutu once said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.  If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

You see, I was not speaking in a partisan way, when I publicly named Trump and his administration—again, I have a long record of calling out the Democrats, not to mention voting against them and for an Independent (i.e. Bernie, who, for the record, does not get my vote this time around).

But I sure as heck was speaking in a political way…based on what I hope is a solid reading of the Gospel.

If a person says that these faith claims “don’t work in the real world,” or are fine in theory but aren’t meant to be put into practice, then I ask you: what, then, is the point of being a Christian?

Is it only to “be saved” in a post-death sort of way?

If this is one’s religious approach, then it may be worth flipping, and stat, to Matthew 25: 31-46:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

Like, what are we about, if not radical hospitality, radical inclusion, radical love?

It’s our M.O., people of God!

If a person claims to be a Christian, then one claims that everything—not just some things, not just when politically/culturally/economically/institutionally/congregationally convenient, but all-the-time-everything—is to be in accord with Jesus.

I fail to see how separating families at the borders, putting children in cages, refusing to recognize climate science and therefore global warming, lying, grabbing women’s “pussies,” refusing to aid the poor, rejecting refugees and (legal!!) asylum seekers, bullying, racism, religious bigotry, mocking the disabled, threatening GLBTQIA folk, and identifying any country—including the USA—with God any more than any other country is, is by any stretch of the imagination in keeping with Christ…let alone something that even the most ardent Trump supporters would do, were they to be face-to-face with the revealed Jesus as a child in a cage, or as a disabled journalist, or as a critter on its way to extinction, or as a person with a home flooded because of climate change.

Upshot: as I see it, based on my reading of the gospel, many of the agendas of the present administration and of the GOP do not not not line up with the agenda of God.

Draw a direct line between the gospel and separated, wailing, frightened, hungry babies; walled off nations; the mocking of people like my son; white extremism; policies that harm the poor; lack of access to health care; discrimination; sexual assault; lying; and preventable global warming, and I’ll change my mind.

Rostered leaders are compelled and emboldened by our mandates, and by the gospel, to Call A Thing What It Is.

We just are.

That’s our vocation.

It’s what we are called to do.

And it is damn risky: that old ALC document called that thing exactly what it is.

It is also prophetic.

Annnndddddd, all evidence sometimes to the contrary, it is pastoral—pastoral to those who are being excluded, for they need to hear and experience the tangible Gospel, and pastoral to those who are doing the excluding, for they need to hear and experience the tangible Gospel too.

Even though it may feel like Law.

That’s often what happens, when a Thing is Called what it is.

It feels like an insult.

But actually, actually, it’s extended, if uncomfortable, grace.

For just as this particular synod’s mission statement says, we are called to walk together, to love Christ together, and to love all together, for the sake of the world.

The three keynote presentations I offered can be found here.

A hearty thank you again for the overwhelming and generous welcome from the Northern Illinois Synod.

I was so, so glad to be with you all.

Clearly, in sitting amongst you and hearing of the way you are God’s hands in the world, you do indeed do so much for all people, in the name of Jesus, and for the sake of the world.

Peace.

————-

You can pre-order Anna’s new book I Can Do No Other: The Church’s New Here We Stand Moment here!