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.

The word isn’t randomly chosen: as of the mid-13th Century, the word ‘holocaust’ had come to mean “sacrifice by fire,” and “burnt offering,”

The term is rooted in the Greek word holokauston, meaning “a thing wholly burnt,” or “a thing burnt whole.”

This, of course, is precisely what happened: not things, but people were wholly burnt, and burnt whole.

The corpses of human beings—babies, even, slaughtered by gas, by gunfire, by hangings, by disease, by starvation, by experiments on their bodies, by cold, by despair—people who were just days or weeks before playing ball in the streets, selling wares in their stores, reading books by their windows, buying groceries in their town, worshipping God in their synagogues, making love in their beds, these people were fed to hungry, hot-breathed crematoria, thrown in like mere logs by other human beings who had lost their own humanity.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, 340 bodies could be burned per day at Auschwitz-Birkenau alone.

In this beyond-tragic Greek sense of the word, what occurred under Hitler’s reign—and by way of those who enabled him both by their active and their silent enabling—was, indeed a holocaust.

We want to say it is unimaginable, but it isn’t.

Someone imagined it.

Many brought the imagined into being.

And we have actual images for what should, in fact, be unimaginable.

~~~~~

So the horrors of those days are often referred to as ‘the Holocaust,’ this ‘sacrifice by fire.’

But the word can be troublesome here.

These humans were burnt, this is horrifyingly true, but they were no sacrifice, at least not to anything holy.

Given that, there is reason some prefer to use the term ‘Shoah,’ a Hebrew word found in Zephaniah and Job meaning “calamity,” “catastrophe,” “desolation,” and “whirlwind of chaos.”

And what occurred under Nazi rule was indisputably all of that.

Today, many English speakers call this day the “Holocaust Day of Remembrance.” But by many Jews and others, especially those in Israel, this somber day is also known, and some believe better known, as Yom Ha-Shoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Catastrophe.

~~~~~

On June 9, 1974, the New York Times published a column entitled “In Search of God at Auschwitz.” The author, a man named Israel Shenker, told of a seminar that had just been held with a theme of that name. Among the presenters was a philosopher, a survivor of the Shoah, Prof. Emil Fackenheim. He is quoted as saying this:

“In Judaism there are two archetypes of experience—one is the saving experience [the Red Sea], the other is the commanding experience [Sinai],” Professor Fackenheim also said. “If one tries to hear a redeeming voice at Auschwitz, there is only silence. But a commanding voice speaks to those willing to listen: A Jew is forbidden to give Hitler posthumous victory, and to consent to despair is to give that victory. The moral‐religious contradiction can be resolved only by affirmation that there can be no second Holocaust.”

In other words, Prof. Fackenheim believes that Judaism tends to see God either in events which reveal God’s salvatory, redemptive presence, or in events which reveal God’s presence via God’s expressed divine, righteous mandates for living.

Prof. Fackenheim rejects the notion that Auschwitz has any value as a redeeming moment, that God intended this desolation of humans—and of our sense of humanity—as a way of saving God’s people or the world at large.

Instead, he files the Shoah under an event which harbors a commandment of God: Never Again.

Never again shall Hitler and those who burn with such hatred burn others, and never again will Hitler and those of his ilk receive despair as compensation for their evil.

~~~~~

I have often referred to a rabbi’s words, though I can’t recall where I saw them nor, alas, who said them, which said, essentially, this:

Whatever you say about God has to be said in Auschwitz, with the ashes of burned Jews on your shoulders. If you can’t say what you want to say about God there, then it ought not be said.

You can’t say in Auschwitz that what occurred under Hitler was part of God’s plan, was reflective of God’s intention for God’s people, was a holy warning or a punishment or a lesson to be learned.

No.

The Shoah and all that brought it into being and sustained it was an utter abomination against humanity and against God.

But you can say there a holy Never Again.

And you can say there that Never Again is always Now.

Now you can be aware that evil which shouldn’t even be imagined can begin to take form.

Now you can be aware that the unimaginable is on the cusp of becoming horrifically real.

Now you can be aware that you are called to refuse to cede evil a victory.

Now you can become more aware of what happened, and why, and how, so that in knowing, in remembering, it will never, ever happen again.

#NeverAgainIsNow

~~~~~

Because hate is on the rise across the world, and terrifyingly sharply so here in the U.S., seen in the increasing power and presence of white Christian nationalists and supremacists, please check out and share widely these resources sponsored by the Auschwitz Museum.

panorama.auschwitz.org
lesson.auschwitz.org

For those of you on Twitter, I urge you to follow @AuschwitzMuseum, which posts daily pictures and stories of those killed in the Shoah.

You are welcome to learn more about Dietrich Bonhoeffer here, Kaj Munk here, the both of them here, Martin Niemöller here, anti-Semitism here, and resisting evil here.

Czeslaw Milosz wrote these words in his book The Captive Mind, and quoted them from the mouth of “an Old Jew of Galacia.”

I read them and I get goosebumps, every damn time.

Every time.

Now, it’s important to note that Milosz wrote those words in the context of fending off fascism.

(We might pass his book off as historical fiction, but these days, it is simultaneously both and neither one.)

Milosz began his book with these words because he was surrounded by people in power who claimed to know the indisputable truth. They purveyed it with uniform, loud, and even menacing voice, even if their take was achingly dissonant to the reality at hand.

If a citizen had the audacity to dispute Said Truth, their chutzpah would be rewarded either in painful secret, or by way of public display, a warning to any one else tempted to stir up counterviews and thereby stir up trouble.

For a mess of reasons, Milosz’ Old Jew has been messing with me as of late, as no small number of righteous Jews have done, young and old, many times before. He’s speaking to me across cultures and contexts and time to make me pause less about my fears about fascism and more about my faith and how it is proclaimed.

So I’m a Christian.

Moreover, I’m called to be a Christian pastor and theologian.

Moreover, I’m specifically called to serve out that vocation as a Lutheran in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Every noun in that sentence is a declaration of conviction.

Christian.

Pastor.

Theologian.

Lutheran.

ELCA.

With every one of those words, I am naming that I believe something is true—so true, that I stand behind it vocationally even.

Implicitly, I am therefore naming that something else is not….what…

As true?

True at all?

And I am left wondering, where am I on the Old Jew’s scale?

Closer to 55% right or 100% rascal?

Milosz has gotten under my skin all the more because of the confluence of all sorts of events: we Christians have just celebrated Easter, and in this very same month, Jews are being killed because they are Jews, Muslims are being killed because they are Muslims, and Christians are being killed because they are Christians.

And these people are being killed by fanatics, thugs, and the worst kind of rascals who believe that they are 100% right and these others are not even close.

It’s troubling.

It’s really troubling.

It’s troubling because, speaking for my tradition, I know for a fact that we do not presently have a habit of preaching that we should kill people of other faiths.

But….we do have a long history of preaching that very thing, and a long history of killing people of other faiths.

I can’t help but think that an honest look at ourselves means that Christians can’t help but own that it’s a bit in our DNA, a bit in our vibe, a bit of an undercurrent in who we are and what we do.

And we do not, of course, have a habit of preaching that people of other sacred texts deserve to be slandered in the name of God.

But…our sacred text slanders people of different traditions, and none so egregiously as the Jews, old and from Galicia or not.

In fact, laced through our texts and our traditions and our proclamation and child-catechesis is the notion that we are right and all the others are wrong.

In fact, a huge swath of Christians have picked up distinct sense that if someone doesn’t believe in Jesus as the Christ, then they are so wrong that they will get and they will deserve to get eternal damnation.

It is not a far stretch to say that if they deserve divine damnation after they croak, they deserve the best we can serve up of damnation in the name of God this side of the grave—and, hell: they probably just plain old deserve the grave.

Like, if it’s good enough for God…

The Old Jew Of Galicia, see, he’s poking me with this weathered stick of a cane I envision him holding, and he’s asking me whether (telling me that?) any claim of faith runs the risk of thuggery.

Maybe not explicitly, he might say, though often enough in just this way.

Instead, even by way of insinuation, and therefore insidiously, does any form of full-throated “I believe in the…” imply disdain and condemnation of people who have not happened to stumble on this same set of, sort of, beliefs.

He’s got a point, he does, and the point is sharp to my chest on which I imagine he’s tapping and in my heart right below.

Jews like questions better than Christians, as it turns out, and knowing this, I have been having an imaginary conversation with this Old Jew.

And I want to ask him so many things.

I want to ask him if a person can ever not believe something.

Like, even believing I am 55% right is a belief.

I want to ask him how one guards against haughty belief—like, being proud that I believe that I am only 55% right, in contrast to those 100% rascals out there.

I want to ask him how one can honor other people’s beliefs while still not believing them.

I want to ask him how, even if a person acknowledges that one doesn’t know what is actually the Full Scoop, the Real Deal, the Truth of It All, at the end of the day she/he/they/we must still believe in something, for to believe in nothing is nihilism, and not only is that also a belief, it is a treacherous one.

And then I want to confess some things to him.

I want to confess that, for reasons born of reason and born of faith and born simply out of the very happenstance of the family into which I was born, I do believe that Jesus is risen from the dead.

I want to confess that, even so, on any given day I am a Jew (this has been asserted to me not least of all by a dear friend of mine who is a Jew, though not old and rather from New York; on these given days am nearing 60%-or-over certitude that he is right).

I want to confess to him that I believe that God is bigger than either my Easter or his vigilant waiting for a Messiah—though God is both of those too.

And I want to confess that I preach Easter so adamantly, not to disdain those who are not Christians, and not to convert people to Christianity, but to convert Christians to the implications (perhaps even alert them to the notion that there are implications) of their purported beliefs, of their Christianity, of the gospel, of believing that Jesus is risen from the dead, implications like:

Feed.

Welcome.

Heal.

Turn over Tables.

Forgive.

Stand in Solidarity.

House.

Visit.

Call a Thing What It Is.

Care.

Look at Death in All Its Forms and Say That It Will Not Win Because It Has Already Lost.

Paradoxically, our Easter faith might even give rise to the notion that we are freed to reject the claim that our faith has it right and no one else does.

Truth is, nobody really knows, at the end of the day.

There is mystery.

But still.

But still.

One has to believe in something (who’s gonna tell the nihilists? Somebody’s got to tell them).

And because of reason and because of faith and because of quirks of birth, there is some grounding to believe that Jesus didn’t stay dead—though I can acknowledge that there are reasons and faith and quirks of birth to believe that the guy did stay dead, and that a person should still be tapping our feet and looking at our watches to wait for the Messiah.

And those Easter reasons fundamentally cause us to reject the very hate and bigotry and prejudice that that Old Jew is fighting: it just does so from a different angle.

So I want to ask this Old Jew from Galicia, especially in these days when the fascism of his day is rearing its head in our day, is it possible that 55% could tread too close to apathy?

Couldn’t 55% be dancing near complicity?

Isn’t 55% actually the friend of the very fascists he was condemning in his very own words, because 55% lends itself to timidity, to ambivalence, to tepidity, all of which are passive tools of the powers of malevolent authoritarianism and systemic, oppressive, status quo?

Can 100%, or even just 75%, well-stewarded for the sake of concern for the Least of These, for the sake of defiance against hate and cruelty be…righteous thuggery?

Is that a thing?

Could it be a thing?

And I imagine he will look at me, maybe give me a bit of a smile, sigh, and say, You might be right.

And I will look at him, and sigh, and say, You might be more right.

And I’d like to think that we will then raise some imaginary glasses, and toast to something I’ve come to call ‘tenacious humility.’

This is what I believe, and I will live out that belief fiercely.

But I might be 45% wrong.

Maybe more.

~~~~~

If you want to sit at the feet of a not-so-old Jew from New York, sign up for the blogs of my righteous friend Murray Haar here.

~~~~~

You can now pre-order Anna’s upcoming book published by Fortress Press! I Can Do No Other: The Church’s New Here We Stand Moment is available here, and is slated to come out on October 1, 2019.

”This book is born out of the conviction that at least two gods are currently competing for our collective trust: nationalism (and its many sub-manifestations) and quietism. Both make a case for and a claim on our allegiance, each by way of different motivations of self and institutional protection. Madsen looks at today’s modern context and asks: Where will the church stand in a day that is marked by globalization, polarization, racism, bigotry, and debates about justice for humanity and for the earth itself? While the Reformation church was built on the foundation of justification by grace, Madsen calls people of faith to a new reformation that will focus on standing for justice in the world. Madsen delves into who Jesus was, and how our claim that he died and was raised establishes our faith and impacts the way we live it out. She pays attention to Luther’s theology and juxtaposes it with our present context. She explores recent examples of Nazi resistance, liberation theology, black and womanist theology, and feminist theology, each of which come at social justice in their unique ways, with a common conviction that justice work is central to the Christian life. She speaks of how our faith grounding and our faith history weave together and entwine themselves into our present moment, offering both warnings and encouragement. And last, a case is made that justice, anchored in justification, is our new Reformation moment, one not inconsistent with Luther’s theology, but weighted differently to address the different weighty concerns of our day. A study guide is included to encourage group conversation and action.”

It’s the liturgical season, as of yesterday, in which we now sit.

It’s marked by the mysterious, nebulous, momentous advent of the Magi, the Wise Men, who came from afar due to a star to pay Jesus and his family respect.

Truth is, for all the tradition built up around the lore of these Men from the East, we don’t have much, scripturally, to go on: Matthew doesn’t bother with giving us the exact number of Magi making their way to the manger (though ask any child who has ever been in a Christmas program, and they will bust out singing about three men from ‘the Orient’), nor any record of their names (but even here history has supplied us—and the Magi—with the why-not options of Melchior, Balthazar, and Caspar); and we don’t really know why these particular gifts were offered (must say, any number of women have suggested that diapers, fresh clothes for both Mary and Jesus, and a bottle of really good wine would have been way more practical and welcome).

The text from which we get all the information we have is right here in Matthew 2:1-18:

2In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, ²asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” ³When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; ⁴and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ⁶‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” ⁷Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. ⁸Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”

⁹When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. ¹¹On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. ¹²And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

¹³Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” ¹⁴Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, ¹⁵and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

¹⁶When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. ¹⁷Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ¹⁸“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

In these compact four paragraphs, Matthew wallops us with hope, love, devotion…and political intrigue, political duplicity, political desperation, and political terror.

And in these compact four paragraphs, Matthew inaugurated (although he didn’t realize it, obviously) an entire liturgical season, one called “Epiphany.”

Depending on how you look at it, Matthew also inaugurated a way of life.

Epiphany means, literally from the Greek, “to make manifest.”

There are all sorts of reasons why this Magi event marks the beginning of Epiphany, but vis-à-vis the three (or pick-a-number-any-number) kings, it is said that they, being Gentiles, were the first non-Jews to come to the conviction that Jesus was the Messiah: they had a revelation, or it was made manifest to them, that the Son of God had been born.

The entire season, then, is filled with texts and tales of revelations of people, both Jews and Gentiles, who saw manifested in Jesus a new glimpse of God, a new vision of who God is, and a new way of being in the world.

This year, three things caught my particular attention about the passage and the season:

1) The historical parallels between their time and ours are striking: systemically extreme poverty and extreme wealth, paranoid and power-hungry rulers, refugees fleeing for personal and political safety, and a desperate need for hope;

2) The Magi gave Jesus tangible gifts (we can only really speculate on the reasons or symbolism for each): Gold (perhaps to honor his kingship), Frankincense (a medicinal herb and incense used in high worship), and Myrrh (an essence used both to treat wounds and to anoint, and even embalm, the dead);

3) The Magi gave Jesus—and his family—an intangible one: they warned the family of Herod’s malevolence, so that they could flee to safety.

This Epiphany, then, I am moved to wonder not just about the epiphanic gifts that the Magi gave Jesus, tangible and intangible, but what corresponding gifts we can offer him now, over 2,000 years later, in an era that is more like Jesus’ than we might realize, or want to.

In other words, how can we make like modern-day Magi?

Here’s the thing: if we say we belong to a historical faith, then we say that faith happens in history—including history-in-the-making.

There is no occasion or moment when people of faith aren’t called to learn from our faith, and called to act out of our faith.

In this troubling and disorienting day and age of Donald Trump, Christians are being called understand our faith and the world around us all the more, and to engage life more completely by way of our faith claims and commitments.

This text from Matthew, and this season of Epiphany, highlights why.

Any regular reader of this blog knows that I am passionate about my opposition to this President and his agenda.

Trump is no Cyrus, as people claim him to be: he’s much more like the paranoid, power-hungry, malevolent Herod about whom we hear in Matthew’s text above.

These same readers also understand that my political views are based entirely upon my faith.

In case there is any question about my convictions, let me be clear: I am convinced that there is nothing about Donald Trump’s agenda that matches that of Jesus’.

(Even those who point to his anti-choice views on abortion—for many the primary stated reason for their continued endorsement of him—miss that his present views on the matter are demonstrably only politically expedient. Not only that, but one can not be ostensibly pro-life and simultaneously overlook, relativize, or dismiss the deaths of two children at the border in US Custody; the attempted dismantling of Obamacare which provides access to life-saving medicines and procedures to those who otherwise cannot afford them—already causing unspeakable harm; the decidedly non-pro-life effects of the death penalty; the dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi; the terrifying truths about the death-dealing effects of unchecked climate change and global warming; the reductions to SNAP which prevent even children from basic nutrition; and the truth that legal abortion and pro-choice policies actually save more lives [including that of unborn children] than [when it was and] were abortion illegal).

I’ll say it again because it is true:

There is nothing about Donald Trump’s personal or policy agenda that matches that of Jesus’.

We as people of faith are compelled and, indeed, called to actively reject Trump and Trumpism in the name of our Christian faith, while advocating, embracing, and rejoicing in something entirely different.

The advent, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus (not to mention the Jewish tradition out of which he came) must mean something, it must have some relevance to our day-to-day lives.

It must matter as history is being made, as it is with every moment in time.

If not, then faith is nothing but a hobby indulged only when you have free-time and mood to dabble, or it is but a historical (and somehow irrelevant) artifact, or it only about “me and Jesus.”

Faith in Jesus is none of those.

Given what we know of the baby-Jesus-grown, and knowing that latter text of Matthew (i.e., Matthew 25:31-46, especially verse 40: “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…’”) which teaches that Jesus is in all people, especially the Least of These, the season of Epiphany asks us, now, these questions:

Do we believe that Jesus is the Christ?

If so, what sort of gifts could we present to him to pay our own respects?

How, in short, can we make like the Magis?

We, too, have tangible and intangible possibilities at hand, here and now.

For example:

• Immediately and most pressingly, actively fight against Trump’s hostile immigration policies and the ridiculous wall
  • They will not work, as LIRS (Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services) demonstrates;
  • They ignore and absolve the history of the US foreign policy contribution to the realities that caused these people to flee;
  • They are based on racism and lies rather than reality;
  • They betray the deep-seated Judeo-Christian commitment to welcome the foreigner;
  • And, if you want to be self-concerned about it, they harm the U.S., not to mention the world, economy too.
• Sign up for faith-based resistance advocates, and then follow their lead
  • Jen Hoffman
  • Faith in Public Life
  • William Barber’s Poor People’s Campaign
  • Jim Wallis’ Sojourners
  • Lutheran Immigration Refugee Services
  • Various Sanctuary Movements
  • Eco-Justice ministries like this one
• Make habitual acts of faith
  • Give as much money as you can to organizations which represent and further the reign of God
  • Bring bags to the store for your purchases
  • Feed birds
  • Garden
  • Volunteer
  • Gift people unexpected presents or time
  • Donate your clothes
  • Sign up for the food pantry
  • Correspond with and visit a prisoner
  • Invite a refugee or a foreigner to a meal at your home
  • Release anger and forgive—even if you can only do so at a permanent, safe distance from that which or the one who has caused harm
  • Understand (confusingly, but not paradoxically to the above) that righteous anger is holy, and can lead to a change of heart, a change of conditions, a movement of alerted advocacy, and a change toward repentance
  • Be motivated to end Trump and his agendas not out of hate but out of deep concern not only for those most adversely affected by his presidency, but also for those who excuse or endorse his personal life and his policies
• Engage in joy and beauty
  • Get lost in nature, and heal
  • Visit an art museum, and become happier, more empathetic, and more creative
  • Download this random act of kindness calendar for yourself, your family, and your workplace
  • Cook up a fine meal for yourself, and maybe invite someone over for a feast—perhaps someone who wouldn’t otherwise taste scrumptiousness.
  • Engage in radical hospitality
  • Go to concerts; classical or otherwise, doesn’t seem to matter: life is better—and maybe even longer—with live music in it.
  • Savor
    • family
    • friends
    • time
    • health
    • sunshine
    • snow
    • the fact that you are alive
    • the wisdom that we are all connected

As for me and my house, we begin each Epiphany like this:

It’s a long-standing tradition to “chalk the door” with the initials of the three wise men (C for Caspar, M for Melchior, and B for Balthazar), which also happily stand also for Christus mansionem benedicat, “May Christ bless the house.”

Every entry into our home, all year long, is a reminder of the Magi gifts of blessing and of warning (and therefore of safe refuge) to the Christ-child and his family.

It’s also a reminder that our home isn’t our home, but is Christ’s home, and is itself a blessing and a refuge for us and others who need a safe and joyful place.

This Epiphany, and all year long, make like the Magi: make manifest the reign of God by gifting Jesus, and gifting Jesus to the world.

~~~~

Read Anna’s other blogs on Epiphany here, including these highlights:

Kaj Munk: Martyr, Mentor of Epiphanic Recklessness

This Little Light Leads Me Home By Another Way

~~~~

Anna has also begun to offer monthly themed retreats at her Spent Dandelion Theological Retreat Center. Click here to learn more!

For example, now that it’s wintery up here in the Great White North, and all the more because we have a wonderful Danish foreign exchange student, we’re thoroughly about ‘hygge.’ Hygge, this right here, is how my brood and I roll all year long, but especially come The Cold.

The notion of hygge auf Deutsch is, naturally, a bit…heftier in pronunciation: Gemütlichkeit. It means more or less the same thing, though: each word just expresses the idea with a bit of its own linguistic and cultural accent (e.g., look for images of hygge, and you find photos of fires and warm feet and be-windowed rooms with blankets thrown over comfy couches; look for images of Gemütlichkeit, and you’ll see such things…annnnnd you’ll be seeing some pictures with a distinct bent toward beer gardens, brats, and spätzle).

There’s something of ‘cozy’ in hygge and Gemütlichkeit, but it’s more than that: it’s warmth and love and gladness and contentment and peace all rolled up into one word.

Or two, depending on how you look at it.

(Turns out that there is even a dispute about whether Danish hygge or German Gemütlichkeit is a stronger force in each culture, which seems to be very un-hygge and un-Gemütlich, but I digress.)

To the point of the blog, though, here’s another way in which English could benefit from more nuance in its language: the word ‘know.’

We pretty much use that word for one-stop-knowledge-shopping: I know my friend Sara, I know her address, I know German (though not as well as I once did!).

But other languages, like German, and French, and Spanish, have variations on the knowledge theme.

So, for example, in German, if you know someone, as in you have met them, or are friends with them, you would use the root verb kennen. The French use connaître, and in Spanish, it’s conocer. So, for example, eating a schnitzel I’d say Ich kenne Sara, eating coc au vin I’d explain that Je connais Sara, and over pozole I’d tell you that Yo conozco Sara.

But if you know something, there’s whole different verb at your disposal in these languages; its root form is wissen in German, savoir in French, and in Spanish, saber. So, to assure someone that I know where Sara lives, I would say auf Deutsch, Ich weiss ihre Adresse; en Français, Je sais ton adresse, and En Español, Yo sé su dirección.

But Hebrew.

Hebrew outdoes itself in the Language of Knowledge scene.

Hebrew has (drum roll) ) ָי ַדע.

Some of us would be more familiar with its Latin script version: yada.

It means ‘to know,’ too, but in the biblical sense.

Immediately, of course, we know (wissen/savior/saber) what “I know someone in the biblical sense” euphemistically means: to have made love to someone.

If you know someone in the biblical sense, you know them intimately; not just physically (left there, a different sort of sexual encounter is experienced, but you aren’t yada-ing).

Instead, when you yada someone, you know (kennen/connaître/conocer) who this person is, and why you are drawn to this person, and what about this person makes them uniquely desirable to you, and that you cherish this person, and that you want to be unqiuely vulnerable with this person, and then you share that knowledge with each other.

That’s lovemaking at its best.

But the word and the concept of yada is not just used in the Bible for those sorts of intimate love-exchanges.

Oddly, and in a head-cocking cool way, as I was researching and crafting this blog (based on all sorts of recent conversations about language and knowledge and wisdom and yada) I stumbled on this other blog written by, it seems…a webdesigner…about webdesign.

I did not see that coming.

I can’t speak to their web-tech savvy, but they have a great summary about, of all things, yada.

Here’s what they say, for they say it better than I could:

Yada: Showing Mercy

Another occurrence of yada can be found in one of the Hebraic wisdom books.

The righteous know [yada] the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel. (Proverbs 12:10)

Wisdom literature frequently creates a dichotomy between good and evil. In this case, a good person knows the needs of their animals and takes care of them; an evil person neglects the needs of their animals and shows no mercy. In other words, yada is understanding the needs of those around us and taking care of them.

Yada: Acting Justly

We’d like to bring your attention to a very important illustration. In one of the prophetic writings found in the Hebrew scriptures, we see an incredible blending of the word yada.

“But a beautiful cedar palace does not make a great king! Your father, Josiah, also had plenty to eat and drink. But he was just and right in all his dealings. That is why God blessed him. He gave justice and help to the poor and needy, and everything went well for him. Isn’t that what it means to know [yada] me?” says the Lord. (Jeremiah 22:15-16)”

In this chapter, Jeremiah (a prophet) is delivering a scathing rebuke to the king of Judah. This king had acted selfishly, neglected the poor and needy, and exploited others to build his kingdom. The LORD tells this corrupt king what it truly means to know [yada] the LORD. 1. Doing justice, 2. Showing mercy to the poor and needy, 3. Exemplifying good and righteous character. In other words, yada is faithfully living out our covenant relationship with the LORD in every area of our life.

Whoever you are, yadadrop, I want to know you, and just to be clear, as in the kennen/connaître/conocer fashion.

This summary is terrific.

When we yada God, we can’t help but yada others.

And what does this mean?

Upshot according to my read is that it means that we get to know as many others in the biblical sense as humanly possible!

Woo Hoo!

At least, that is, according to biblical values like mercy, kindness, concern, compassion, tenderness, justice, and tangible extensions of aid to those who yearn to be known and have their sufferings and grief known.

I’ve often said—quite recently, in fact, in Ohio and Pennsylvania—that it was quite the juxtaposition to have spent four years working on a Ph.D. that considered suffering, and then to live it.

Before the accident, I knew (wissen/savoir/saber) about suffering, because I’d studied it.

I even knew (kennen/connaître/conocer) suffering, because as a pastor I’d attended to people who had experienced it.

But I didn’t yada it.

Now I do.

I don’t think that one has to go through suffering to yada it, thankfully.

There are any number of ways to know it, not least of all getting out of our comfort(able) zone and participating in the suffering and the grief of others who are discomforted, who are uncomfortable.

That means not only being beside them, and wiping their tears, and holding them, but it means offering them food, and child care, and gift cards for coffee drive-thrus, and it means looking at the broader issues of why they are suffering, and advocating for political and social change even if it means that our best interests have to be sacrificed for the sake of others who struggle.

Conversely, though, there are other ways to yada others.

For example, a person could share some holiday hygge and Gemütlichkeit, offering welcome and cheer, and maybe even a pair of cozy socks and a fire.

As for us at 808, we happen to know how to do both hygge and Gemütlichkeit well (Gløgg and Glühwein and Kinderpunsch are hot hygge and Gemütlichkeit in a mug, as an aside, and we have all on hand all the time) so if you’re in the area, come on over so that we can know you.

Grow up.

You know what I mean.

It’s not an isolated moment of anti-Semetic rhetoric: the recent spike in incidents hostile to the Jewish people has a regrettably long list.

A few:

In January, Jewish Community Centers became the target of violent threats.

In February, gravestones in Jewish cemeteries in St. Louis, Philly, and Rochester began to be desecrated.

In March, swastikas started to appear at yet one more school, this time in California, shaking the community and involving the school board and police. It’s hardly the only school to suffer anti-Semitic slurs and threats.

Since January, since Trump’s election, the Southern Poverty Law Center notes a sharp increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes.

Trump used a Nazi slogan in his inaugural speech, much to the gladness of the bevy of anti-Semitic supporters throwing their weight behind his presidency.

Sebastian Gorka, a man with proven Nazi sympathies, now serves on President Trump’s Deputy Assistant, even wearing the emblem of a far-right Hungarian Nationalist group, of which he is a member, to Trump’s inauguration.  (He claims that the pin was in honor of his father, to which this author asks, “…but really, now: Didn’t Dad leave a tie? How many of us wear Nazi-sympathetic medals to remember our parents?”)

On Holocaust Rememberance Day, Trump didn’t mention the genocide of the Jews. When questioned about it at a press conference, Sean Spicer retorted that the representative from the Anne Frank (yes, that Anne Frank) Center for Mutual Respect should have voiced their appreciation of the President instead.

This year, Maundy Thursday takes on new heft.

It is almost customary for Christians to believe that at the Last Supper, Jesus was celebrating the Seder, the traditional Jewish meal which recounts the history of God’s saving hand in rescuing the Israelites from Egypt during the Exodus.

The elements of the meal are similar, the timing of the celebrations gel, and the words Jesus uses seem to hearken back to the customs of the celebration of Passover.

However, more and more scholars are saying it isn’t so.

Jonathan Klawans writes a brilliant piece for the Biblical Archeological Review which calls pretty much every tenet of this argument into question.  Most interestingly, the concept of celebrating the Seder ritual seems to not have been even in place until after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.

It’s a timely question, as it seems as if with each passing year, more and more Christians celebrate the Seder meal, either within their Christian community or by invitation from Jewish families or communities, as part of their Holy Week festivals.

There is much debate about whether Christians have any business participating in the Passover Meal at all.

Rev. Ann Fontaine offers her thoughts about the matter in this thorough and nuanced blog.  In it, she spells out an array of pros and cons, the essential points boiling down to the Yes: the Exodus is part of Christian history too; and the No: Christians have no more business appropriating/mis-appropriating the Seder Meal than Jews do presiding over a Eucharist.

It is not just a theological question these days, but a regrettably pressing one given the distressing rise of anti-Semitic acts, not least of all by those professing to be Christians (the irony, of course, is that they and all Christians are indelibly Jewish: Jesus was, after all, a Jew).

Given that even within the Jewish Community, there is no clear consensus about the appropriateness (or lack thereof) of Christians celebrating the Seder Meal, it’s difficult to know how best as Christians to respect and honor the desires of the Jewish people.

Still.

Still, in these days during the rise and rule of Trump, and precisely during and beyond these our Holiest of Three Days, Christians have an especially clear responsibility, a mandate, to attend to the history and the earned fears of Jews, their justified deep apprehension due to the long history of hateful actions by those who identify as Christian.

Two thoughts, then, on the Eve of Maundy Thursday:

One: As is often the case, this year the Christian Holy Week falls at the same time as the Jewish Passover.

Exactly becauase of the increased incidents and toleration of anti-Semitic actions, as our Holy Week and Passover are entwined again, this year all more so we Christians are called to manifestly reject any and all evidence of anti-Jewish bigotry.

Why?

Because of Thought Two: We call the day Maundy Thursday because of the etymological root of the word related to “mandate,” as in “Commandment.”

During this Last Supper, Jesus gave two commandments: to love one another as he has loved us; and to hold the meal together, namely to give Thanksgiving over bread and wine together, in remembrance of him.

In these two Commandments, Christians learn about our identity and our mission: we are to be the tangible presence of the loving reign of God in the world.

Fed with the promise, we are to be the promise: the promise being, of course, that death doesn’t win–even the death, threatened or real, caused by religious bigotry, not least of all that which is implicitly and explicitly condoned by Trump, and fostered across the nation by his rhetoric and political recruits.

While it may or may not be appropriate for Christians to celebrate the Seder, it is nothing but appropriate for us to remember that Jesus was a Jew; that God never forsakes God’s people, of whom the people of Israel were the first, whom God brought out of the land of slavery; that religious bigotry and hate still enslave us; and that God’s history of love and promise to those who suffer still shows us a way (‘odos) out (ex), an ex-‘odus, an exodus.

That, of course, is worthy of giving thanks (Eu, good, and charis, grace, or thanks), not least of all at the celebration of, and the living out of, the Christian meal, the Eucharist, the first celebration of which we recall on Maundy Thursday.

No one who knows me or has read my blog will be surprised that I am not happy about it, not one little bit.

In the name of my faith, I stand at the ready to oppose him wherever I find him offending the Christian gospel of care and concern for the Least of These, the oppressed, and creation, not to mention him denigrating, debasing, and dismissing basic expressions of human decency and democracy.

Given what we know of Trump, I’m sure hoping that my well of oppositional water is deep.

Turns out, though, that if my personal reservoir runs out, I’m not exactly going to need to be in the market for a dowsing rod: there’s a veritable deluge of concern and outright indignation about Donald Trump across the religious spectrum.

Springs are popping up everywhere.

In no particular order, a running short list of conservative and liberal religious bodies, theologians, pastors, and laity who vehemently oppose Trump, Trump’s agenda, and his nominees:

1. The National Council of Churches (comprising and representing the African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Alliance of Baptists, the American Baptist Churches USA, the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, the Church of the Brethren, the Community of Christ, the Coptic Orthodox Church in North America, the Ecumenical Catholic Communion, the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Friends United Meeting, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the Hungarian Reformed Church in America, the International Council of Community Churches, the Korean Presbyterian Church in America, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the Mar Thoma Church, the Moravian Church in America Northern Province and Southern Province, the National Baptist Convention of America, the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America, the Orthodox Church in America, the Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, the Polish National Catholic Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) (of whom Trump ostensibly claims as his denomination), the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc., the Reformed Church in America, the Serbian Orthodox Church in the USA and Canada, the Swedenborgian Church of North America, the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, the United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church)
2. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
3. The conservative Christian Post (in an article which calls Trump a “scam,”)
4. Jewish historians
5. Baptist theologians
6. ELCA Lutheran pastors and congregations
7. Lutheran and Jewish teaching theologians
8. Diverse faith communities who welcome immigrants
9. Evangelical leaders
10. Conservative Christians
11. Roman Catholics
12. African Methodist Episcopal Council of Bishops

As I posted on my personal FB page, although I was recently called a religious nutcase for my blog on Trump, I am proud to be even a small peanut in the same bowl as these many people of faith…with whom, wonderfully, I might otherwise disagree about any number of matters!

Donald Trump has at least this to his credit: ambassador of ecumenical and inter-religious agreement.

Religious people realize that Donald Trump’s inauguration has implications, profound implications, for people of faith.

Even the word ‘inauguration,’ it seems, is a sign of the role of religion at hand, for the word “inauguration” comes from the Latin term meaning not only ‘to install,’ but also ‘to consecrate.’

Well, that’s interesting.

Why? Because the word ‘consecrate‘ means to make holy: con-, ‘together,’ and sacrare, ‘to make sacred.’

But wait!  That’s not all.

One of my favorite websites is www.etmyonline.com (I look at it at least once a week–just ask my children, who hear the phrase, “Well, the etymology of that word is…” almost as often as “I love you more than you can possibly know!”).

Under the search for “inauguration,” the site offers this quote:

INAUGURATIO was in general the ceremony by which the augurs obtained, or endeavoured to obtain, the sanction of the gods to something which had been decreed by man [sic]; in particular, however, it was the ceremony by which things or persons were consecrated to the gods …. If the signs observed by the inaugurating priest were thought favourable, the decree of men [sic] had the sanction of the gods, and the inauguratio was completed. [William Smith (ed.), “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,” 1842]

Upshot here is that in the ancient Greco-Roman world, a person attained office, and then was inaugurated.  However, during the ceremony a religious leader was appointed to watch for signs indicating whether the gods thought that the new authority were indeed the right pick.

This is why the word ‘inauguration’ became associated with ‘consecration,’ with, that is, making the event holy.

Personally, if I were the appointed religious leader on the 20th, given what we know of Trump, and given the wide dismay about him from religious leaders and laity alike, I’d be not a little nervous about being too close to potential incoming signs.

It is worth mentioning, however, that the religious leaders whom Trump requested to bless his inauguration are, well, not mainstream.  As NPR relates, these are pastors who preach the heretical Prosperity Gospel (wealth is good and a sign that one is blessed by God; poverty is a sign that you are not….I don’t think that these folks have read Amos or Luke much, for starters); who themselves live in million-dollar mansions (I bet Jesus lives right next door!); and who, conveniently, donated extensive dollars to Trump.

That critique aside, there is a passage in the New Testament that would seem to support the notion that Trump’s election is, indeed, holy, and blessed by God: Romans 13:1-4.

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.

Now, this is an interesting, perplexing set of verses.

They seem to operate exactly opposite of the Greco-Roman understanding of inauguration referenced above: there, the ruler was chosen and people waited to see if the gods approve, whereas here, if a person is in authority, they are by virtue of that position and by default approved by God.

Hmmm.

It’s worth noting that Nazi Germany, the South African Apartheid Government, and pro-slavery forces (as but three examples) have employed this text to justify acquiescence to governing authorities.

Left alone, any critical thinker (certainly anyone who reads Paul elsewhere) must wonder whether this text truly asks us to believe that dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mugabe, or Mao are appointed by God, or whether policies set in effect by governments are necessarily divinely approved, like slavery, women’s lack of right to vote, and even the death penalty.

So maybe this text is an occasion for some worthy (not to mention timely) nuance.

Paul wasn’t exactly writing in a time of democracy.

As my family and I were talking about this text over supper last night, we started tongue-in-cheeking 1st Century Election Day news reports: “A donkey-jam as everyone is making their way to their local voting precinct stations.  Pay attention to your sundials, everyone, only a few more hours until the polls close.  Due to smeared chalk tallies, some are questioning the results–watch your toga sleeves, everyone!”

Paul’s message was less about acquiescing in the face of political oppression and injustice, and more about recognizing that society needs order, and that God’s will can work through government, and that when it does, we are to accede to it.

Lutherans in particular talk about this notion by way of the Two Kingdoms: Luther’s approach to talking about God’s involvement in the world by orchestrating systems by which we can live in secular community, and God’s involvement in the world by working in and through the life of faith and trust in the gospel of grace.

Still, the text from Paul raises questions, if not hackles.

The late German New Testament scholar Ernst Käsemann, a man who lived through Hitler’s Germany, spent no small time thinking about the implications–and the mis-implications–of this passage.

And here’s what he wrote in a twenty-page piece called, simply, “Principles of the Interpretation of Romans 13″ (for you German-readers, it is also found in Exegetsiche Versuche und Besinnungen: Zweiter Band, Zweiter Auflage, Grundsätzliches zur Interpretation von Römer 13,” (Göttingen Vendenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1965, 204-222).

“Is there anything which might rightly be called a limit to the obedience here being demanded of the Christian and, if so, where is it to be drawn?….The boundary of our service is the point at which we cease to acknowledge Christ as Lord of the world…This raises the problem of the possibility of Christian resistence to the existing political power; it raises, that is, the specific question of participation in revolution…Is there such a thing as participation in revolution as an authentication of the service of God in the world? When and where can this be possible–not merely for that citizen of a democratic community in the carrying out of his political responsibility, but for the man [sic] who being such a citizen, yet wills to be, and to remain, a Christian also? My own personal answer would be, that such a possibility could only exist when the possessors of political power are threatening and escorting in a radical way those ties which hold together a political community as a whole in bonds of mutual service. When it becomes impossible any longer to render whole-hearted service within the total context of a common life, but every concrete act of service within the individual’s province takes on the character of participation in a common self-destruction–and in my view this possibility became reality for every man [sic] with eyes to see in the Third Reich (at least after Stalingrad)–then it also becomes impossible to deny to the Christian his [sic] right as a citizen to take part in revolution. Christin obedience in everyday life takes its significance from the fact that we have both the duty and the privilege of service; for this reason, and in the same way, in the conditions of democracy, Christian obedience can and must end at the point where, because of the nature of the existing political authority, service, though still possibility as an act of the individual, is yet robbed of all meaning within the total context of the life of a given community.” Ernst Käsemann, New Testament Questions of Today: Study Edition (London: SCM Press, 214-216).

Well, even translated from the German, it’s a heady mouthful.

Here’s Käsemann’s basic gist: We are called to serve authorities as long as the authorities do not ask, as a fundamental element of their rule, a habitutal abdication of our calling and allegiance to God.

In fact, engaging in revolution can itself be an expression of faithful Christian service: think, for example, of the civil disobedience of Martin Luther King, Jr, and Rosa Parks; the resistence to the South African government of Nelson Mandela and Bp. Desmond Tutu; and Dorothy Day (though the list can go on and on).

Now, to return to Paul’s point, civil disobedience does not mean that we aren’t subject to the–often unjust–civil punishments.

But is that not what we are freed to do by the gospel, by the news that death doesn’t win?

Does that news not in fact rush us headlong into the headwinds?

Is it not so that the reality of suffering because of the implications of our faith is precisely what Jesus implied when he said, “Take up your cross and follow me?”

No act of faith is necessary for our salvation: grace trumps all–even Trump and his own acts of un-faith.

But as Gerhard Förde said, “Now that you don’t have to do anything to earn salvation, what are you going to do?”

And as Walter Bouman said, “Now that you know that death doesn’t have the last word, there is more to do with your lives than preserve it.”

The point both men were making is this: the news that Jesus is risen frees us to not be afraid of death, in whatever shape it might present itself in our lives.

Indeed, not least of all with Trump’s inauguration, freedom is, in fact, at stake, and brings us right back to that word “consecration.”

If to ‘consecrate’ means to make, or deem, something holy, what is it to be holy?

Let’s call up Paul again, this time in his letter to the Galatians.  In it, he wants to identify signs of the Spirit–the Holy Spirit (read more in this OMG blog about how the adjective before Spirit–like community, Christmas, school, mob, and, of course, Holy–helps us grasp the otherwise ghosty sense of Spirit).

That is, when we read the description of the Spirit below, we also read the description of what it is to be holy.

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Let’s see: reference points for holiness are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Hmmmm…gotta say, I’m not seeing a lot of Trump’s habitual character traits here.

How about the unholy, then?

“…fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.”

Um….I don’t believe, given the topic at hand, that I have any commentary to add to that.

But I do have something more to add to how Paul begins this text: Christians are called to freedom.

This freedom is not about doing what we want.

It is, paradoxically, to be bound to only one thing, and it is not the governing authority–at least where that authority trespasses on the holy.

That can get dicey, and for the Church and faithful Christians, come Friday, it is about to get just that.

Ernst Käsemann again: “So long as we are not in heaven, the challenge of freedom is always controversial, a cause of vexation both to the Christian church and to ourselves.” Jesus Means Freedom (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968, 9).

But here in the States, we live in this land we call the Land of the Free.

As US Citizens, we are free to engage in civil disobedience, and we are free to speak our minds, and we are free to vote people in…or out.

As Christians, we have those freedoms, and we have even more: we are freed to engage the risks of speaking truth to power in the name of our faith, and we are freed to directly address malevolent power in the name of Jesus, and we are freed to not be afraid, for the gospel tells us that death and fear do not win.

However, our freedoms are curtailed, more than others are: we are not free to engage in unrighteous anger and petty disputes.  We are not freed to lie to advance our cause. We are not free to hate or malign our neighbor; rather, we are called to love them.

Donald Trump, much as it might make me wince to say it, is, indeed, my neighbor.

I do not malign him when I call him out with truth, nor when I object to his policies which offend and harm the ones we are called to most protect.

In fact, much to his dismay, I honor him with these actions.

While that is true, I am moreso honoring my higher authority, the one whom (I hope) is the primary governing authority in my life.

That is, in the name of Jesus, out of my claim to be a Christian, and on behalf of all things holy, I will love Donald Trump–and this nation–enough to engage in necessary, regular, organized, committed, vigilant struggle against his presidency every single time his authority clamors for more respect than, presumes to be worthier than, insists on higher allegiance than the gospel.

Inauguration Day, then, has the potential to inaugurate a new way, a rededication, an invigorated way of faithful living for people of faith.

If such a renewal comes to pass, January 20th may, in fact, be a holy day after all.

Hoooo-buddy.

While watching “The Return of the King” from the Lord of the Rings trilogy with us, Dad made it to 8:30. Karl’s eyes got droopy at about 8:57, so  I got him tucked in and conked out by 9:21. E and I snuggled in to a couple of Sherlock-Behind-the-Scenes episodes, which carried me through until 11:17, and Else (I think) slogged on ’til 12:01, after I tucked her upstairs in bed–that was her plan, anyway.  As she’s still snoring now at 9:01, I don’t yet have confirmation that she pulled off her feat, but I’ll bet she did, as she’s a night owl like her papa was.

Clearly, we aren’t exactly carousers, here at the Madsen household.  In fact, a “Pâ-TÉ” is the closest we ever get to having a “Par-TAY!”

(That’s not really true: I just thought it sounded funny. Actually, I positively hate liver).

So I have mixed feelings about New Year’s Eve, I confess.

I don’t like the drinking associated with the night, and because of that, I don’t like driving anywhere on the 31st either.

I don’t like crowds and loud music: watching the big celebrations on Times Square or in big bar scenes with hoards of people bumping into each other just makes me look for my cozy slippers all the more.

But I do like our customary table spread of New Year’s treats.

I do like curling up with my family whom I love so much.

I’ve even been known to like a tender New Year’s kiss.

And I do like the new beginnings the evening promises.

And I do like clearing the slate.

See, the thing of it is, of course, is that New Year’s Eve makes you look both forward and back.

That can be both unpleasant, and sad, and discouraging..and also gratifying, and hopeful, and emboldening.

New Year’s Eve, that is, is a bittersweet reminder that time moves forward, and that matter (and matters) always change.

Reading up for yesterday’s blog on the Massacre of the Innocents, I stumbled on another great contribution in the book Social Themes of the Christian Year: A Commentary on the Lectionary.  This one was written by feminist and historical theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, in a chapter called “The New Year: A Time for Renewal.”

In it, she gives a marvelous account of how New Year’s festivals–even if they didn’t fall on our customary one of December 31/January 1–held similar meaning to ancient peoples as our celebrations do to us.

Of course, because their cultures were more religious than ours, the day held cultic significance for them in a way that the day doesn’t for us.  Given that the people were also more communally agricultural than are we, the rhythm of planting and harvesting and dying and re-planting was the backdrop for the New Year rituals.  “In this annual cycle of seasons, humanity saw the mirror of the whole drama of life, death, and renewal of life, both in nature and in society…Each year’s cycle was a miracle that required the intense participation of the divine and human communities to make it happen,” (56-57).

But the ancient Hebrews also incorporated a sense of judgment into the marking of the New Year, she writes, an intentional time to mark the wrongs one has committed against neighbor, and also then the occasion to forgive the debts–both economic and moral–so that there could be fresh starts: “Repentance, forgiveness, restitution allows society to be renewed,” she writes (58).  In this way, every new year enacted the first creation all over again.

Order out of chaos, life out of death, beginnings out of endings.

Jews and Christians still claim this heritage, this trust that life can be renewed and reinvigorated and redefined and reclaimed.

“The theme of New Year,” writes Ruether,

“is that of crisis, but also new hope; of acknowledgement of sin, but also celebration of grace.  New Year allows the church to tie together, in a particularly inclusive way, the themes of old and the new, the Beginning and the End…New Year calls us to judgment, exposing our failure to love God by rejecting love for our neighbor.  But New Year also calls us to new hope.  Death is not the end of the story.  Grace is possible.  It is already present among us.  God’s coming reign is already in our midst.  New Year demands a rejection of that ‘realism’ which insists that evil is stronger than good and that nothing really can be changed.  This is the ‘realism’ of the comfortable status quo, which wishes to snuff out the hopes of the poor because these hopes entail an overthrow of their own systems of privilege…In this sense, the gospel, the hope of the Bible, the hope of New year, is ‘unrealistic.’ It dares to continue to hope for a coming reign of God against the realities of human sinfulness,” (61-62).

I like that a lot.

I like her words here not least of all about the death-dealing world-doling-out realism that snuffs out of the hopes of the poor: the poor being those who are economically impoverished, but also (given the gist of her overall chapter), those who are poor in spirit, poor in gladness, poor in energy.  Rather than drawing upon such realism that, as people of faith, we call out as unreal, those who are privileged by a wealth of good spirit and gladness and energy–not to mention finances–can be ambassadors of faith-filled hope to those who are, in fact, impoverished in any number of ways.

As a Lutheran, I can’t help but come away with this notion (again!): Lutherans are nothing if not all about the both/and of life: sinner/saint; already/not yet; Good Friday/Easter.

As I’ve often said, you can’t beat that the closest we Lutherans have to a saint is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pacifist assassin!

We get that life is messy.  That there are competing truths.  That there are moments when despair and hope, sadness and relief, anger and gladness mingle.

That’s what New Year’s, it seems to me, is about for people of faith: the juxtaposition of the both/and, the before/after, the then/now, the regret/renewal.

It is an occasion to decide if we will be defined by the past or by the promise of the future; if we will be beholden to mistakes of the last year or the possibilities of repenting and redeeming them in the next; if we will let the hurts and disappointments and anger of the last year be more potent than release and forgiveness and the possibilies of moving on; and if we will let the negative events of 2016 hold more sway than God’s desire and invitation to be involved in our 2017–or, for that matter, in even this very moment.

The New Year’s table may have been set by 2016, but it will be served by 2017.

As people of faith, God is wanting to be the host of the party…which promises to make 2017 bearable if not better than 2016 (which, by most accounts, let’s be honest, tanked).

I would prefer, however, that there be no pâté in it.

“Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.”  Elie Wiesel, Nobel Lecture, Hope, Despair and Memory

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“Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.” Hebrews 13:3

“Remember is a serious word, for it calls for more than just occasionally mentioning someone in prayer–it means behaving as if we, too, were in danger of imprisonment.” William Flippin Jr., pastor of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, You Visited Me

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“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.  Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?”  Martin Luther King, Jr., Trumpet of Conscience

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“The loss of hope was the result of focusing too singularly on the present moment of defeat. An act of memory enables the speaker to look away from this defeat, in order to draw upon older, continuing resources. And this is what is remembered:
‘Yahweh’s mercy is surely not at an end, nor his is pity exhausted. It is new every morning. Great is your faithfulness! Yahweh is my portion, I tell myself, therefore will I hope.'” Walter Brueggemann

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Washes of grief, disbelief, shock, anger, and trauma have saturated our collective spirits over these last several weeks, and this morning brings one more dousing of despair with the news of even more officers dead in Baton Rouge.

We can’t even find rest in repression for just a moment, because another act of violence comes about, jolting us into another event of fear and vulnerability and uncertainty and deep, deep sadness.

We are beaten down and bracing ourselves for more crushing news.

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Bracketing the front portion of this wave of relentless violence was the July 2nd death of Elie Wiesel.

Wiesel survived the Holocaust, and served all of humanity as an author, a Nobel Laureate, and an incessant siren to the collective responsibility of remembrance.

His words excerpted above are but one small sample of his abundant teaching about the necessity of recollection, of telling the stories of oppression and injustice so that their horror and their truth won’t happen again.  “It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.”  Incumbent–that’s a significant word.  We have no choice but to remember. It is a command, a calling, a credo: Remember and tell.

Shortly after he died, I read Rev. William Flippin’s column in the most recent Living Lutheran, an article that is geared toward the call to visit those in prison.  The base text for his reflection is from Hebrews (also cited above).  But in his segment, he wrote the line above–a strung-together-set of words that is more than a line, but is a call: “Remember is a serious word, for it calls for more than just occasionally mentioning someone in prayer–it means behaving as if we, too, were in danger of imprisonment.”

As I heard somewhere in the last several weeks, white people will never get the fear and anger and frustration of blacks until we experience their oppression and deaths as our own.  Thanks to Rev. Flippin, I hear this differently now: we won’t get it unless we are behaving as if we, too, are in danger of imprisonment–or of getting shot, or of loving someone who was shot because of the assumptions based on the color of their skin.

And in this mix, Martin Luther King Jr.’s words floated back to me: “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?”  That is, remembering also means calling to account not only those who harmed by way of action, but by way of inaction. Remembering calls us to get in the streets, to call our legislators, to change our choices based on heretofore unrecognized privilege.

And finally Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann showed up on my screen.

I’m at Outlaw Ranch right now, in Custer SD, readying with SD Bp. Zellmer to teach the adults here this week about grace.  This morning I’m finding the first time I’ve had to write and think in weeks (thanks to emptying boxes, signing on house closings, establishing electrical and gas and phone services, registering vehicles, learning new skills like how to steer riding mowers, and in general settling in to our new home and our new life in Two Harbors), and as I’m scanning some thoughts about grace, Brueggemann popped up on my iPad.

Walter Brueggemann is all about hope.

Hope, of course, is often yoked to the future, and for good reason: I hope for all sorts of future things that may or may not come to pass.

But Brueggemann suggests that hope is actually tied to the past and pulled into the future. For hope, he says, can be found in the recitation of events of despair and, still and even so, God’s constancy in the midst of it.  If we return to the past–and not a whitewashed past, but the honest past–we can see where death has been evident and new life bursts forth anyway.

“An act of memory,” says Brueggemann, “enables the speaker to look away from this defeat, in order to draw upon older, continuing resources.”

What are those older resources? Texts. Tradition. Tales of God’s continuing love and grace and mercy and attention to the Least of These. To that end, he writes this:

Every time a pastor and a choir director get together to pick hymns, the work is one of constructive imagination designed to lead the congregation in turn to imagine the world in a certain way. Much worship is informed by tradition and conventional practice, but those who construct such worship must each time commit an act of imagination in order to determine what is to be accented and to adapt the advocacy.

Worship returns us to the raw and painful and yet occasional triumphal past to help us recreate a new future that mirrors and captures and stewards the reign of God.

Here’s the upshot of my ramblings and musings:

It seems to me that we are in a crisis of conscience, of community, of re-collection.

We people of privilege have too long forgotten the daily and all-too-long reality of those who are oppressed–or, to adapt Pr. Flippin’s words, we people of privilege have not often enough behaved in solidarity as if we too were oppressed.

Our convenient amnesia has manifested itself in more violence against blacks, and more violence against police officers.

Our convenient amnesia has lent itself to seeing the violence against blacks and officers as the problem rather than a symptom of a far greater, far older, far more virulent problem: that of systematic racism embedded in the very (all too often literal) body and blood of our country.

Those of us in the Church have a shot at redeeming our bent toward convenient repression: worship.

In worship, we gather together as members–that is, we Re-Member–to partake in a body and blood that is of a very different essence: one of equity, and welcome, and safety, and peace.

In worship we re-collect our identity found in text after text, tale after tale, teaching after teaching that tells of a society where the proud are scattered, the hungry are filled, the lowly are raised, and God remembers God’s mercy.

And we begin to re-imagine a new world, not just in theory, but in practiced and communally enacted being.

These painful weeks–and the probable painful weeks ahead–give us an opportunity to remember, and to re-member, and to re-imagine, and to re-form our communities (both congregational and civil) in protest to the past, in light of the past, in hope of the past, and in hope of a new future where Shalom rather than shootings saturate, wash, douse, our shared lives.

In the meantime, Lord, have mercy.

These last few days, they’re like the final days of pregnancy, a season which is itself uncomfortable.

Nine months of baby-growth are hope-filled, to be sure, but still and even so, let’s be clear: especially at the beginning, an urp bucket doubles as a new outfit accessory.

Near the end, the swelling mama tries to maneuver her bulging belly elegantly around tables and through doors and onto beds…and she’s not doing it, so very much, elegantly or at all.

And the baby’s flips, the flips which shift your entire body and draw stunned stares and giggles.

They are actually cloaked internal attacks of feet and elbows taking real cracks at your innards.

In a similar way, you see, Advent’s got its own unpleasantness to offer.

Its kicker to our innards is the cry to repentance.

Repentance is an awkward and uncomfortable topic, because if we have to have it mentioned, there’s apparently reason for it.

We’d prefer to walk around it, and we get queasy thinking about it.

And yet Advent is the season of the relentless and awkward calling to repentance.

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

“Bear fruits worthy of repentance.”

John the Baptist was “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

So, having listened to all of these texts for the last several weeks, I decided to listen this last week to this show on Krista Tippett’s marvelous On Being: The Refreshing Practice of Repentance.

It is a beautiful podcast, an interview with Louis Newman, Professor of Religious Studies and Associate Dean of Carleton College in Minnesota (Ole though I am, I can concede when Carleton’s got it going on).

Dr. Newman is Jewish, and so therefore is his take on repentance, reflected so deeply in the rich extended exchange below:

DR. NEWMAN: …in Hebrew, there are sort of root words, and the root word of teshuvah — or “chu-VA,” as people would typically say it…in Anglicized form — is that it is about turning. So turning away from the path you’ve been on, back toward a loftier goal, back toward our true selves, back toward God, back toward a righteous life. So it’s a kind of shifting orientation, so really turning your attention somewhere else. It’s also about returning. And in that sense, returning to one’s true nature. As I said a minute ago, that sense of coming back to who we really most deeply are and were meant to be. And turning, of course, to God. And finally, it has that sense of responding.

…If you think about this in terms of a 360 degree circle, if you’re headed in one direction and you turn only one degree or two degrees to the right or to the left, over a long period of time — it may be a very slight turn, but over an extended period of time, if you now walk in that direction, you’ll end up in an utterly different place than if you extend that line outward infinitely. And that sense of turning even slightly…it doesn’t have to be a radical, all of a sudden transformation into a new life. It’s actually a very gradual process of recognizing, “you know, I need to pay attention to that particular failing a little bit more, and move in a little different direction.”

I love everything about his wisdom here.

The notion of teshuvah expressed in the New Testament is metanoia, translated as ‘repentance,’ but meaning, just like teshuvah, a turning-around.

Repentance, says Dr. Newman, and says the Jewish-Christian tradition, is a return to one’s starting place, to one’s center, to one’s core identity.

The season, then, invites us to repent, but it does so by inviting us to return to whom we essentially are, and to whom we essentially belong.

Note too that beautiful image of standing in the middle of a circle, and walking straight out from it…and then shifting your direction just a couple of degrees to the right or the left.

Now consider yourself in the center and walking north to 90º.

But consider that rather, you should be walking north to 91º.

A small degree doesn’t make a big difference, one would think.

It’s only a pesky degree.

But if you ‘repent’ of your established 90º path, if you rather extended your stroll down that singular line right on next to you, the one extending just a smidgen of a bit to the left, in a matter of time you will be in a very different place if you start at an 91º angle than you would have been at a 90º.

What an encouraging way to think about repentance.

I can’t, in other words, do the full-monty turn, but maaaaybe I can do a 1º monty turn.

And then maybe another 1º turn.

And then maybe a few more.

And who knows, I might just might near the 180º, some time on down the road.

Repentance is, of course, a word often laden with shame, and with defeat, and with sincere uncomfortableness.

But it could, instead, be a word laden with grace, with freedom, with inspiration, with encouragement, and with an invitation to come on home.

Just hop a degree over, just take a tiny turn in a new direction, and come home.

And, as we are on the cusp of Christmas Eve, it can even be a joyful call to prepare for the Advent of a new life to be born in you and in the world.