After tomorrow night's Game of Thrones finale, Michelle and I are finally breaking it off. With DirecTV, that is. This will be the first time I'm without cable or satellite television since the early 1990s, when I was early elementary school and Armstrong Cable delivered liberation ocular liberation to my childhood boredom. Except now, we've got an incredible number of less expensive options. We'll keep Netflix and Amazon Prime, give Hulu a shot, and likely purchase a HBO Now subscription when the next season of WestWorld and GoT premier. I'm hoping that, with fewer options, we'll spend less time focused on the biggest screens in our home. And yes, before you wonder why we're talking about this, there is spiritual substance to this story. Part of this is a decision on price. At it's cheapest for us (without an annual subscription promotional price), DirecTV cost about $80 a month. Netflix, Hulu (with commercials), and HBO Now altogether are $32. $48 dollars a month, across the year, is $576 dollars saved. Theologically speaking, there's a stewardship component for us in this decision. That money can be put to better use in our generosity toward others and in our care for the lives God has given to us. A question related to financial stewardship is becoming increasingly important in my life. Wherever we spend money, Michelle and I now ask, "How is this helping us grow?" Too often, as Americans, we spend money without reflection. Asking how our monetary investments support our development as Christ's disciples tries to prioritize whole life stewardship and reminds us that money, along with our lives, our vocations, and our skills are God-given gifts meant to foster the Kingdom of God in our hearts, our communities, and our world. This question also reveals the fruitless nature of some areas in our lives. Any farmer will tell you a fruitless plant serves little purpose. Sometimes pruning is necessary, and while painful, can lead to fruitfulness. Sometimes, though, fruitless plants must be rooted out to make space for more fruitful ones. I must admit, though I'm incredibly entertained by my regular television viewing - Highly Questionable, Around the Horn, Pardon the Interruption, Dr. Who, The Daily Show, The Late Show, Last Week Tonight, The Walking Dead, Preacher, Game of Thrones, WestWorld, @Midnight, sports from Duke, Ohio State, and any team from Northeast Ohio - there's a ton of fruitless time in there. Some of it provides for an educational experience. Some it provides formative sermon fodder. Some of it provides joyful relief in the midst of Sabbath. But most of it is just wasted time and mental space. Simply put, much if it isn't helping us grow, so it's not worth the current level of investment. Anticipating this weekend's divorce with my DVR, I had two choices: binge EVERYTHING that's left or start the process of separation. I chose the latter and found myself drawn to an old love, one I haven't fostered in a long time: music. As a pastor whose ministry is greatly formed by music, listening to new bands, learning new harmonies, tapping new rhythms, spitting new lyrics, and increasing the variety of music with which I'm familiar and that I enjoy, proves quite fruitful in my life. I've already found myself more energized for the work that I'm doing. I find my mind more invigorated by music than television. The aural engagement works my mind in a different way than ocular entertainment and also allows me to more easily multitask. God's shown up already in Duke Ellington, The Academy Is, Tonight Alive, Childish Gambino, twentyonepilots, and a host of other musicians, exciting me for worship in our congregation and connecting our campus ministries with more musical forms of spirituality. I'm not saying this will or should be everyone's experience, though I do think the amount of money that we invest as a nation into entertainment is sinful. What I am saying is that I'm learning more each day that I don't need the things that I'm so often told by advertisers that I need. Choosing to do without some forms of entertainment, and less of it in general, sets us up to be better stewards of the gifts God's given to us. It also opens new space in our lives where God can show up to invigorate us personally and the vocations through which we serve God and neighbor. Who knows. Maybe in a few months we'll have island fever without immediate access to 24/7 sports coverage (by "we" I most certainly mean me). But I hope not. It's an experiment worth taking, because as stewards of God's gifts, there so many other things that we might be doing with the time, money, and head space we devote to television. Music and its inspiration for my work as a pastor has been the firstfruits of this pruning process. I'm excited to see what else comes.
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I write this from the second floor waiting area of University Hospital in Cleveland, OH. It's an odd place, feeling like home and yet having never been here, in this precise space, before. I'm praying in vigil for my sister in Christ and sister of choice Karen, whose second cancer surgery this year was successful, only to be plagued by complications since this latest surgical intervention a week ago. This room, with it's necessarily wipe-able plastic furniture and unexpectedly empty seats on a Sunday, feels familiar for at least two reasons. To quote Hawthorne Heights (my emo game was strong in high school and college), my heart is in Ohio. Though I love Virginia, where I live and serve, as well as North Carolina and South Carolina, where I've lived and was educated for service to the church, Ohio is where I met God, where God found me, where I was born into a loving family and reborn into a wonderful church family at my baptism. Ohio is a home to me, so the very same hospital here would feel more familiar than if it were in Kazakhstan, Belize, or Wyoming. Yet, since I've left this original home, I've sat in a number of hospital waiting rooms alongside family who are hoping and praying for the healing of their loved ones. Simple, elective procedures and sudden, complicated interventions alike, I've found an odd stability in these otherwise unstable environs. No waiting room is a home, per se, but I've been prepared by the church and the academy to exist in this liminal space between sickness and health. The date is also important for two reasons. It's August 13th, the day after violence broke out in Charlottesville as a white supremacy demonstration led by the KKK, NeoNazis, and other Alt Right groups was met by counterprotesters advocating for racial equality. Our church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, was among those nonviolent demonstrators, confronting messages of hate with the Gospel declaration that, "we stand against all forms of hatred and discrimination. We believe that cultural, ethnic and racial differences should be seen and celebrated as what God intends them to be – blessings rather than means of oppression and discrimination. We are a church that belongs to Christ, where there is a place for everyone. Christ’s church is not ours to control, nor is it our job to sort, divide, categorize or exclude." It's a day where we vigil not simply for peace in America, but for God's good justice that declares all people worthy of equal inclusion in the Kingdom of God because we all, of every race and gender, of sexual orientation and ethnicity, of language and ability, are made in the image of God and made one in Christ Jesus, This also ends the first week of my life where nuclear war seemed a legitimate, albeit not likely, possibility. The leadership of our own United States, along with that of North Korea, seem hell bent on a hellish end to a conflict that's lasted for over seven decades. We vigil not just for cooler heads among heads of state, but for a worldwide commitment that we would turn our swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. I learned to vigil for the great feasts of our faith, Christmas and Easter. More precisely, from those feasts I learned to vigil for the Lord's presence, for God's answer to our prayers that comes most clearly and distinctly in Jesus Christ.T This word vigil is most common after tragedies, where people gather with candles, drawings, and stuffed animals to support one another in the pursuit of healing after pain. This is included in the Christian sense of vigil, but there's a key difference. Many churches hold Christmas Eve services, and if you've been to one, it may have felt simultaneously much like a vigil and entirely different. The candles are there, as are spiritual songs and readings common to the vigils we experience in wider society. But what makes Christmas Eve (and Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday) different is that, at these vigils, we already know the end of the story. After Columbine and Sandy Hook, after Charleston and Orlando, we vigiled not knowing the outcome of our experience, not knowing the answer to our lament. In the church, we vigil already knowing the end to the story. In Jesus, God's already established the kingdom of God. We vigil because we hope in God's promises being realized. We vigil because we hope in the truth God has told us. To vigil is an expression of hope. I'm here in a waiting room, feeling at home not just because it's in Ohio or because I've spent days of my life camped in a hospital waiting room before. I'm at home because, in Christ, we're at home in hope. We're at home because we know how the story ends, with all things reconciled in Christ Jesus, even though we don't know what the journey looks like between here and there. We're at home in hope because, thus far along the way, we've seen Light when darkness seemed to reign, we've found the Way when the path seemed to disappear, we've heard the Truth when the cacophony of lies drowned all other voices, we've eaten the Bread of Life when starving seemed inevitable. I just got word that Karen's prognosis is looking up, that she should be able to eat and regain the energy that's been sapped from her bones. I've begun to hear from pastors who confronted racism in their churches, some to support and some to antagonism, but all with a renewed sense of purpose that God's on a reconciling mission and the whole church must take part. I even read that, despite the rhetoric coming from The White House and Pyongyang, back channel diplomacy is at work for peace. That's all good news, but we must remember that our hope didn't make these things happen. The God in whom we hope works in ways sometimes obvious, sometimes beyond our comprehension, yet always mysterious. Hope keeps us focused not on the despair, but on the God who rescues us from despair. That, then, is why we vigil. We await God's presence on Christmas and Easter, in hospital rooms and after tragedies like Charlottesville, in international politics and in our own homes. We vigil because we hope and we hope because God's given us reason to hope. Too often (to be honest, once would be too often, but I've heard it much more than once), people have questioned the value or validity of campus ministry. "What's the point of investing time, energy, and resources into this group of people who aren't investing their resources, time, or energy in our congregations?" This question betrays a defunct theology of vocation, a poor ecclesiology, and a limited missiology. But I can't fix any of that in a blog post. What I can do, however, is offer a few vignettes into why I believe campus ministry isn't simply worth doing, but a vitally important ministry of the contemporary church (and through that, I'll at least address some of those theological concerns).
Our goal in discipleship is both personal growth in God's image and helping others to experience that growth as well. In short, our campus ministry efforts should affect the church, but that doesn't necessarily we'll see that fruit born in our particular congregation. Simply because we don't see someones' discipleship coming alive firsthand doesn't mean that we should give up on our call as disciples to bring opportunities for abundant life to campus. Indeed, the vocation of a student is to be just that, a student. We ought to be first supporting them in their God-given vocations and helping their faith to come alive on campus, and then invite them to explore how that vocation connects with congregational life. That's a longer process, but it more faithfully reflects our Lutheran theological commitments and our call as Christ's disciples. As Paul reminds us, we're one body with many members, so while we're bound together by the Holy Spirit living in us, we don't all perform the same function or even worship in the same spaces. The church isn't bound by a particular hour on Sunday morning, but by the mission we share to help the world look, live, and love more like Jesus. The limitation in missiology is equally problematic. We often view Christian mission as something that's done in the Global South by embedded missionaries, week-long service trips to perform disaster cleanup, or the street preachers that all too often give evangelism a bad rep. We assume that campuses are Christianized, and so don't need a Christian witness. We assume that in the 21st century Western world, there's not immediate suffering. We're wrong on all accounts. Just this week, I've dealt with students who can't afford regular meals because their job is tied to work study jobs, and so they rely on our ministry to help bridge the gap with food until work returns in the fall. I've dealt with students who can't afford rent because they've fled an abusive household and have had to declare themselves legally independent, leaving them homeless and unable to pay rent until financial aid comes through at the beginning of the semester. We support victims of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. We advocate for full equality and absolute integrity of our gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and gender minorities on campus in a part of the country that's not often safe for them. Most important, we do this all through the unique and necessary lens of Jesus. The confusion is understandable. The campus is one of those strange places that is both church and mission field. I say strange not because it's uncommon - in fact, much of our public spaces are intermingled in this way - but because we have such trouble comprehending their existence. We like to neatly categorize places and spaces, but the reality is much more complicated. The worth of campus ministry isn't just supporting Christians on campus, though it is that. It's not just inviting new people to experience the abundant life that Jesus offers, though it is that. It's both. And it's more. There's also a dirty little lie that campus ministry costs more resources than it brings in. When I got to CLC, we brought in no money for campus ministry. This coming year, we anticipate $5,000 in grants and another $3,000 in direct giving to campus ministry. That more than funds the budgeted items we've committed to Radford University, and a consistent presence projects consistent growth. The time that I spend on campus comes back to the congregation through student participation in programs and assistance in community service, as well as the growth of faculty and alumni relating to the church's ministry. Most importantly from a Lutheran perspective, our decreased funding from all levels - churchwide, synodical, and congregational - has left a gap that's too often been filled by destructive theologies. Theologies that deny the space for questions about God and instead force a false dichotomy of total acceptance of their litmus test or atheism writ large. Theologies that undergird the oppression of women, LGBTQ+ people, refugees, immigrants, and those with brown and black skin. Theologies that give lip service to grace but entirely lack forgiveness. In the midst of the gap we've left, distorted versions of God's Word seem true. This is a liminal space after high school and before total immersion into the working world, filled with potential that the church may serve. At this most opportune time in the lives of students, where they're open to education, to learning, to exploring the world beyond their wildest dreams, we've left generations of opportunities backslide through the front door. It's time to change that trend. But the best vignettes are the good stories. Soon, one of our most recent Virginia Tech alums will head to South Africa as a part of the ELCA Young Adults in Global Mission program, an opportunity she discovered through campus ministry. Our Radford ministry is in a trial period of joint ministry with our Episcopal and Presbyterian siblings in Christ, hoping to better serve Radford by combining our resources and raising our critical mass. We're planning Sex Positive Spirituality presentations for each campus, approaching issues of consent, joy, and intentionality as God's heart for sexuality. We've got students discovering more than just careers. They're finding God-given vocations from faculty and staff who help students to envision how faith comes alive in work that's worth while. Why does Lutheran campus ministry deserve our time and effort? Because that's where the church is now, and we're helping the church of the future come alive. Now is the time to embrace that idea, of being the church and building the church, with wonder, with purpose, and with joy. “Is that bullshit at some point?” A dear friend of mine texted me this question during a presentation about fostering inclusive church communities (don’t worry, he’s a vocal advocate for inclusion of all people). I’d described the importance of people-first language (a person who uses a wheelchair rather than a paraplegic), and specifically the commitment to refer to us all as persons with different abilities because it doesn’t prioritize people that have certain abilities over those that don’t have those same abilities. In other words, describing us all as people with different abilities removes the value judgement that more abilities = better.
It’s helpful to understand that both my friend and I have hidden disabilities. We each live with different mental disorders. We each find joyful days and days of struggle. His question comes from a very understandable place. Most of the time, we’d rather live life without our disabilities. It was an honest question because we often imagine that we'd be better off without many of the limitations that shape our lives. Yet, we also must ask how those different abilities have shaped us for the good. At our core, would I be the same person if I didn’t live with an anxiety disorder, depression, or OCD? What has that combination of chemical imbalances and psycho-spiritual torment taught me that I could not have otherwise known? Does the image of God shine through me despite my disabilities or is God’s image present within my disabilities? Of course, that’s a false dichotomy. It could be both. The next question that came up in our conversation is this: when we enter God’s eternity, what type of transformation happens to our bodies? Jesus’s scars and descriptive of one possibility. Our eternal bodies are shaped by our presence realities. I don’t mean to prooftext the situation here, but I find this incredibly instructive. Many people imagine heaven as a place where there’s no such thing as a personal disability. No physical or mental limitation. We’re all the perfect version of ourselves. Except that goes back to the original question. It assumes ability is perfection. Plus, if you talk about this version of heaven too much, it starts to sound way too much like a desire for a master race without impurity. That is neither Christian nor Christ-like. To be sure, that’s not the intent of many people, but we might ask instead: What are we excluding from heaven if everyone has the same abilities? This hit even closer to home this week when my dear friend Jimmy Lefler died. Jimmy, a member of our church, lived his entire life with a mental disability and spent the last couple of decades in an assisted living facility for people who live with disabilities. Through Jimmy, I developed relationships with all sorts of people with various abilities. Together with Jimmy, CLC even developed a program call Across the Spectrum, which creates opportunities for spiritual development for people of all abilities. Jimmy lived abundant life in Christ more than most any person I know, without caveat. That all provides the background music to me today as I write Jimmy’s funeral sermon. When we reunite with Jimmy in God’s eternity, who will we meet? Is our hope in Christ that Jimmy would receive abilities he never had in this life, and for that matter, never expressed a desire to have? Or is it that the entire populace would see what we’ve all known all along: that Jimmy’s value isn’t determined by abilities he has or doesn’t have? Is our hope that Jimmy would never need assistance or that all people would rejoice in the opportunity to assist someone who need it? A few things are most certainly true. One is that I have no certain knowledge of what abilities any of us will have in God’s eternal presence. Another is that, whatever we need, God will provide. Perhaps some of us, because of the ways our abilities have shaped us, need a transformation that allows us to do more or less in order to fully experience God’s fantastic truth. Perhaps others of us will find not our abilities transformed, but the willingness of others to help us do what we can’t, as well as a willingness to ask us to do what we can. I suppose the point of this all is that, no, it’s not bullshit, but it will always seem like bullshit when we define more abilities as more valuable. Value in the Kingdom of God is incredibly different than value in the workforce. I learned through Jimmy things I had never know about God, about love, and about being the church, things that he shared through his skills and limitations. I couldn’t have loved or appreciated Jimmy more if he had more abilities. I can’t be sure that would be the same person. Most instructive for me in this thought process is the fact that Jimmy never lamented his condition to me. He didn’t see himself as someone to pity. He lived with joy, with wonder, with a practically unparalleled passion for life. So, from Jimmy, I’ve learned to appreciate my limitations more, and how they’ve shaped me. I've learned to appreciate others' abilities, abilities that are different than mine but no less valid. Whenever we meet, in the fullness of God's Kingdom, I'll know that it was Jimmy's existence in this life that taught me to love all the more, not despite of our differences, but through them. Accusations are strange things. At various times in my life, I've been accused of just odd stuff. Once, while talking with Michelle in a public pool, we were accused (incredibly falsely) of having sex because we were standing close to one another and whispering in an attempt to not disturb the other pool attendees. How embarrassing, not to mention icky! I really can't fathom the physics of what this person thought they saw. Another time, after receiving advice from Duke Divinity School staff on how to register in order to save on the overall cost of education, I was falsely accused by another staff member of intending to deceive the school and steal from the institution that I loved. I was shocked at the internal miscommunication and saddened at the personal nature of the assumptions made about my character. In very different ways, these violations of my integrity were painful, despite the fact that they were patently untrue. The most haunting part of these false accusations, and others like them in my life, has been the reality that I was attempting to do what was right. With the situation itself being misread, I was misread. It wasn't the behaviors I was accused of, unfortunate as they were, but the specter of myself that formed in these people's minds. The distorted version of myself formed in these people's mind looked back at me with a piercing possibility: Are you that man? Even if the answer is no, to look at yourself as that caricature is a frightening endeavor. Though I was quickly vindicated in both cases, there was something missing in each case: a friend seeking the truth, an accuser wanting true justice rather than to inflict punishment. Of course, there are worse accusations. Those that are true. Some accusations are the entire truth, like the melody of the song, while others ring true like a harmony or support the truth as a rhythm. Any accusation that fits within truth's song stings because we've lied to ourselves, convinced ourselves to listen to the dissonance of a lie and turned our ears to the amelodic falsehoods that seek to rule our worlds. King David fell into such a trap, In 2 Samuel 11-12, we read about King David's forced violation of Bathsheba and then attempt to cover it up, first through the deception of bringing her husband Uriah home from the war. When Uriah wouldn't sleep with Bathsheba - as a sign of his commitment to David, no less - David then conspired to murder Uriah by placing him at the front of the fighting and ensuring his immediate death by telling his generals to pull back Uriah's support and leave him exposed to the Joabite attack. The accusation comes for David when Nathan, a prophet in David's house, speaks to David through a parable where a rich man steals a lamb from a poor man (obviously, one of the major issues even the Biblical authors couldn't see was that women aren't property and deserve much more humane treatment than Bathsheba is given in this entire account). David becomes incensed at the rich man's insensitivity to the poor man's plight, at least until Nathan raises the curtain on his ruse and declares to David, "You are that man!" The accusation breaks David's heart, not because he's been seen falsely, but because he's been seen so true. Yet, someone like Nathan is necessary for truth telling. Nathan is honest, bold, a witness, and a friend. Witnesses are necessary for obvious reasons, for they help to reveal the truth from another perspective. Fortunately, in both of the cases I mentioned above, witnesses came to my defense to speak the truth. Yet, sometimes we're rightly accused of things, and we don't have witnesses like Nathan around to help us honestly assess our culpability. Whether we're blind to our faults or our own harshest critics, we're most often improper judges of our guilt. Nathan's conviction to speak the truth in a way that pursues David's repentance is perhaps the best form of an accusation. Nathan seeks not to shame David, but to make right what was wrong. Justice must be served, but justice is not punishment. Justice is retribution that opens the door to the possibility of reconciliation. Bring people like Nathan into your life, people that are brave enough to accuse you when you're wrong and want to help make it right. People who will witness on your behalf when you're innocent. People who help you bear the accusations that sing the truth in you, those that ring falsely, and those that harmonize enough to sting. For a fan of comic books and graphic novels like myself, few things inspire excitement like an origin story. How did this superhero gain their powers? What led to the zombie outbreak? What led to this character’s choice to choose evil rather than good? These questions, and a multitude of others, drive the narrative of development. Comparatively, our own origin stories can feel less compelling. Mine? Born at Dunlap Memorial Hospital. Grew up on Back Massillon Road. Started school at North Elementary. Attended the now-demolished junior high, which a building that formerly housed the high school. Joined the church at Augsburg Lutheran. All in Orrville, Ohio. You’ve probably never heard of it, and if you have, you've probably just read about it on the back of a Smucker's jar or in Bobby Knight's biography. But when I reflect on my life, and the way that I lived it, it was never a boring endeavor. Back Massillon Road might not have the same historic resonance as Route 66 or cultural vitality as Broadway, but until you’ve caught fish in Renner’s pond, busted through Troyer’s electric fences while running through the fields, pulled friends on saucer sleds tied to ATVs in the Ohio snow, and leapt over bonfires with boys who desperately wanted to be men, you’ll never know excitement like I have. North Elementary is now gone, but never will the bickering about it most assuredly not being North Street, though it seemed everyone who went to Maple or Oak wanted redub Mineral Springs Street (I mean, seriously, it was just the northernmost elementary school. What’s so difficult about that! But I digress…). That Junior High was where I realized I hated running, experienced my first kiss, realized I loved playing football and discovered that my knees didn’t care for the sport all that much. I don’t remember anything about my birth, but the same doctor that delivered me into this world at Dunlap also taught Sunday school classes at Augsburg that included “The Gospel According to the Simpsons” and even helped me to believe in the miraculous. In fact, at Augsburg, I learned to see God at work on Back Massillon, in school, at work, truly everywhere. Our origins aren’t boring. Perhaps we just fail to remember the excitement at the heart of our developing lives. Perhaps we forget God’s presence on every step of the journey. Origins play a central role in the stories of our faith. What would Eve and Adam be without the initial story of their formation at God’s hands? Just creatures of dust with no breath of life. Where would Noah – and for that matter, the rest of creation – be without God’s initial intervention? At the bottom of the sea. Ruth would still be in Moab without Boaz and unsure of God’s protective, redemptive love. Who knows what Mary’s legacy might be without God’s origins? Likely that of most women in the 1st century. Sold to an older man for marriage and immediately forgotten by him and by history. And yet, because of our origins in God’s story, she’s now known as theotokos, God-bearer, the one who gave birth to divinity and salvation within humanity. You, too, have an origin story. Wherever it began, and however it developed, God was there. At times, encouraging. At times, challenging. At times, weeping with you, lamenting the hurt others caused you and you caused others (and, likely, you caused yourself as well). Always celebrating your origin, for your origin is God’s image. Your breath is the very Spirit of God. If you can’t see it, or can’t imagine it, look again. In God’s presence, places like Orrville become the Edens of our origins.
The above tweet came across my Facebook feed (just think about that statement for a second and the intersections of a social media-drive world...but alas, that's barely related to the point of this post) on my birthday. Break out the cake and pointy hats!
The linked piece is by Dr. Russel Moore, President of the Ethics and Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Church. As is often the case, it appears Dr. Moore meant well. Indeed, his introduction to the piece sounds not just true, but convicting to white Christians willing to listen: "A church that doesn't reject racism, nativism will cut itself off from revival." Of course, that itself is the problem. White Christians have been listening to white Christians forever. If we truly want to move toward an integrated understanding of faith, we can't keep listening to only or primarily white, straight, old(er) men. This probably sounds odd, coming from this white, straight, young(ish) white man, who hopes one day to be an old man. However, it's also desperately and obviously true that we need people of color as leaders in the conversations about diversity in the church. So, rather than explain what's problematic with Moore's post, I implore you to read Dr. Christena Cleveland's excellent tweet storm that responded to and critiqued Moore's article. Dr. Cleveland is a theologian at Duke Divinity School and her evaluation of Dr. Moore's article is on point, beginning with the article's optimistic but ill-suited title, "A White Church No More," which is only the tip of the problematic iceberg with Moore's article. Instead, let me take this time to implore you this simple truth: who we listen to is a matter of faith. We can't imagine a God who truly loves black people, or truly embraces gay people, or truly calls women to ministry, if we aren't willing to follow the leads of African American theologians, LGBTQ+ pastors, or women presidents. If you aren't reading these authors, listening to these lectures, appreciating these artists, then a chasm will always remain between your conception of God and your experience of your neighbor. The image of God given to all people will be inconceivable to you in people unlike yourself. Fortunately, some people have already done the work of compiling lists of people to read. Consider engaging these resources, and more specifically, the people behind them, as a spiritual practice. For instance, Elle Dowd, a white ELCA seminarian and leader within the #decolonizeLutheranism movement, has put together a list of texts by women of color that introduces themes important for white people, and especially white men, to understand. You'll find that list at the bottom of this post, and her writing is especially helpful in helping to understand the experiences of women, bisexual persons, and advocates in #BlackLivesMatter. Traci Blackmon, a significant theologian in her own right, recently listed a number of Black women theologians, which deserves your attention. Dr. Willie Jennings, currently of Yale and formerly of Duke, wrote The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race, which along with his class were the watershed experience that helped me comprehend theological anthropology, or what it means to be human creatures created by God in God's image. Lenny Duncan, a Black ELCA seminarian, compellingly writes about his experience as a formerly incarcerated in our prison industrial complex, formerly homeless in Philadelphia, and formerly unchurched. Thanks to the internet, the only obstacle remaining between these leaders and a straight white audience is that audience's decision making. Who will you decide to listen to? Who's voices will you pursue? I'm not saying you should stop listening to me or white voices altogether. I am saying that we've privileged straight, white, older, wealthy voices too much, so you should devote your attention to people of color, to women, to the LGBQ+ community, to people outside of the wealthy Western castes. Consider their intelligence, their perspective, their lament, their frustration, their hope, all that they share, not only because they deserve it (they do), and not only because they'll change you for the better (they will), but because God calls us to a church diverse far beyond our wildest dreams. We can only experience that kind of church when we listen to diverse leaders and allow their convictions to shape our own. Who we listen to is a matter of faith, and as long as we choose to listen to mostly white, straight, men, we handcuff ourselves to a dying form of church. Make no mistake, that form of church needs to die. But if we bind ourselves to diverse leaders, who more fully share God's image through the prism of their perspective, then we'll find we're bound again to a church experiencing Christ's resurrection. We'll find that we see God in places and people that we never expected. We'll see God's gifts manifest throughout all people. Of course, that's already happening. It's up to us whether we want to see that, to experience that, to know those people and know the God who so profoundly gifted them. --- Elle Dowd's Reading List Fiction The Color Purple by Alice Walker Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat The Autobiography of My Mother by Jimaica Kincaid The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston God of the Small Things by Arundhati Roy Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini The Red Tent by Anita Diamant Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Little Bee by Chris Cleave Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver Poetry “Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth” by Warsan Shire “Milk and Honey” by Rupi Kaur “salt.” by Nayyirah Waheed Memoirs Mighty Be Our Powers by Leymah Gbowee I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou The Color of Water by James McBride Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt Assata by Assata Shakur A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah Documentaries Pray the Devil Back to Hell When I was a child (read: into my early 20's), I believed pastors were supposed to carry the burdens of a congregation without revealing the personal or professional burdens that wearied them. In my estimation, since the congregation was supposed to rely on the pastor, the only one a pastor should rely on was God. Of course, at that point I didn't realize how high of a pedestal I placed the pastor, simultaneously above the congregation and as the congregation's sole conduit to God. Fortunately, a strong dose of realism and not a little bit of therapy debunked that myth in my life.
That's one reason why I shared my diagnoses of depression and anxiety with my congregation during the interview process. Though I've not needed medication for about five years, mental illness still irregularly inserts itself into my life at home and at work. What's important for you to know, as a reader, is that you've got people in your life who exist with this burden. People who you love but who may not feel comfortable enough to share just yet. Maybe even yourself, if you've lived with these kind of plaguing feelings, emotionally and physically, without a precise answer. For me, it starts with a day that just doesn't feel right. Not sleepy but not fully awake. Not mad or sad but neither feeling fully alive. Almost always, this is accompanied by a headache that radiates with full persistency from my temples. The first twenty four hours or so I imagine it's just poor sleep, but two or three days into the luminal space between life and mere existence, I realize that something more is likely going on. So I begin to ask some questions. Is the weather constantly overcast or rainy? Has my diet been too high in carbs lately? Did something throw my routine out of whack? Have new factors entered the equations of my life. People sometimes imagine that, if there's environmental factors related to symptoms, then it's not related to mental illness. I imagine that comes from a misunderstanding of how or bodies and minds are related, but in short, we're psychosomatic creatures. What happens to our bodies affects our minds. The reverse is equally true. I've found that the best remedies to my anxiety and depression begin with a daily routine that includes lots of vegetables, an hourlong workout, some exercise, and achievable goals. So, when Michelle went out of town for much of the week, I took the chance to eat foods she normally doesn't like (I prefer Papa John's pizza, while she prefers Pizza Hut). At the same time, I had work commitments through the weekend that took me far of my routine. It rained intermittently for five days straight, with no windows of consistent sun longer than thirty minutes. While I slept fairly well, and even worked out more, with the rest of my physical factors at play, I found myself settling into a funk. It didn't help that I knew I had to leave for a conference only twelve hours after Michelle's return home. That's the thing with mental disorders. Not all are major incidents all the time. Rather than feeling like a car wreck all the time, my experience lately is much more like driving a car that's not handling right, but getting a standard tuneup doesn't solve the problem. It's something deeper than topping off the fluids, and much more difficulty to access, something like the timing belt on the engine. It's essential to run well, but hard to diagnose without taking apart key components. It's been important for me to return to a daily routine that begins with meditation and includes much better diatary choices. While my schedule will remain atypical the rest of this week, the forecast of daily sun and typically Texas warmth (near one hundred degrees) in Austin also bodes well for me. Our minds are even more difficult to inspect than an engine, so there's no guarantee the fog will lift from the forefront of my mind. But that's not the important thing today. The key is for you to know that, if people don't seem themselves - or if you don't feel like yourself - there may be something below the surface, outside of your control, that created that change. If it's someone else, react with grace, because compassion and encouragement are essential for someone whose processing through a flareup of mental illness. If it's you, don't leave it unchecked. The best decision I made was to pursue counseling and psychiatry, because through conversations and medication I learned how to affect my conditions. Though they remain out of my control, just like the environment, I can make choices conducive to health. So can you, and a counselor, spiritual director, or psychiatrist are all healthy and helpful options. This is true for everyone, but it's essential for pastors. Being authentic about your needs is the only way those needs can be met. It's your story to share, and who you inform is your choice, but notinforming anyone endangers your health and God's minsitry through you and the church. After all, God showed up most powerfully in shared suffering on the cross with others who suffered a similar fate, and through that, brought healing and resurrection to the world. There's no shame in living with pain. When you're ready, and when you share, you'll find that you're not alone. Jesus is there in your midst, suffering alongside you, and in all likelihood, there's another person (or a whole community of people) who now what it's like to be in a funk. We're all better off pursuing healing, chasing new life, together. 11 The Lord said, “Go out and stand at the mountain before the Lord. The Lord is passing by.” A very strong wind tore through the mountains and broke apart the stones before the Lord. But the Lord wasn’t in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake. But the Lord wasn’t in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake, there was a fire. But the Lord wasn’t in the fire. After the fire, there was a sound. Thin. Quiet. 13 When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his coat. He went out and stood at the cave’s entrance. A voice came to him and said, “Why are you here, Elijah?” 1 Kings 19:11-13 It's been a whirlwind of a weekend. In the Virginia Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, we celebrated the ministry of our retiring Bishop Mauney and began our meetings on Friday with around seventy nominees to become our next bishop. By Sunday morning, we elected Bob Humphrey, pastor of Muhlenberg Lutheran in Harrisonburg, VA. As soon as Bob's first speech as our Bishop-elect was over, I skidded down the road to Fuqauy Varina United Methodist Church that afternoon. After spending the evening with some classmates from our time at Duke Divinity School, Bobby and Amanda Rackley, along with their six month old son Josiah. I took off early Monday morning to drive to Landsdowne, VA. There I spent the afternoon with my three year old niece Charlie, four year old nephew Ben, and sister-in-law Michelle while they were visiting Michelle's family outside of D.C. It was wonderful to see God's work in our church, in friends, and in family. In the midst of those chaotic times when our pace and direction changes frequently, it's difficult to remember that God's also active in the silence of our lives. Spending time in work, worship, and celebration with nearly 1,000 people throughout the weekend at the synod event is exciting, but God's no more present there than in the fifteen hours I spent in the car driving from Virginia's Appalachia to the North Carolina Piedmont to the edges of our nations capital and back home again to another part of Appalachia. God's no more present in a full worship service celebrating the vocations of students who soon head to college, work, or service than in the down time at a friend's house with a cold drink paloma (tequila, lime juice, and grapefruit soda like Squirt or Fresca) and meaningful conversation about what God's up to in our lives. God's present both in the gleeful shots of nieces and nephews when you first arrive and in the silent cuddles as they watch Paw Patrol. I tend to look for God in the flashy experiences, but the problem with that is I can miss the presence of God in the normalcy of my life. While I was driving up I-95 and down I-81, I listened to various parts of my iPhone's music catalog, which includes a handful of albums from Mayday Parade. One song in particular caught my attention in ways that it hadn't before, despite nearly a decade of listening. It's called, "The Silence." You can listen below, but here's the gist of the story: a woman's disappointed about a broken relationship and cries out for the return of her lover. Yet, the tag to the chorus is, "and the silence will set her free." Now, this is an incredibly loose association to the story above from 1 Kings, but for the first time, I heard the song as one of liberation and life rather than solely lament. The silence wasn't the absence of what she needed. Rather, she found her freedom despite looking for deliverance in another form, namely a response from the now absent paramour. It wasn't in a flashy, fictional, RomCom reunion, but in the profound realization that her value, integrity, identity was still presence even in the silence, even absent what she'd come to identify as the important presence in her life. I'm much the same way. Silence is often the most liberating part of my life, whether through meditation and prayer or rest and awareness of my surroundings. Though I look for God's presence in the flashy portions of life, I'm even more exhausted by the barrage exposure to the demands of work, the desired pastoral appearances at various functions, and the simple realities of life like swimming against the current of humanity at the grocery store. In those moments, silence becomes the active presence of God, who offers a word of comfort that, even if the job isn't perfect, God desires to be with us. Even if we can't meet every expectation placed onto us by others, God still favors us. Even when we're overwhelmed by sensory stimuli and the sheer mass of people, God remains patiently supporting us, not shouting at us or cutting us off in the international foods aisle but whispering, wooing, that we might realize our sufficiency not in the flashy, fiery, resounding realms of life, but in those moments of sheer silence, when the only one we know is the only one we need. One of my favorite shows as a child was Ren and Stimpy. I'm not suggesting it's the most wholesome show, but at times, it offered some clever social commentary. One of my favorite moments is from the commercial for Log. Check out the commercial for this toy that all the kids will love. Ridiculous, right? Not as much as you might think. While we were with some of our youth and young adults on a hike and swim event at Claytor Lake State Park, the "toy" that drew the most attention wasn't the football, frisbee, beachball, or bocce ball set that we brought. It was the log-sized driftwood that floated into the swim area. The lifeguards must have admonished a half dozen kids for playing on the log. Apparently we're so worried about liability that kids can't play with driftwood! Before the log was dragged onto the beach, their imaginations didn't just see a dead plant, but a personal flotation device, a pirate ship, a tugboat, a donkey to ride (apparently donkeys can swim while hauling people), and who knows what else. Imagination turns logs not just into toys, but all sorts of creations that bring us joy.
Imagination is an indispensable part of our life together as the church. This weekend, June 9-11 of 2017, the Virginia Synod of the ELCA will call a new bishop to lead God's work through our Virginia congregations and ministries. We use an ecclesiastical ballot, which means that we believe the Holy Spirit is actively at work in the process and that any pastor in the ELCA is eligible on the first ballot. There's thousands of possibilities of who could become the next shepherd among us, but when I think about what kind of leadership we need in the church, I think about logs. I pray for a bishop who sees more than just driftwood, whose imagination allows her to embrace the endless possibilities of what that log might be. I pray for a bishop who won't holler for people to stop playing with that log, whose aversion to risk will smother any innovation. We need a bishop who takes calculated risks, understanding that the rewards aren't just in some far off potential payoff, but in the thrill of the risk itself. I pray for a bishop who will gather a staff around her that will complement her strengths and fill in for her weaknesses. I pray for a realistic bishop, who knows well the obstacles we face. We need a visionary bishop, whose insight sees the way to Christ's abundant life within and beyond today's dilemmas. I pray for a bishop who loves Jesus, loves the church, and loves the world that we're called to serve. In this increasingly divided culture, I pray for a bishop committed to diversity and inclusion of people who aren't like us. A bishop who celebrates the gifts that others bring. A bishop who won't let the patriarchy and privilege caught up within our bureaucracy prevent us from lifting up the wonderful gifts brought by women, people of color, people in the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, people in poverty, people of all sorts who aren't as welcome as they ought to be in our churches. I pray for a bishop whose leadership decenters leadership and recenters the Priesthood of All Believers, and that doesn't put an asterisk on the all. I pray for a bishop who looks at these challenges not as some useless piece of driftwood as an obstacle to ministry, but as an opportunity to find joy in seeing new life where there seemed no possibility for life. I pray for a bishop who grasps the joyful ability of a young person to see something more than a log and helps others see that too. The Holy Spirit that will guide our process of calling a new bishop is the same Holy Spirit that moved to create all creation out of formless chaos. The Holy Spirit never sees only dead vegetation floating without purpose. The Holy Spirit sees hope beyond hopelessness for new life for that log. I pray for a bishop filled with that spirit, with God's Spirit, for it is that very Holy Spirit that is at work making all things new. Even driftwood. Even me. Even you. |
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