Winning

You will not always win. 

You are a wonderful, wondrous person, fully worthy of love and affection and kindness, and you will not always win. 

It's important that you know that both of these things are true. You are beloved simply because you are, loved with the deep love that spills from the foundations of everything, but the rain falls on the just and unjust alike. No matter how good or bad you think you are, no matter what you think you've earned or deserve, this world will be what it is. It is full of joy and wonder and delight and hatred and pettiness and deep sadness and you do not get to choose which visits you and when. You are beautiful and you shine with the light of the cosmos and you will not always win. 

Some days, some years, it will be the world that wins. Maybe the money won't be there. Maybe the support won't show up. Maybe everything that can go wrong does go wrong, all at the same time, and there is no way on earth to fix it. It is a fact that all those big sweeping events and systems and powers that we pretend to understand and control can and will take and take and take from you. Sometimes the world will knock you flat and leave you empty. 

Some days, some seasons, it'll be the worst parts of you that win. Those sneaky little voices that sleep curled up in the back corners of your mind will wake up when the alarm clocks of stress and self-doubt ring and they will not be silenced even after the alarms are off. They will tell you horrible lies and exaggerations and you'll listen to them, because you know they've always been a part of you and maybe that means they're right. Their noises will pull you down, drag you to your bed, lash you to the couch, and you will not be able to get your fingers to the knots to let yourself free. 

Some days, many days, it'll be other people that win, and win at your expense. Those unmanageable systems are set up and maintained by people whose interest does not extend to your wellbeing. Sure, other humans are capable of everyday unkindness, dozens of little insults and injuries that peck at your soul like a flock of so many hateful little black birds, but we all know our problems are bigger than that. Sometimes the people in charge, and the people influencing the people in charge, will display their apathy for your existence in astounding ways and you will be left breathless and insecure. 

But none of this changes anything about you. You are unique. You are glorious. You are a miracle, just by the very fact that you exist. When you lose, when you're hurt, when your strength fails and your hope falters and the world takes advantage of that, you still remain this awesome thing, this amazing combination of brains and body and spirit and being. No matter what the world visits on you, you are still marvelous. 

And so is everyone else. 

In this new year, let's act like that's true. 

Falling

The first time I fell down the stairs at work, there was a moment of absolute freedom. It happened right after the sole of my right shoe failed to lift off the step, refusing to follow the rest of my body downward. Its stutter, rubber on rubber unwilling to move, caused my body to twist in a way it hadn't before and that I hope will never happen again. During that twist, I felt a pop in my lower back. That pop was the freedom, a release of years of tension as a problematic muscle finally gave up its struggle to hold the weight around it and tore. The two seconds before I hit the ground were memorably peaceful. 

Of course, on the ground, not being able to move my legs because of the searing pain that exploded in my back every time I tried to use that muscle, that peace was replaced by panic. Well, occasional waves of panic that I talked myself out of. "Okay okay okay," I said to myself and to the empty back staircase to the basement on which I had fallen. "You can lay here for ten more minutes but then we've got to get up and go home." I pictured myself driving back with my left foot on the pedals, taking back roads so as to avoid causing danger to other drivers, and collapsing on my mattress with a heating pad and some ibuprofen. I didn't worry that no one would find me and I honestly didn't really worry about my responsibilities for that day--my walkie had flown out of my hand in the fall, as had my phone, so I couldn't tell if my absence was missed, but summer camp was a well-oiled machine with plenty of replacement parts. It would go on without me. What I needed to do was to summon the grit to stand up and maybe find someone to drive me home. 

I told the IT guy who found me, laying flat on my back with my legs at an awkward angle, that I would be fine in a few minutes, and if he could tell my boss where I was, that'd be great, since I couldn't reach my walkie. I think I actually asked him if he had enough room to walk by or if he needed me to move, though that was more of a courtesy than anything else. I most certainly could not have moved. Luckily, he, and the subsequent six staff members who waited with me for the ambulance to arrive, realized that I was probably in shock and that there was the potential for some spinal damage and that I couldn't just go home with this kind of injury. They all winced when I screamed as the EMT moved my legs and again when the pair of them got me onto the stretcher. 

My boss went with me to the ER and read to me as we waited for me to be seen. Just a note: if possible, don't suffer a catastrophic injury on a Monday. Everyone who doesn't want to pay the weekend fees saves up their pain for business hours, so the line for morphine and an x-ray was long on that afternoon. The line was long enough that we got through several chapters of Game of Thrones (a reading choice which not my best, not my worst for this particular situation) and through a phone call to my parents in which I again dropped my phone and started screaming in pain. My mother had asked if I wanted them to come up, and it suddenly didn't matter that I was a strong, independent twenty-two-year-old with her own job and her own insurance and her own apartment two and a half hours from her parents. It was my first time in an ER and I wanted my mommy. I started to cry and I started to stop myself from crying, but that required me to use the very muscle that had brought me to this place and I dropped the phone in my pain. My boss picked it up and explained what was happening to my mom. My parents were there the next day. 

After the morphine, the doctors figured out that it was just a muscle tear and my friend Pamela came and got me. We picked up the pain med prescription and went home. Now, I have spent years of my life dealing with parents in chronic pain, so I know that in situations like these, you have to stay ahead of the pain and not wait until it hurts to take the next round of pills. I did not set an alarm, though, and so the worst part of this ordeal was probably after the morphine wore off and before the prednisone kicked in, when I laid on my mattress on the floor of my first post-college apartment in the worst pain of my life, trying and failing to stifle moans because I couldn't suck it up anymore. Pamela, who spent the night with me trying to sleep on the couch, still tells me that she remembers what it sounded like to hear me in pain, both of us unable to do anything more to help me. 

There's more to this story. I could talk about how I had to have a traumatic injury before I let anyone help me, or about how vulnerable missing a week of work made me as an intern and temporary employee. I could talk about how this fall almost cost me my next job. I could talk about the ambulance bill, the physical therapy, or the weird detached bit of my spine that's floating around inside my body and is apparently fine. It's all there, avenues to be explored as I think about the couple seconds that were oddly formative in my life. 

My mind flashed through this story and its extraneous bits as I fell down the stairs for the second time at work on Monday, the sole of my right shoe again failing to move, rubber stuck on stone. It was just skinned knees and a bruised shoulder, so I could just pick myself up after a few minutes with a few, "You're okay, you're okay"s, whispered to myself in the same tone I use for the kid I nanny when he tumbles down in his learning attempts at walking. It was an hour or so before my DCOM meeting to get my candidacy for ministry approved, so I'm lucky that I was just shaken and not actually injured this time. Candidacy is apparently difficult to reschedule. 

The fall made me think, though. I've spent the past year and a half learning to live in my body. Or, better, learning to love and listen to my body, learning how my mind cares for and challenges my body and learning how my body can help heal my mind and keep it accountable for my wellbeing. Take, for example, the hug from a friend that taught me what a good hug could be; the half-marathon training and running that showed me what I could really do; hours of holding and carrying and rocking the part-time baby in my life to sleep, which somehow conspires to use more strength and affection than I knew I had; a class on doing liturgy that had me thinking about my shoulders and my feet and my hands and my face as I pray and sing and lead and be. In these and other ways, thinking about my body has been inescapable. 

Life has brought me into my body over the past months. And the scary thing is, I like it here. I like the newfound awareness in my stretching in the morning. I like being able to identify the tension in my shoulders and neck instead of assuming that they had always been one gigantic knot of stress. I like letting my body feel things. I think about how my body felt free for a few seconds as my muscle tore five years ago and I wonder at all the years before that led to that feeling of bliss in detachment. I don't want that anymore. I want to be here, even with the pain. It is frightening to have to so much to lose. 

Here's the other thing about getting to know my body: it makes me incapable of not caring about what happens to yours, no matter who that "you" is. Caring for the hungry, the thirsty, the cold, the sick, the imprisoned, wherever you are and however I can, is a direct consequence of knowing my body and what I need to live in it. The things I consume, the things I throw away, how I regard people with bodies different and more vulnerable than mine, my perspective on all of these things shifts when I live in my body and I think about others in theirs. We are such fragile, precious things, with only each other for help. What we do to each other matters immensely.

Maybe that's why Jesus came into all our fragility, the Word of God shrunk into the form of a precious baby. Being God, he knew that one day his story would reach across the centuries to people who had forgotten their bodies and ignored their pain and, in so doing, forgotten and ignored those around them. He knew that it would speak to the people who, having fallen or having been pushed to the ground, needed to get back up again. He knew it would be with all of them, challenging and comforting. He knows us. He knows what we need.

We never get back up alone. 

Sheep and Goats

Gather around. Let me tell you a story. 

You see, when the Son of Man (that's Jesus) comes in all his glory (to this mess of despair that we've made of the planet), and all the angels with him (and that's the scary kind of angels, you know, the ones with flaming swords and like eight heads and eyes just, like, everywhere, not the cute ones with, like, blonde curls and ish), then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 

All the nations (like, everyone, everywhere, without exception) will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. Do you have the mental image in place? Jesus, throne, scary angels, and literally everyone else in the world, and he's going to split everyone up, like apparently shepherds used to do. Sheep on the right, goats on the left. Not literal sheep and goats. That's just an image. He's going to split the people up and put some on the right and some on the left. His right and left, not ours. We there? Perfect. 

So then the king (also Jesus, the Son of Man, from before) will say to those at his right hand (the sheep, remember?), "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

See, that's how you get to be a metaphorical sheep, the people on the right hand, the ones that go on to the good place prepared since before the Earth began: you feed the hungry and you give water to the thirsty and you welcome strangers and you give clothes to those who need them and you take care of the sick and you visit those in prison. These are the things that you do. 

But see, the metaphorical sheep are a little confused, because they ask him, "Lord (Jesus again), when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?" 

See, they didn't understand what they were doing when they were feeding and watering and welcoming and clothing and caring and visiting. They didn't know that in the way they were living their life, they were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. So Jesus breaks it down. He says, "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." 

And now he turns to the rest of the people, the goats, those at his left hand, and he says, "You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (so, you know, hell); for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me."

So what Jesus and all his scary righteous angels is saying here is that the goats Jesus are going to hell. So the goats panic. They start making a case for themselves. "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?" Jesus, if I had seen you, I certainly wouldn't have treated you like that. I know that you are worthy of my attention and care. You're Jesus. The Lord. The King. I know how to treat people in positions of power and authority and I unquestionably wouldn't have ignored your needs. Here. Have a tax break. 

Jesus is having none of this. He says to the goats, "Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me." 

So, you know, when you let food assistance programs for low-income children expire, or when you do not fix drinking water crises, or when you turn away refugees and immigrants, or when you let people sleep out on the streets, or when you limit access to medical care, or when you turn a blind eye to overcrowded prisons and mass incarceration, or worse, profit off of it, you go to hell. 

Which is what happens. The goats go away to eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.

Now, what do we take away from this story?

Because we do treat it like a story, like some over-the-top thing Jesus said that we get to gloss past because we don't really believe in hell anymore. We don't believe in angels and the eschaton, so Jesus is just telling us that we should be nice to people, but, like, on an individual level, because we don't think that the nations are actually going to be brought before the throne. We don't think we're going to be judged on the systems we create and participate in.

But if you visit the poor and sick, or even the semi-rich and sick, how can you not want to tear apart the heath care system and fix it? If you visit the imprisoned, how can you not want to reform the prison system and the justice system? When you see the hungry and those that die from lack of water to drink, how is it that you can go back to your homes and sleep in comfort? 

And I think that's part of the point. How can we, as people who ignore the deep pain of the world, pretend to have hearts that could abide being in the presence of the living God? Of course we would be sent away from the throne. We couldn't stand it. When we see what actual goodness looks like, our apathy toward those who suffer would infinitely torment us. Our regret and shame would tear us into pieces. When we really understand the pain our selfishness causes and the pain we could have stopped if we ever looked outside of ourselves, our only response will be to cry and grind our teeth. Being measured and found wanting? That's hell to me. Knowing I caused another pain and that my heart was so hardened that I didn't even care? That's torture. That's eternal punishment. I think we can take Jesus at his word on this one.

So go. Be sheep. Be the righteous one who feeds the stranger on the street and the hungry in your community. Be the righteous one who fights for housing programs and potable water initiatives and health care and criminal justice reform. Meet needs. Do not allow injustice to stand in your presence. This is more than enough work for a lifetime, but we have to do it.

It's the work that Jesus tells us to do.

Normal

In the months leading up to and the months after the election, we reminded ourselves that this is not normal. This was not politics as usual, this was not governance as usual, this was not the behavior we expected from those seeking office and those in office. It was important, we told ourselves, to remember that this was not how things were supposed to be. We couldn't settle in and let this become our new normal. I remember reading several very earnest thinkpieces about this. A whole bunch of tweets, too. 

It's an open question, I guess, as to whether we actually settled into a new normal or not. Depends on your definition of normal. Normal is what you're used to, maybe, and eventually what you're used to becomes what you expect and what you expect becomes what you think is right. The ever-present veneer of stress that's coated everything from the last year maybe means that low levels of panic are the new normal, but I guess that's up for debate. It's not like it hasn't been a stressful year in my individual life, in its own small way, and it's hard to separate the subjective from the objective, or the shared subjective from the individual subjective. But regardless, we're all worn down, I think, and rightly so. If you're not, you're not paying attention. 

These past few weeks have given us a powerful example of that. If you think our nationwide conversation around sexual assault is telling us something new, you haven't been paying attention. If you think it's an anomaly, you've been living in a different world from everyone else. Those with power have always abused that power, whether it's the physical power to force themselves on someone or the social power to make someone do something they don't want to do and then keep quiet about it. Talking about sexual assault forces us to see vulnerability in myriad forms and confronts us with all the ways in which we have not protected or cared for the vulnerable. 

Advent is a time of repentance, though goodness knows we never think about it like that. It's a time of confronting what we've allowed to become normal, to measure our lives, our communities, our societies against the standards brought to us by the prophets and by Mary and, eventually, by Jesus. We have settled into either presumption or despair, asserting that this is the best we can do or that this is just the way things are, but that is not what the prophets tell us. The prophets scream that this is not normal. This is not the way that things should be. This, our world, our lives, these things are not right. They are not just. They are not love.

And so we must repent. We must turn away from these things that should not be and turn toward the vision of things as they will be. The mighty are sent away empty because they have already received their reward and the vulnerable are cared for and kept safe. The world at war because of pride and conceit will become the world at peace, where weapons are changed in shape from things that end life to things that tend it. The unfixable mess of a world that we have made will be redeemed into the world as it should be, where an end to tears comes not from hardness of heart but from healing. The new normal of the kingdom of heaven will be a beautiful rest compared to the normal built from the turbulent norms we've let accumulate here. 

So this Advent, as 2017 drags us on through its final month, let's seek a new normal. Let's tear down the norms inside of us that we've accepted in our presumption or despair and rebuild our expectations with justice in mind. Let's prepare ourselves for the night when we, with Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and all of the least of these gather around a manger and see a normal that we never could have expected: all the unjust powers of this world brought to their knees by a vulnerable little baby asleep in the hay. 

Oh, Jesus. 

Get here soon. 

A Little Self-Confidence

You know, I can change my own oil. I can rotate my tires, check my fluids, change my wiper blades, fix a blown fuse. I can mend my own clothes, sew on a few buttons, patch a couple of holes, hem my dress pants. I’ve changed the locks by myself before. I make a mean casserole. I’ve re-caulked a shower. I’ve done my own taxes for a decade now. My cookies are generally well-received. I am extraordinarily competent.

I’ve got ribbons galore. Swim team, science fair, various academic competitions. Certificates, trophies, graduation caps, all sorts of knick-knacks showing my achievements. I’ve got handwritten notes and pictures and poems telling me how much I’ve meant to people. Postcards, birthday cards, thank you cards, clippings from newspapers I’ve been in. I’ve got boxes of this kind of stuff, stored away in various places because it’s all important, these physical reminders of organizational and individual kindness, gratitude, recognition. I am quite accomplished and very loved.

I have been all sorts of places. Paris, London, Madrid, Rome, Vienna, Berlin. New York, LA, DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas. I have friends across the globe and around the nation. I’ve performed in front of tens of thousands of people and have been on national television. I’ve been on a panel with world-renowned theologians. Hundreds of people read what I write. In the span of one conversation, I can talk with you about Milton and quantum mechanics and the Social Trinity. I can explain black holes to a third grader and holiness in speech to a toddler. I can set up a portable planetarium system in twelve minutes. I’m good at what I do.

I’m funny, you know? And charming. And gorgeous. And witty. I’m a fricking delight. I have excellent taste in music and popular culture and books and art. I have a beautiful voice and intelligent eyes and hair that a Disney princess would envy. In summary, I’m brilliant, I’m kind, I’m capable, and I’m cute as hell.

Whew.

Narcissism.

Sometimes it’s good for the soul.

Because, see, I live in a world that will tell me something completely different about myself. Or… maybe not completely different, but different enough to matter. I live in a world that will say to me, “Are you sure you want to travel alone?” or “Oh, honey, you shouldn’t be lifting that!” or “Do you know how hard it is to be a pastor?” I live in a world that has, at best, a complicated relationship with my intelligence and my body and my capabilities.

And I’m lucky.

I have plenty of people who affirm my place in ministry, who are excited about my smarts, who know I can do most things I put my mind to and celebrate that, and who think I'm wonderful for a myriad of reasons. When the world gives sound to the awful voices in my head that say I'm unworthy and unlovable and unloved, I have patient friends and family who remind me that those voices lie. No matter how right they sound, they lie. 

But I need to be able to tell myself that they're lying too. In all humility, I know my worth and my capabilities and my limitations. I do, in fact, have a balanced idea of myself, more or less. But I'm very good at listing off my faults and my "growing edges." I could be better at listing off my strengths. Should be pretty easy to do. I've been carrying mountains for decades now. 

So once more, from the top.

I can change my own oil. I can rotate my tires. I can...

For Christ's Sake

On Sunday morning, we had one of the most powerful All Saints Sunday services that I've ever been a part of. The church was full of people gathered to mourn the losses of the past year and to celebrate lives, long or short, lived well and lived deeply. The bell tolled more than seventy times as the list of names was read and the chancel was aflame with candlelight. The congregation was grieving the loss of both its oldest member (just a few weeks short of her one hundred and third birthday) and its youngest (just a few weeks past his and his twin brother's first birthday) and still, there was an abundance of joy. They lived in the place where hope meant deep strength rather than weakness.

It was beautiful.

It was beautiful and I was going to write about it.

I was going to unpack the service and really dig into the comment one of the parishioners made about it. ("It was heavy this morning, ladies. I know you gotta do it, but...")

I was going to let us sit with this lone empty high chair, which hit me like a sucker punch to the gut as I walked into the fellowship hall, because there should be two of them. This child should not have to grow up without his brother, nor this mother live without her son, but the fact of this emptiness remains and that's why we have Sundays like yesterday.

I was going to be deep and encouraging and I intended to share all of the gifts given to me that morning with all of you.

And then what happened in Sutherland Springs... happened.

Happened again.

How is this happening again?

How are we doing this insane dance again? How was once not enough? Playing like thoughts and prayers are sufficient when what does the Lord require of us but to do justice? Where is this famed mercy that we're supposed to be loving when people are bleeding out on the church floor? What kind of God are we walking with if we continue to allow instruments of murder to be easier to obtain than medical care, when we enable death and curtail life? Our hearts are cracked, every single one of us, with deep chasms that scream for fulfillment, and we pretend like bullets are safe things to have within reach.

God.

I swear.

Is one dead kid not enough? Wasn't twenty? How high does the pile of corpses have to be, exactly? I'd love it if you'd give me a number, just, you know, an upper limit for the number of acceptable gun deaths in a given period of time, because apparently we live in some twisted reality where that number is not zero. I mean, parents of toddlers put covers on all the outlets but it's not like we're outlawing electricity. We're just taking precautions because we decided that one kid dead from electric shock was too many. I don't understand how you can even pretend to be on the side of life when you value access to guns more than the safety of the most vulnerable among us.

So, is it a question of legislation? Or is it a question of enforcement? Training? Equipment? Is the real issue here domestic abuse and toxic masculinity and broken community? Radicalization and terrorism? Fear? Guilt? Greed?

You know, I honestly don't care anymore. It doesn't matter to me which fix we try. I just need to know that we can all see that there's a problem here. I need to know that we all know that this is not what normal should look like, that this is not what good or even fine looks like. I need us to acknowledge that this is not the life that we were freed for.

Dear God, what have we done that we continue to have Sundays like yesterday?

Music

I'm not having much luck processing the past week or so, so instead, let me offer you a Spotify playlist: 

Use it in good health. Do some dancing, do some listening, have a good time. 

Vulnerability

I have been told, recently and frequently, that I need to work on my vulnerability because, as a pastor, people are going to want to see that vulnerability from me. People keep saying to me, "They want to know you're human!"

Really.

They want to know I'm human.

What, this shipwreck of a body isn't enough to convince another person that I'm human? You need to see something more than this frayed hair and these frumpy clothes, these wrinkles and these rolls, the dozens of tiny scars and scrapes and cuts on my skin, in order to know that I'm human? I walk around daily in my vulnerability just like you do, but I don't demand proof of emotion before I see you as human.

And while we're at it, why should I have to join the scores of people I know who have outed themselves as survivors of sexual harassment or assault? For many of us, that just comes with the territory of having a female body. But maybe you want some more disaster tourism of the emotions on your timeline so sure, let me tell you about the time that I got catcalled when I was in a vulnerable state. It got to me so much that I had to write about it so that I could get it out of my head. Is that enough for you to accept that there's a problem? Or do you need something "more real", something that would "actually count"? Because I can go digging back into the pain and panic of another story I don't tell for a reason, if the #metoo isn't enough for you to believe me, but don't expect me to like you on the other side of that. I'm not Jesus. You don't get to dig your finger into my side to see if it still hurts and expect graciousness from me.

I just don't understand what you think I am, if I have to start naming my troubles in order for you to see that I'm human. I'm here, aren't I? Is there any person on this planet that hasn't had a share of sorrow? How do you walk through this life, live in a limited body like this, without trouble visiting your doorstep? Who do you think I am, to have avoided being ravaged by the same deep pain that has seeped into the soil of this world and ruined you in some way too? Do you need to see how my mind hurts? My body? My heart? Do I need to unravel every one of my monsters for you before you can say, Me too? Do I have to show you how a comment can send me into the depths of my fears about myself before I earn the right to have you to sit down across the table from me and call me sister?

Listen, I hear all y'all when you say that I need to open up more, but I'm still kinda puzzled. How do you not see the bandages I've wrapped around my wounds? Sadness seeps into my every smile like a beacon-- how did you not notice that? There are days when I've used every ounce of energy I have left to drag myself to the places that I need to be, where commitment is the only thing propping my shoulders up and Someone Else's kindness is the only thing that can find its way out of my mouth, because goodness knows I have nothing left to give. You're telling me that on those days you don't see how I'm taut like a cello string a turn away from snapping? I'm that good at hiding it?

Well. Coulda fooled me.

Guess that makes me kinda human, huh?

Attention

Our attention is a gift.

Our attention is a gift that we give freely to the things that make us happy, the things that make us feel something: sometimes our friends, sometimes our family, sometimes our relationships, sometimes our jobs, usually our pastimes, varied as they are. Sometimes it is a gift that we give without thinking, usually to the internet. Or dogs. Sometimes it is a gift that we give begrudgingly, usually to a lecture. Or a sermon. Sometimes it is a gift that is given conditionally. Actually, I think that often, it is a gift that is given conditionally.

Because we are finite. We are so small and we live such brief lives. We know this, somewhere in our cores, and so we give the gift of our attention when we have a chance of getting something back. We make our attention transactional. I gave you my attention so now you need to give me something. Give me happiness. Give me validation. Entertain me. Stay with me. Praise me. Love me. Keep me. See me. See me. See me. See me because I saw you.

I think transactional attention is dangerous. I know why we do it, why I do it, but knowing why doesn’t make it any safer. Transactional attention, giving our attention to what can give us attention back, means that we will not willingly give our attention to what most needs our attention. We will not give our attention to the things that make us uncomfortable, or hurt us, or require something precious from us with no hope of repayment. We will not give our attention to the things that need us, especially if those things need us to change. Somewhere along the way, our attention became commodified. Our attention became money. And money cares only for money.

Friends, loves, let’s be different.

Let’s give our attention away.

Let’s give our attention away and let’s be generous with it.

Let’s lavish it on those who need it. Let’s search those people out. Let’s renew it over and over and over again so that when a hurricane hits (and another and another) or an earthquake strikes or a famine devastates or outbreak threatens or a gunman murders, we will be there with our attention and our compassion and all the aid that we can give. We are so limited, but we still have so much to give.

And I know it’s difficult. I know that our stores of charity and kindness have been depleted because the energy that we would use to renew those stores is going to just simply keeping our heads above the water of the confusion and disorganization and dysfunction of American society and politics, the realm of those who are supposed to be our public servants, but we can not let this steal our hope. I know that getting out of bed in the morning carrying the weight of all the tragedy that we should not have to bear is a mighty struggle in and of itself. We were not meant to live like this. It is hard.

But I also know that we must. We are called to. Whatever we need to do, whatever steps we need to take to renew ourselves so that we can pour out our attention on others, we need to do this. I understand that our attention will not suture a gunshot wound or feed a starving child or rebuilt the power grid in Puerto Rico, but our attention will reach those who can do those things, or at least those who can provide the money required for those things to happen. I think that we need to lavish our attention because I do actually believe that people really are good at heart and that if we just pay attention, if we just see, we will be compelled to act out of love for our neighbor and we have so many neighbors.

Your attention is a gift.

Give it.

http://www.umcor.org/umcor/resources/news-stories/2017/september/5-things-you-can-do

https://hispanicfederation.org/unidos/

http://www.americasblood.org/where-to-donate.aspx

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-fg-donate-mexico-earthquake-relief-20170920-htmlstory.html

https://www.rescue.org/

13

See, the thing is, it doesn't say that love avoids situations which will aggravate or irritate or try love's patience. It says love is patient.

It doesn't say that love is nice when love can afford to be and caring when it's easy to be and helpful when it wants to be. It says that love is kind.

It doesn't say that love denies the good things about love so as to not sound boastful or that love detaches from the situation so as to not become envious or that love decides to be self-sufficient so as to never be in a position when resentment or irritability will arise.

Love does not endure all things because love has been kept safely away behind bulletproof glass. Love cannot bear all things if love is not around to receive things.

What I mean to say, I guess, is that when I reasoned like a child, I tried to be perfect, so I put myself in situations where perfection was more or less achievable. In speech, in knowledge, in self-sacrifice, in all the things I can work on by myself. I thought, maybe, and maybe still think sometimes, that love was attention and that you got attention by doing these good, achievable things and that in order to be loved, you needed to put yourself in the position to do good things and to remove yourself from situations in which you would not be able to do good things.

What a tiny view of love.

And I don't understand love, not really, not truly, and I don't love, not really, not truly, but I do see it, dimly, sometimes. I do see the outline, the shape of love, enough to know that it is this enormous thing and that it is not a distant thing. Love is present. Love is here. Love endures. Love remains. Love stays.

What a frightening thing we try to be.

Gentle

The kid that I nanny loves being outside. Mostly, he loves the plants. Trees, bushes, grass, flowers, anything I let him get his hands close enough to touch or grab. It was always a beautiful moment when he was smaller to see him reach out and pat a tree leaf or wave his hands through the needles on the pine tree because he was just so fascinated by it. Everything was new and he would spend long minutes just feeling things. It brought out this deep joyful nostalgia in my spirit, watching him experience the world around him. Now, though, he's a little older and a pro at picking up Cheerios and other foods, so taking him outside to experience the world also means making sure he doesn't experience the world by putting it in his mouth.

As soon as he could grab, though, he would reach for leaves and pull them from the trees. Part of it is wanting to hold things and part of it is exulting in his newfound skills, but part of it is that he loves watching leaves fall. His parents will gather leaves and throw them up in the air for him. I've never seen a baby laugh so hard. He wants to do what he sees us do and so he reaches for the leaves, pulling any green thing in reach to himself. Now that the year has marched on, when the wind blows in this first fall for him, I'll take him to the window so that he can watch the leaves tumble from the branches. He stares and smiles.

I know he won't remember me, but I want to teach him kindness anyway. When we're outside and he's reaching for the nearest flower, I let him reach, but when his fist closes tight, I wriggle my fingers into his and open it back up, saying, "Gentle, gentle." I show him how to touch the pedals with his fingers and leave the bloom still living and attached to the stem. We practice. "You have to be gentle with growing things," I say to him.

We have to be gentle with growing things. They are tender and vibrant but they are not always protected or safe. The sun shines and the rain falls and the wind blows and we cannot help those things, but we can, for our part, be gentle. We can touch. We can hold. We can be. But we should not tear. We should not crush. And when the wind and the rain batters and the sun scorches, we can help. No. Not can. As we're able, we must. 

And I have to remember that I am also a growing thing. I must also be gentle. I want to teach myself kindness too. Brush up against the petals of my heart and allow them to breathe. 

Apologetic

I am apologetically myself.

This means that I will apologize in advance before walking into a museum with you, because I know that I will run away from you and go look at the things that I want to look at and spend entirely too much time reading signs and then excitedly explaining them to you.

This means that I will talk at length about my opinions on quantum gravity or string theory or predestination and at some point in the middle apologize for talking so much before taking a breath and continuing on to my next point.

This means that I will get preachy about the Incarnation and at the end, blush and apologize for being so loud, it's just that I have some feelings on the matter.

It means that I will stare off into space for minutes at a time while I think about something, then snap out of it and look around guiltily, hoping no one saw me mentally be in the place I want to be.

I find that I come at the world confirmed in the knowledge that I am a lot, and I'm sorry about that. I know that I have thoughts and feelings and I understand that they should be kept in my brain for the most part because they are overwhelming when they come out of me. When I care about something, it shows, maybe more than prudence would deem appropriate. I hear this when people give me that confusing compliment, "I love your energy." I'm going to make a joke about coffee to get me out of the moment, but I'm also going to wonder what expectations I upended to make you say that. Because, see, I know that I am a bundle of enthusiasm, and that's probably what you think you're complimenting, but I also know that you're complimenting the relatively constrained version of that enthusiasm that you saw behind the pulpit. Like saying that the Hoover Dam is the most impressive part of the Colorado River.

I also know that this comes across as self-deprecation, but I don't know how to tell anyone that it's not that. I apologize not because I have any intention of changing myself or, indeed, because I think that I should change myself, but because I, maybe uncharitably, assume that the fullness of myself is not what anyone wants to see. I am an immensely prideful person. I have an inordinately high opinion of myself. I am too good to be shared with the general public. And since I haven't mastered the line between confidence and arrogance, I settle on apologies. Sorry I'm so enthusiastic about existence. Sorry I'm so excited about the things I know and the things I want to know. Sorry I'm capable. Sorry I care.

At the end of the first class every semester with a professor who hasn't had me before, I go up and apologize in advance for asking so many questions and talking so much in class. I had an English professor in undergrad who stopped me in the middle of class and said, "This shouldn't be a conversation between me and you" and made me let someone else talk. Ever since that moment, I've tried to be aware of how much class time I'm occupying, but I don't always succeed. I tell my professors that I'll do my best, but they'll probably need to actively tell me to stop talking at some point. Usually, this is met with a smile and an affirmation that questions are good. My ethics professor, though, did not have the usual response. She said, "Have you read Alice In Wonderland? You remember the mouse? I'll let you know if we need to put you in a teacup."

My apologies have a root in a need for reassurance, I think; in a need to be told that I'm not wrong about myself, maybe. I hate being wrong. Or maybe it is a need for acceptance, a need for a teacup. "I know you're a lot. That's okay. We can handle that. The things that you worry are flaws, the things you think you need to struggle to tame on your own, they're not as insurmountable as you want them to be. You're just as special as everyone else is. And you're not alone in this."

A friend of mine recently told me, with a hint of sarcasm and at the end of a long conversation about my doubts and my fears and my tinny attempts at realism in the face of them, "Sorry the universe doesn't confirm your poor opinion of yourself."

Well. I mean. When you say it like that...

Sorry.

Preacher Voice

I've been thinking about how spent the better part of two hours of a recent Sunday morning sulking. See, I had been priding myself on how calm I was behind the pulpit, and how well I was reading things, and how natural this all felt, and how with my calmed heart came a slower pace of speech. I really thought that I had begun to luxuriate in the words I was saying, letting them take their time as they travelled from my eyes to my brain to my vocal cords and out of my mouth, the sound waves propagating away from me with appropriate weight and purpose. I was paying attention and I was sure that my speaking speed was appropriate, for what may be the first time in my life. I allowed myself to think that I'd finally tricked my brain into a sense of peace and out of that peace arose a clear voice annunciating well-timed words.

Then the end of the service came, and the pastor and I shook hands with everyone who came past us, and a lady walked up to me, and reluctantly accepted my handshake, and, after she took her hand back, said, "Now, I know you're new."

My pulse shot up but my smile stayed on, still genuine and cheerful.

"But you really have got to--"

My face froze.

"...slow down when you're speaking into the microphone."

For a tenth of a second, I'm seven again, crying into my mother's pants leg while she talks on the phone with my first grade teacher. I had been too loud during center time and the whole group at my center had lost a strip, this teacher's elementary school way of monitoring behavior, and the fact that I was now a disappointment to my teacher and my parents was too much for my little heart to bear. I couldn't stop my tears enough to explain what had happened and so my mother had to call the school, thinking I'd been bullied or had an accident or who knows what else, and, well, come to find that the only problem is that her daughter just can't handle the consequences of her actions. I had thought I was so good. It was devastating.

Then, as the remainder of the second ticks by, I'm twenty-six, reading the feedback form where a teacher calls me hateful. I'm eleven, looking at the one problem I missed on a hundred-question multiplication test. I'm eight, looking at my barely-passing score on the writing test. I'm twenty-five, listening to a friend tell me all the signs I missed. I'm fourteen and my drama teacher is telling me I've got to slow down. I'm twenty and my boss at the planetarium is telling me I've got to slow down. I'm twenty-two and the worship leader is telling me that I've got to slow down. I'm twenty-three and a teacher is telling me that I've got to slow down. I'm twenty-eight and my dad is telling me that I should slow down. I'm twenty-four and I'm trying not to cry because my grandmother never told me to slow down and now she's gone and she spent the last decade of her life without understanding a single word I said because I was too comfortable with my stupid racecar of a brain to think that someone else might need me to be different.

In the present, the lady has more to say. "If you listen to the pacing--" (and here she gestures at the pastor beside me) "you'll hear that there's a speed you've got to use. And like I said, I know you're new, but you've just got to think about these things."

"Of course," I say. Some kind of accent comes out of my mouth. "I know I talk a mile a minute, so it's always good to be reminded that I still need to work on that. You're absolutely right. Growth opportunity."

"Especially when you talk into the microphone," she continues. "It echoes."

"Yes ma'am, I should have noticed that. I'll keep that in mind."

"Well."

There's someone else in line after her but I don't really have anything to say to them, because now I'm the shy girl who doesn't want to talk because of her lisp and the shy girl who doesn't want to sit with anyone because she won't know what to say and the shy girl who knows everyone will just mispronounce her name and so it's better to just not be noticed at all. I smile and shake hands with the next person, and make quiet polite conversation with the next, and when the whole line is gone, I go and sit in the choir loft and stare up and to the left, up and to the left, urging the saline to stay in my eyes and off of my cheeks.

Of course, five minutes to myself and I'm on an even keel again. I'm defensive, but I've committed myself to my planetarium voice, which I know is as close to slow as I'll ever get. I train my breathing, I relax my shoulder blades, I fix my posture. I'm fine. After the second service, I only hear compliments about how well I read the liturgy. At coffee hour, someone asks me if I want to be a pastor and insists that I'll be fantastic at it, despite having only met me twice. I'm full of an aggressive, vindictive pride. 

I hate that. I hate that I have an Achilles' heel and I hate that hitting it brings out the worst parts of me. I hate that how I deal with it is anger and self-reassertion. I hate how I can feel the stone creeping back into the muscle of my heart. I hate how I can't find any generosity in my heart for this woman who wanted to make my ministry better with her intentional, direct, and accurate comment. I hate how whiny and pathetic and real this pain is. I hate how it took me out of worship. I hate that I gave it that power. 

I know my value. I know that I shouldn't get hung up on this. I know that I will forever be working on this. I know I'll get better. God willing, I'll look back at this in ten years and smile and shake my head. It'll be fine. I shouldn't let it bother me. 

Well, woulda, shoulda, coulda. 

Witness

Most of what I write is glorified hand-wringing. I can admit it. I know it won’t accomplish anything and I still do it. It’s a habit now, I guess.

Thing is, I don’t have much in my own life to wring my hands over. A new school year has just started and it promises to be pleasantly full. I’m excited for all of my classes, excited that I get to be a TA, excited for the church where I’m interning, excited that I get to keep working in the library, excited that I get to continue to get paid to hang out with an adorably chubby infant three days a week, and excited that I can still pop into a planetarium or an observatory from time to time. The two big weights on my heart from last year are gone and the indentions they left are filling back out. Old complaints have been answered in wonderfully affirming ways. I have stretches of time where I sit trying to remember what I forgot to worry about before realizing that most of those worries are gone. 

My Hebrew Bible professor last year taught us that the Bible has writings that are both witness and counterwitness, stories that clearly show us a God of love and stories that challenge our understanding of God. Life is full of moments of witness and counterwitness, full of times that feel like blessings and times that feel like abandonment. I spend so much time empathizing with the counter that I don’t think I’ve realized how lovely it is to live in the witness. 

Of course, we live in a world in which all things were created good and now demonstrably contains things that are not and so we all live in the counterwitness, whether we see it or not. We participate in the counterwitness, whether we see it or not. And I think we have to see it. I think we have to remember it. I think in this time of connection, those of us with plenty must witness those in need and not turn away, no matter how great the need or how real and seemingly indomitable the distance between us. 

There is a famine in Somalia. Witness. 

There is a cholera outbreak in Yemen. Witness. 

We Americans are fighting the longest war in our history. Witness. 

Storms worsen as the climate changes. Witness. 

Still more important than our witness, however, is our action and in most instances, the time for action has already come, though I pray it has not gone. The time to stand against white supremacy is always. The time to stand against racism in all forms is always. The time to speak out against the laws and the systems the entrench these problems is always. The time to change how we consume our resources could have been decades ago, but it is also now. The time to change how we use our military might has probably been from the founding of the country, but it is also now. 

The time to love our neighbors is always and is now. The time to embody that love is always and is now. The time to encourage another to that love is always and is now. 

I’ll be looking for the ways I can act. I hope you’ll join me. 

Ocean

I love the ocean.

It is frightening.

I love the indifference of the ocean, how my individual existence does not matter at all to it. The ocean has no expectations of me, but the ocean accepts me all the same, with my slow feet carrying a body both excited and uncertain into the waves to be buffeted and tossed and encompassed and supported. I love jumping the waves on the shoreline, splashing in the thin coating of salt water on the sand, and I love springing up to ride the waves farther out from the beach chairs and tent, the ones whose gentle height catch me and hold me weightless for a split second. I even love falling from those, arms outstretched and toes searching for a floor they may not find.

We have an agreement, the ocean and I. I get to stare at it, mesmerized by the never-ending waves, new and old at the same time, and it continues its existence, same as it ever was. It is easy to think that I could disappear in the ocean, in its vastness, and it would carry me and hold me, like a tiny ship transported by the waves, guided by the currents. Because what can I do to the ocean? How can I, whose eyesight is exhausted upon a millionth of its expanse, have any impact at all on this great thing?

Of course, we are this great thing as well, this enormous careless biological mess, and we have underestimated our power for harm because we have overestimated the durability of nature. It is an understandable mistake to make, in the face of such an awesome thing, that it would endure while we pass on in our limited days. And maybe we can’t destroy the ocean, can’t remove its waters from the face of the earth. We certainly cannot remove its being. But we forget that we are not the only life that the ocean carries and shelters. The creatures that teem in the seas, those we have the horrifying ability to destroy.

The ocean owes me nothing. The ocean owes us nothing. The ocean rises up when the storms come and the earth quakes and the ocean devastates us. There is a fallen cruelty in our tragedies, a deep pain that demands to be felt. The same water that brings serenity when it minds its bounds brings chaos when it oversteps them. The ocean overwhelms us. Even with all our knowledge, the ocean contains depths that we have not explored. Even with all our power, we have yet to change the tides. It’s funny. When faced with greatness, I talk about our limitations in terms of science and technology, as if they alone held the heights for which we reach.

I love the ocean. I love the happenstance of beauty woven into every crest and trough. I love being reminded of my fragility, of my dependency. When I am too important, when the weight of carrying me is more than I want to bear, the ocean reminds me of what is true. I can leave my running thoughts to hum to themselves on the beach while I count the waves. I cannot control the ocean. The ocean is frightening. And I love it. 

Charlottesville

For this I will lament and wail; 
I will go barefoot and naked; 
I will make lamentation...
For her wound is incurable.
It has come to Judah; 
it has reached to the gate of my people, 
to Jerusalem. 

We told ourselves a story. We told ourselves that there are different kinds of people out there, and that some of those people are more human than others, more deserving of freedom, more deserving of property, more deserving of rights and privileges, more deserving of rest and happiness. More deserving of food. Of shelter. Of care. Of love. We told ourselves that story so that we could perpetuate slavery, so that we could benefit from the work of others without having to treat their work and their bodies as we believed our work and our bodies should be treated. We told ourselves this story so that we could dismiss those with a different heritage from us. This story sunk down deep into us, into ourselves, and we fought to defend it and the systems built on it because we could not imagine a world without this story. We could not imagine a world in which all humans were truly created equal, in which all were truly human. We did not want to love others as we loved ourselves because to love requires sacrifice. To love requires uncertainty. To love others as we love ourselves means discomfort and labor. And so we let this great wound fester so that we could maintain other comforts and we feign surprise when it erupts, wracking our body with convulsions and fever. 

Alas for those who devise wickedness 
and evil deeds on their beds! 
When the morning dawns, they perform it,
because it is in their power.
They covet fields, and seize them; 
houses, and take them away; 
they oppress householder and house, 
people and their inheritance. 

"Do not preach"--thus they preach--
"one should not preach of such things; 
disgrace will not overtake us."
Should this be said, O house of Jacob?
Is the LORD's patience exhausted?
Are these his doings? 
Do not my words do good 
to one who walks uprightly?
But you rise up against my people as an enemy;
you strip the robe from the peaceful,
from those who pass by trustingly
with no thought of war.

Arise and go; 
for this is no place to rest.

I would leave. I know I would if I could. I would take with me those who do not deserve the hate that is thrown at them, the danger to their lives, and we would go somewhere else, start something new, and leave these people to their own pain. I would deprive the world of communion with me, or at least take the offer, the promise of brotherhood and sisterhood from those who march with torches and do not understand the pain they cause, the pain they perpetuate, the pain they seek to enliven with their fear and their hatred. I would run from them, if I could, these people who forgot the dream that we the people dreamed, who forgot that we endeavored to form a more perfect union and instead desire to rip that union apart, more committed to the mistaken comforts of a misunderstood past than the mutual care, labors, and, yes, dangers of continuing to seek that better union. 

In the days to come
the mountain of the LORD's house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised up above the hills.
Peoples shall stream to it,
and many nations shall come...
He shall judge between many peoples,
and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under 
their own fig tress,
and no one shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.

The LORD is not just my God, my local deity whose powers can only reach my problems, whose concern only lies with my joy and sadness. The people of God learned as the centuries tripped onward that all peoples would come before the LORD and that when that happened, we would not stay as we are. Our instruments of hate would be turned into instruments of life. The death that our fear seeks would be out of our power and the life that our hearts yearn for will be given to us, to all of us, to every single person brought to the mountain of the LORD. No one will be able to rob another of the good inheritance promised to us. No one will be able to take our peace. When the LORD speaks, the LORD promises these things. When the LORD speaks, the LORD shows us the world as it was meant to be. There was never meant to be this fear, this hate, this death that we all hurtle towards, that we make, that we bring to each other. 

Hear what the LORD says: 
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the LORD,
and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the LORD has a controversy with his people,
and he will contend with Israel. 

"Oh my people, what have I done to you?
In what have I wearied you? Answer me! 
For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, 
and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses, 
Aaron, and Miriam.
...that you may know the saving acts of the LORD."

The mighty things of this Earth witness what we do. Our action and our inaction do not go unnoticed. But what can I do when my heart aches so? What can I do in the face of mobs of hate? Will words of condemnation reach them? Will they hear when a voice from on high tells them that the redemption that was won for them was won for all, that with every shout they erect barriers and create divisions that were never meant to be? How can I show them that to destroy the separation they make costs Something very dear, a price paid in our past for the renewing of our future? Do they know that in their fear they are driving away the peace we all long for? How do I make them see through their pain the pain they bring every one of us?  

"With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before God on high? 
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Nervousness

I don't like being nervous. The slight nausea, the elevated heart rate, the forced yoga breaths I have to take because my lungs figure if my heart and guts are going to cut up and act the fool, they may as well too-- I hate all of it. And the headaches! I did not know that I clenched my jaw when I'm anxious, but man. It's a miracle my teeth haven't shattered under the stress. I despise how visibly tense I am too, everything reduced to quick bursts of movement before returning to a knot of clenched muscles, all the nervous energy channeled to one toe that thumps like a rabbit's foot until I notice and make it be still with thought and a stare. It is impossible to have any kind of poise or easy grace when every inch of you is two seconds away from the "flight" option of "fight or".

Thing is, I don't get all that nervous all that often. I am typically in situations where I'm either in charge or know how I fit into the social order around me and am aware of how to petition the people with authority, so I feel like I'm in charge in some way. That's why I like systems. I can learn them and participate in them and question them and endeavor to change them as needed. Where there is order, there is the potential for concrete and measurable change. It's a product of my time and place that make systems a soothing comfort for me, I think. It takes the pervasive empiricism of the Enlightenment combined with an entrenched trust in the mobility of the American dream to find comforting control instead of stifling helplessness in paperwork and meetings.

Now, I overthink things, that is true, and that's probably a symptom of nervousness, but that's just in my head. I can control that. I may have to run like six scenarios in my brain before I settle on a course of action and I may do that for things as simple as going to the grocery store, but I like to think of that as a factor of preparedness, especially when I'm in new situations, and let's be honest, I've been in new situations a lot in the past two years. Soothing mundanity has been hard to come by. A daily routine is hard to come by. And this is fine, or at least manageable, as long as I create the semblance of routine by walking the familiar decision-making paths in my mind again and again, day after day. And keep my calendar updated.

I never thought of myself as a particularly controlling person, because I can roll with the punches, as long as the punches are specific and small in scale and I can accommodate them into the larger plan. Let me say it this way: there has yet to be a punch that I couldn't eventually roll with. If your larger plan is flexible enough, or squishy, or buoyant, you can absorb a lot of blows. I can even change the larger plan as needed, though that's a bit of upheaval that I don't relish. Still, there's a process for that and we get through it. And I don't mind spontaneity. I have occasionally been spontaneous. It's just not my default position. Which, now that I say that, sounds pretty controlling after all.

And with that realization, the nervousness bubbles up again because now I've found something that I can't be and what if that's something you want me to be? It's not that it's a non-negotiable, it's just that my default state, the place that inertia is always going to draw me back to, is structure and organization and plans. Because if I don't have those, see, then I have to trust you. I have to lean on you. I have to allow myself to be led into a place I have no way of knowing I actually want to go. Trust is just a way of letting your structures be mine without being told just exactly what those structures are or if there are any structures at all. My independence rankles at that, never minding that my independence is a structure that I should have started questioning a long time ago, but I'm starting to think that I built my sense of safety on my independence and so trust is unsafe. A lack of control is unsafe. I do not want to be unsafe. Please don't make me move away from what I know to be safe.

See, I'm vulnerable. I put all of my vulnerabilities right here, in ones and zeroes rendered into letters for your eyes to see, miles away from me. I separate my vulnerabilities from my body and in that way from myself and I leave them around for people to peruse. Cut my chest wide open.

I don't often feel nervous. I don't often feel nervous about what I write. By and large, I can avoid situations that produce anxiety because there aren't all that many of them and they're mostly clustered together in a subset of human interactions that I can put in a box and leave ignored in a corner of the closet, to be taken out and examined well in advance of any situation that might cause them to breathe in deep and become a problem for me. But maybe they shouldn't be. Maybe they shouldn't be kept in the box, I mean. Maybe I should practice not being in control of things. Maybe I should figure out how to be nervous.

Maybe a little nervousness is worth it, all things considered.

God's People

(Editor's note: I feel like a giant tool bag uploading all of this.) 

I preached a sermon a couple of weeks ago at my church back home. You may have heard me stressing over it. For the people who couldn't be there, but wanted to hear it anyway, I've uploaded a recording of it (thanks, Daddy!) and I've included the text of the sermon that I preached off of below, because video content is overrated. 

Hebrew Bible reading: Isaiah 43:1-7
Epistle reading: 1 Peter 2:9-10, 3:8-16

I love the verses from 1 Peter that we just read. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.”

I love the images in these verses, and the promises and the challenges. It’s the last verse that always gets me thinking, though. “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.” 

Who are God’s people? What does that even mean? 

The Bible actually spends a lot of time trying to answer this question, from the earliest books to the most recent letters and that’s what I want to dig into today. But it’s a big question so let’s back down to something more approachable. 

Who are your people? 

Take a few seconds and think about that question. Who are your people? 

Now turn to someone beside you and talk about that question. Who are your people? What does that question mean? What’s your answer to that question? 

If I were answering these questions, I’d have to say that my people are my family. They’re the first ones to name me and claim me and have been there for me throughout my life. But they’re not my only people-- I have lifelong friends who are always a message or a phone call away no matter where in the world we are, and they’re my people too. As I’ve journeyed through life, I’ve found more and more people to be my people, friends and coworkers and colleagues who are excited about the same things I’m excited about and feel similar calls on our hearts and lives. 

And of course, y’all are my people. St. Luke’s is the place where I was baptized, the community of love and forgiveness that helped raise me to be a faithful disciple who walks in the way that leads to life. This is a place that has been a waterfall of God’s prevenient grace in my life. Because of my time here, I’ve always known in my being that the church is a place I can belong, a place where I am loved and valued. That is one of the most beautiful gifts we can give each other and I know not everybody has that experience with church, so thank you for that, even if I don’t know you yet.

So. We know that people are important to us today. This exercise of naming our people can be helpful for us in understanding ourselves. As important as that is for us, though, it was even more so in the world of the New Testament, the first century Roman Empire, but in a different way. 

See, in first century Rome, who your people were defined you. How you were related to other people defined who you were. It’s called a dyadic personality. Who your people are is what sets others’ expectations for you. You did what you family always did, or what your patron told you to do (or, if you were a patron, what the people dependent on you needed you to do [or, if you were a slave, what your master told you to do {or, if you were a wife, what your husband told you to do}]). You defined yourself by your place in relation to other people. You had to know your people, or you didn’t know yourself. 

Take a second and put yourself in the shoes of a first-century Christian. You’ve heard about Jesus of Nazareth from other Christians, you’ve come to believe that he was the Son of God, and you’ve allowed that belief to transform every part of your life. Maybe you’ve had to leave your family and your community because they didn’t receive the Gospel the same way you did. Because of Jesus, you’ve lost the very thing that defined you. You don’t know who your people are anymore. 

This is why we find the New Testament letter writers calling their fellow Christians “brother” and “sister” left and right. For them, the Church was their people. This radically redefined how they understood themselves. 

Now, the original hearers of the letter of 1 Peter would have known all of this intuitively. They would have understood how being a Christian redefined them. So when the writer calls them “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,” they would have received comfort from that. These people, many of whom were already in poverty and had suffered a second blow by losing a core part of their identity, were being given a new identity. And not only that, they were called royal. Holy. God’s own. Words reserved for people like the emperor. 

Many of them also would have heard in these verses echoes of the Exodus story, because, as you know, the early followers of Jesus and most of members of the early church were Jewish. They would have known the story that began with God’s promise to make a great nation of Abraham, carried forward through Isaac, then Jacob and his twelve sons, who went to Egypt in a time of famine. They would have remembered the stories of how the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt and how God raised up Moses to demand their freedom from Pharaoh. After the Passover, after crossing the Red Sea, after songs of celebration led by Miriam, after water from a rock and manna from the sky, Moses stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, about to receive the Torah from God, and called those Israelites wandering in the desert God’s “treasured possession out of all peoples” and “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation,” those that God had borne “on eagles’ wings and brought to” God’s self. (Exodus 19) By using the words he uses, the writer of 1 Peter reminds his listeners of these sacred stories. He invites Christians into this larger story of who God’s people are.  

So that seems to answer the question. Who are God’s people? The ones God called out of Egypt, redeemed from slavery, and brought to God’s self. Biblical writers would have identified God’s people as Israel. 

Except… the story is a little more complicated than that. 

In the book of Joshua, almost soon as Israel emerges from the wilderness and enters the land of Canaan, we get the story of Rahab, the woman of Jericho who helped the Israelite spies. She and her household are spared from the destruction of Jericho, and we are told “her family has lived in Israel ever since.” (Josh 6:25) So apparently the people of God can include Canaanites, not just Israelites. 

We also find the story of Ruth, set in the time of the Judges, before Israel had a king. Ruth is the Moabite, not Israelite, daughter-in-law of Naomi. Naomi left Israel for Moab when there was a famine and Ruth followed her home when she returned, but Ruth is only related to the people of Israel by marriage. Yet at the end of the book, we find that she's in the genealogy of David, the king whose rule defined the glory days of Israel. It seems that Moabites can not only be among the people of God, but even hold a place of honor in Israel.

Or what about Hagar? Long before Israel came to Canaan, before there even was an Israel to come to Canaan, Hagar was a slave belonging to Sarah, Abraham's wife. When she flees because of Sarah's mistreatment, God appears to Hagar, the first woman in the bible to receive a theophany. God promises to make a great nation out of her son, Ishmael. If we count Abraham and Sarah’s descendants among God’s people because God appeared to him and made him a promise, maybe we should be counting the descendants of Abraham and Hagar, too. 

It seems like maybe the definition of the people of God could be wider than we thought (though some other books of the bible, like Ezra-Nehemiah, would disagree with that). But even if we let some of these outsiders in, the important thing is that they follow the Torah, the teaching of Moses. That’s what sets the people of God apart from anyone else in the Ancient Near East. It’s their covenant with God, the agreement between God and Israel that determines what it means for Israel to be God’s people. 

The prophets certainly had some thoughts about that. During the time of each of the prophets, people in the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah were disobeying the Torah, usually by oppressing the poor and aligning themselves with foreign powers. The condemnation from the prophets could be harsh. Take Hosea for example. Hosea, married to a faithless wife, named two of the children Lo-ruh-a-mah and Lo-ammi, names meaning Not Pitied and Not My People. He did this to show the elite of Israel how God felt about their abandonment of God's ways. When they have turned back to God, it is then that God says, “I will have pity on Lo-ruh-a-mah (not pitied), and I will say to Lo-ammi (not my people), ‘You are my people’; and Lo-ammi will say, ‘You are my God.’” (Hos. 3:23) The writer of 1 Peter has Hosea in mind as he writes.

The Hebrew Bible takes so seriously the covenant between God and God’s people that it understands world events as judgement for not honoring that covenant and breaking God’s Torah. The most powerful example of this is the way in which the Hebrew Bible talks about the Babylonian Exile. It impacts many of the prophets and changes the course of their history. The prophet Ezekiel, for example, sees a vision of God leaving the Holy of Holies of the Temple in Jerusalem before the Babylonians strike, because of Israel’s faithlessness. The entire book of Jeremiah responds to the trauma of this event. Psalm 137 says “By the rivers of Babylon we hung up our lyres… for how can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” God’s people were devastated by this loss of their home and their sanctuary. 

So it is after the fighting is over and the destruction has come and many of the people of Israel are living in exile in Babylon that we find these words from our passage from Isaiah. 

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; …

“When you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, …

“For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. …

“Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you…

“I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you…

“…bring my songs from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” 

Again, God calls to God’s people. God calls to the ones who have broken God’s will and not obeyed God’s law, who have disregarded their sacred covenant with God and who now, they believe, are suffering for that disobedience. God sees their brokenness, just as God heard them in Egypt and God calls them by name. You are mine. I will gather you to me, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made. 

Do not be afraid. I have redeemed you, God says. My people, in your exile, in your suffering, remember that I have called you by name and you are precious in my sight. 

Now, these words that Isaiah speaks to the Exiles, we tend to read as being about us. Same with the words from Hosea. The New Testament writers did that too. Why? Because a world-changing event had happened in the time between the prophets and the New Testament letters.

Jesus.

When the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, how we understood the universe changed. How we understood God changed. Jesus, by his life, death, and resurrection, tore the curtain in the Temple in two and broke apart the separation sin had placed between us and God. Jesus’ death and resurrection opens the gates for the justifying grace that redeems even us, even me, and puts us back in right relationship with God. He frees us from our slavery to sin and death. For the people who lived closest in time to Jesus, he was new light by which everything else was seen. The whole of scripture was opened up in a new way. 

Jesus is the reason why the writer of 1 Peter is able to say to us Christians, we who are the Gentiles of the Church, that we were once no people but now we are God’s people. He’s the reason why the writer of Ephesians says that in Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek and why the writer of Colossians can say that all things are held together. Through Jesus, Paul writes in Romans, we are given a spirit of adoption, made co-heirs with Christ who is the end, the fulfillment, of the Torah. Again, the circle of the people of God has been drawn wider. We who were no people are now God’s people, through God’s redeeming act in Christ. Now these stories we’ve been talking about, these stories of God and God’s people, they’re our stories through Jesus. 

It is in our redemption that 1 Peter tells us that we were called and claimed “so that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

How do we even begin to do that? 

Well, there’s a straightforward answer here. We proclaim. We aren’t shy to talk about Jesus, to tell the stories of God and God’s people, including our own stories from our lives of faith. We all have our own darkness that God has called us out of. That is what God does for us through grace. Our job is to proclaim the light we now live in. As 1 Peter says, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” Let that little light of yours shine some. 

The writer of 1 Peter has other work for us too, work that we find throughout the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels and letters of the New Testament. He tells us in 3:8 to have “love for one another.” If you read the sections in between the verses we read today, you’ll find instructions for how to live in Roman society but you’ll also find that that love is radical. 1 Peter tells its hearers to honor, to love one another without a regard for the different statuses the world placed upon them. The expectations of the world do not tell the Church how to love. Those hierarchical person-to-person relationships that were so important to self-understanding in the Roman world, the writer upends them, telling both husband and wife to have regard for each other. He tells us to “live as free people”, people who “have a unity of spirit… sympathy… a tender heart, and a humble mind”. What matters is our life and hope in Christ, the grace transforming us into loving people.

And love we should. The circle of God’s people only grows as wide as we allow it to. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is also the God who saw and cared for Hagar, Rahab, and Ruth. This God is the one who calls to the slave and the exile and knows their name. This same God calls to us in our exile and our bondage. God knows our names and cares so deeply for us that God couldn’t stay away and instead took the form of a servant so that all may be free. The beautiful thing about our Bible is that it preserves these stories of the ever-growing people of God, the story of God’s plan that has length and width and depth enough to encompass all of us, every single person who has been unexpectedly but undeniably called and claimed by God through Christ. It also preserves the stories of all of the bumps along the way. May we learn, as God’s people throughout history have learned, that God’s ways are bigger, bolder, more loving and more marvelous than anything we can imagine. 

May we hear the Word speaking to us so that God’s love and grace may abound in the world. 

Amen.