[written for the Kansas City Interfaith Pride service 2014-06-18]
[potentially triggering themes include: suicide, drug use, sex work, murder, and various kinds of shame-fueled self-destructive behavior. And if any of that is too heavy for you to read about right now, know that this is for you, too. Especially for you.]
A Litany of Binding and Loosing
This is for you.
This is for you when you looked in the mirror with loathing.
This is for you when people in power sensed your pain
and used it to hurt you.
This is for you when you hid your true name in the back of your closet
with your shoes and your dresses and your powder compact.
This is for you still living
behind your picket fence.
This is for you bleaching your skin and straightening your hair.
This is for the bone-deep blush
when strangers, colleagues, family, lovers
cut you with humiliating slurs.
This is for you whispering euphemisms,
lighting a match and searching
in the dark
for family.
Many: we bind up your shame and let loose your pride.
This is for you when you damaged your lungs, binding with ACE bandages.
This is for you barebacking and bug-chasing.
This is for you refusing to be tested for HIV.
This is for you downing uppers and booze
This is for you when you knew
that only johns would want to touch you
This is for you when you knew
that you'd never marry.
This is for you with a knife in your hand
with a gun to your temple
at the end of a bridge
This is for you every time you make choices
Like you have no future.
And this is for our siblings
who didn't make it this far.
Many: we bind up your despair and let loose your hope.
This is for you, denied hormones
by insurance companies, doctors, therapists
every institution who knew you only as an illness.
This is for you, unemployed because you came to interviews dressed up as yourself,
and you eliding for your co-workers the genders of your spouse,
and you fired because of who you married.
This is for you homeless
because you're denied housing,
denied work,
denied hope.
This is for you, named unfit to parent.
This is for you imprisoned for defending yourself.
This is for you, Sylvia, and for you, Marsha,
rejected by the movement you incited.
This is for you, my trans sisters, especially for you
for every time the rest of us refused to name you
and sold your rights in exchange for
broken promises that we'd be given ours.
And this is for you when you're dead
and your murderers walk free.
Many: we bind up all forms of oppression and let loose your justice.
And this is for you, too,
beribboned in rainbows and dancing your truth
radiant on your wedding day,
glittering at Missie B's,
splendidly strong and courageously meek.
This is for you working for a pittance at nonprofits
giving voice to lost stories
and lifting strangers into
your heart's tomorrow.
Many: we bind up your apathy and indifference, your hurt and your exhaustion, your painful past and uncertain future, and we let you loose to heal all that is broken in your heart, in your community, in our world.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
[midrash] temptations in the wilderness
[let's just all agree to headcanon Jesus as a trans girl, ok? I'll go first.]
[content notes: intentional food deprivation, suicidal ideation]
[inspired by bestie's version of the temptation story and her reflections on Jesus' baptism]
Temptations in the Wilderness
Matthew 3:13-4:11
Her cousin greets her with a grin and a peace sign, like he has a thousand times before.
Her stomach flutters -- less from the presence of so many bodies as from the knowledge of what's inside them -- the oppressive intent of repentance, the turning, turning, that's tugging her too. The crowd's fervor tugs at her, pulls her where she wouldn't go, or wouldn't go yet.
A press of hands all around, John's smiling refusal to baptize her, an argument they've had many times before, half-joking, about worthiness and precedence, elder cousin and younger kinswoman, greater and lesser, first and last, and then Jesus kneels and John kneel, and John dunks Jesus like they're kids again, rough hands on her shoulders.
Dripping wet, she emerges from the river, and the skies open.
This is what God looks like like, a reflection of her own soul, diving from heaven into the waters, fearless, landing on her sodden robes and becoming enveloping light, saying, "You are my beloved child. I'm so pleased with you."
belovedchild
She wades out of the water, teases John, says something under her breath about needing some time alone, and John nods and tells her, "Go into the wilderness. It's what I do," but God is already pulling her there, no longer visible or audible, but a tug on her heart like the strongest winds. Like riptide.
She spends a lot of time in prayer.
Some things she can see clearly -- a long, narrow road. Many secrets. Friends, close as her breath, and betrayal. And God's kingdom, all around --in the stillness of the wilderness, she remembers children, and lepers, widows, and sinners, each of them in their way perfectly reflecting God. And the grains of the earth and the birds of the air, and all the things that are given for human consumption, and all the work that people do, building and crafting and weaving, and it is all an image of God.
Then she'll walk for awhile, pulled by that invisible wind, and she sees nothing at all.
She hears John's voice, calling for repentance, and she thinks yes, yes, he's right. And remembers the fate of prophets, and would stop to weep, but she's tugged further along.
belovedchild
Pieces of it are already in her hand -- she can feel herself reaching out, touching stopped ears and broken limbs, can feel the place whence the power comes -- she could do it now, she's ready now, and her muscles are tense with anticipation.
She could stop storms in their paths, multiply bread and feed every starving child. She could do it now.
But it's not time yet, says the wind, blowing stronger, whipping her robes around her until they're the enemy, preventing her from taking another step.
And yet she stumbles further.
She thinks perhaps she knows how it should end, but all she can see there is darkness, and death, and she is nowhere near sure she's strong enough.
belovedchild
She sits and thinks about death and Rome and desire, and all the good she would do if there were only time, and if only people listened.
Whenever she's visited John, since she was child fresh out of Egypt until this last time at the Jordan, John has explained that people won't listen. John, with a voice that could fell trees and ignite nations. People won't listen, and so she will fail.
She walks further into the wilderness, away from failure and from success, into the heart of the mystery that whispers belovedchild and gives her glimpses of a world where grown-ups sit at God's feet like children, learning, playing.
The shape of her body is strange and growing stranger. Muscled, weak, tired, restless. She walks, she doesn't know how far, and the wind blows up around her. At night she lies down, but doesn't sleep. She listens, and the desert tells nothing.
She thinks maybe she can recognize this body as her own, for the first time.
God saw her in the Jordan, and God was pleased with what God saw.
If she saw God doveshaped and lovely, maybe God, too, saw her as she really is.
Her feet hurt, and then become calloused, and then she loses them altogether, has no sense of them belonging to her. Then her hands, and her voice, and her beard and her hair and her eyes and her ears. There is still something that's her (belovedchild) but it's shapeless and starving.
Feed me.
She longs for braided bread and fresh fish, but there is nothing but dust and stones.
Hungry.
If she ate a stone (like an infant, innocent) or two or three or three thousand, she would feel full. If she changed the rocks to bread, she would be full. She can feel the shape of it (in that part of her that isn't hand or foot or voice or even thought, but Power), silt and sediment becoming wheat and oil. It would be easy. It would be nothing.
And she would be full and forget what hunger means.
She must remember hunger, must remember starvation, hollow agony, and the feeling that she would do anything, anything, to stifle that pain for a moment. She would cheat, or steal. She might murder, and she wouldn't even know when the Sabbath was to care if she broke it.
Remember hunger.
But that will be later. Now, starving, she holds the hunger at bay and reaches into the tug of the desert winds, so wild now she has no choice but to follow, and the wind takes her up and far away from her life, and it seems to her that she is in Jerusalem, although she may just be on a cliff, overlooking desolation.
Either way, she is ready to jump.
It ends in death, why not end it now?
Of course it ends in death, and in Jerusalem, and at the Temple, where, unseen and unnoticed, a woman could preach Good News forever and be ignored. Why not begin it the way it must end?
And if you are God's child, then God wouldn't let you die.
A child hiding in the Temple, testing her parents, waiting to see if they'll come back.
If they really loved you.
If God means for you not to die, then God will rescue you.
Jump.
(But God probably wants you to die.)
Jump.
Death, and flight, and the sensation of falling, and the possibility of rising, and surrender to the forces of nature, wind and gravity, and the forces of darkness, oblivion and destruction -- if she just stops holding on --
Jump.
belovedchild
There is no second vision, no intervention. God descended once and wrapped her in light, and if she holds her mind just so, she can remember beyond the physical senses (dove, warmth, whisper) what it felt like to know that she was God's.
Is God's.
She steps away from the cliff.
And walks higher.
(Whenever she looks down, for the rest of her life, she'll think about jumping
but she never will.)
She sits down, as if to rest, or teach, and the world goes gray, then clarifies into a vision, golden at the edges -- the farthest valleys that she can see from this pinnacle, where vineyards grow, and goatherds tend their flocks, and she can taste:
sweet wine, tangy cheese, salted fish, mother's bread (so, so, so hungry, still). There are friends at either side and a cup that overflows with joy, the fatted calf has been slain, and there is feasting without end. This is the taste of God, but pleasure is not God, and she makes herself swallow and taste the desert grit that fills her mouth.
"Repent! Repent and return to the God who brought you up out of Egypt, the God who sets before you the ways of life and death. Listen, sinners! There is still time to turn again to God. Hear what God demands of you -- that you do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with God. That you love your neighbor as yourself..." This is John's voice, but it is also her voice, and the voice of every prophet. It is the voice of Law, and also the voice of Love, and it sounds like God, but it is not God, so she closes her mouth and stops preaching, and listens to the uncanny winds.
She holds a child in her arms, and in the distance an ephemeral spouse does chores. This is her family, and every family -- it is Elizabeth and Zechariah and John, her parents and her siblings, Mary and Martha and Lazarus growing old together, building a life. She nurtures a child, and teaches it, feeds it and clothes it and when it grows old, it will care for her. This feels like God, but it is not God. She lets go of the child, and feels the ache and cold and strangeness of her body, sitting on a mountain, learning the posture of a teacher.
The Temple smells of livestock and blood sacrifice, and under that finest resins, and smoke without end. When they no longer bring animals, they bring praises and incense and oils wrought at great cost, and their labor and their joy, their sacrifice and their worship, are pleasing to God. This is the scent of God, but it is not God. The desert smells ancient, and cold.
She opens her eyes and sees a ladder dangling in front of her. She can see the throne that is hers, covered in glitter, draped silks so fine they are like water and covered in mirrored gems that reflect glory upon glory, the throne she dreamed of when she played at being a princess as a child. If she climbs the ladder and sits in that throne, then everyone to the furthest reaches of the valleys that surround her pinnacle will obey her softest command: "Share," or "Heal," or, "Love." The light that comes from that throne refracts into rainbows, -- and this looks like God. Wherever she looks, this looks like God.
belovedchild
This looks like the heavens opened up, and a voice calling her home, to the place where she belongs, where she will be clothed in finest robes and honored like an eldest daughter, where she will be God's princess child and where her siblings and children will gather, uncountably numerous, to feast with her and to worship her Parent. No one will be lonely, and no one will know what hunger means. Home.
belovedchild
A God who comes to her tenderly, who tastes of love and deepest sacrifice, who feels like her mother, and a little like herself, the God who named her, and who summoned her into the wilderness -- the God of love and family and pleasure and joy, who demands worship and evokes awe, the God who summons her home to Galilee, where it all begins.
[content notes: intentional food deprivation, suicidal ideation]
[inspired by bestie's version of the temptation story and her reflections on Jesus' baptism]
Temptations in the Wilderness
Matthew 3:13-4:11
Her cousin greets her with a grin and a peace sign, like he has a thousand times before.
Her stomach flutters -- less from the presence of so many bodies as from the knowledge of what's inside them -- the oppressive intent of repentance, the turning, turning, that's tugging her too. The crowd's fervor tugs at her, pulls her where she wouldn't go, or wouldn't go yet.
A press of hands all around, John's smiling refusal to baptize her, an argument they've had many times before, half-joking, about worthiness and precedence, elder cousin and younger kinswoman, greater and lesser, first and last, and then Jesus kneels and John kneel, and John dunks Jesus like they're kids again, rough hands on her shoulders.
Dripping wet, she emerges from the river, and the skies open.
This is what God looks like like, a reflection of her own soul, diving from heaven into the waters, fearless, landing on her sodden robes and becoming enveloping light, saying, "You are my beloved child. I'm so pleased with you."
belovedchild
She wades out of the water, teases John, says something under her breath about needing some time alone, and John nods and tells her, "Go into the wilderness. It's what I do," but God is already pulling her there, no longer visible or audible, but a tug on her heart like the strongest winds. Like riptide.
She spends a lot of time in prayer.
Some things she can see clearly -- a long, narrow road. Many secrets. Friends, close as her breath, and betrayal. And God's kingdom, all around --in the stillness of the wilderness, she remembers children, and lepers, widows, and sinners, each of them in their way perfectly reflecting God. And the grains of the earth and the birds of the air, and all the things that are given for human consumption, and all the work that people do, building and crafting and weaving, and it is all an image of God.
Then she'll walk for awhile, pulled by that invisible wind, and she sees nothing at all.
She hears John's voice, calling for repentance, and she thinks yes, yes, he's right. And remembers the fate of prophets, and would stop to weep, but she's tugged further along.
belovedchild
Pieces of it are already in her hand -- she can feel herself reaching out, touching stopped ears and broken limbs, can feel the place whence the power comes -- she could do it now, she's ready now, and her muscles are tense with anticipation.
She could stop storms in their paths, multiply bread and feed every starving child. She could do it now.
But it's not time yet, says the wind, blowing stronger, whipping her robes around her until they're the enemy, preventing her from taking another step.
And yet she stumbles further.
She thinks perhaps she knows how it should end, but all she can see there is darkness, and death, and she is nowhere near sure she's strong enough.
belovedchild
She sits and thinks about death and Rome and desire, and all the good she would do if there were only time, and if only people listened.
Whenever she's visited John, since she was child fresh out of Egypt until this last time at the Jordan, John has explained that people won't listen. John, with a voice that could fell trees and ignite nations. People won't listen, and so she will fail.
She walks further into the wilderness, away from failure and from success, into the heart of the mystery that whispers belovedchild and gives her glimpses of a world where grown-ups sit at God's feet like children, learning, playing.
The shape of her body is strange and growing stranger. Muscled, weak, tired, restless. She walks, she doesn't know how far, and the wind blows up around her. At night she lies down, but doesn't sleep. She listens, and the desert tells nothing.
She thinks maybe she can recognize this body as her own, for the first time.
God saw her in the Jordan, and God was pleased with what God saw.
If she saw God doveshaped and lovely, maybe God, too, saw her as she really is.
Her feet hurt, and then become calloused, and then she loses them altogether, has no sense of them belonging to her. Then her hands, and her voice, and her beard and her hair and her eyes and her ears. There is still something that's her (belovedchild) but it's shapeless and starving.
Feed me.
She longs for braided bread and fresh fish, but there is nothing but dust and stones.
Hungry.
If she ate a stone (like an infant, innocent) or two or three or three thousand, she would feel full. If she changed the rocks to bread, she would be full. She can feel the shape of it (in that part of her that isn't hand or foot or voice or even thought, but Power), silt and sediment becoming wheat and oil. It would be easy. It would be nothing.
And she would be full and forget what hunger means.
She must remember hunger, must remember starvation, hollow agony, and the feeling that she would do anything, anything, to stifle that pain for a moment. She would cheat, or steal. She might murder, and she wouldn't even know when the Sabbath was to care if she broke it.
Remember hunger.
But that will be later. Now, starving, she holds the hunger at bay and reaches into the tug of the desert winds, so wild now she has no choice but to follow, and the wind takes her up and far away from her life, and it seems to her that she is in Jerusalem, although she may just be on a cliff, overlooking desolation.
Either way, she is ready to jump.
It ends in death, why not end it now?
Of course it ends in death, and in Jerusalem, and at the Temple, where, unseen and unnoticed, a woman could preach Good News forever and be ignored. Why not begin it the way it must end?
And if you are God's child, then God wouldn't let you die.
A child hiding in the Temple, testing her parents, waiting to see if they'll come back.
If they really loved you.
If God means for you not to die, then God will rescue you.
Jump.
(But God probably wants you to die.)
Jump.
Death, and flight, and the sensation of falling, and the possibility of rising, and surrender to the forces of nature, wind and gravity, and the forces of darkness, oblivion and destruction -- if she just stops holding on --
Jump.
belovedchild
There is no second vision, no intervention. God descended once and wrapped her in light, and if she holds her mind just so, she can remember beyond the physical senses (dove, warmth, whisper) what it felt like to know that she was God's.
Is God's.
She steps away from the cliff.
And walks higher.
(Whenever she looks down, for the rest of her life, she'll think about jumping
but she never will.)
She sits down, as if to rest, or teach, and the world goes gray, then clarifies into a vision, golden at the edges -- the farthest valleys that she can see from this pinnacle, where vineyards grow, and goatherds tend their flocks, and she can taste:
sweet wine, tangy cheese, salted fish, mother's bread (so, so, so hungry, still). There are friends at either side and a cup that overflows with joy, the fatted calf has been slain, and there is feasting without end. This is the taste of God, but pleasure is not God, and she makes herself swallow and taste the desert grit that fills her mouth.
"Repent! Repent and return to the God who brought you up out of Egypt, the God who sets before you the ways of life and death. Listen, sinners! There is still time to turn again to God. Hear what God demands of you -- that you do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with God. That you love your neighbor as yourself..." This is John's voice, but it is also her voice, and the voice of every prophet. It is the voice of Law, and also the voice of Love, and it sounds like God, but it is not God, so she closes her mouth and stops preaching, and listens to the uncanny winds.
She holds a child in her arms, and in the distance an ephemeral spouse does chores. This is her family, and every family -- it is Elizabeth and Zechariah and John, her parents and her siblings, Mary and Martha and Lazarus growing old together, building a life. She nurtures a child, and teaches it, feeds it and clothes it and when it grows old, it will care for her. This feels like God, but it is not God. She lets go of the child, and feels the ache and cold and strangeness of her body, sitting on a mountain, learning the posture of a teacher.
The Temple smells of livestock and blood sacrifice, and under that finest resins, and smoke without end. When they no longer bring animals, they bring praises and incense and oils wrought at great cost, and their labor and their joy, their sacrifice and their worship, are pleasing to God. This is the scent of God, but it is not God. The desert smells ancient, and cold.
She opens her eyes and sees a ladder dangling in front of her. She can see the throne that is hers, covered in glitter, draped silks so fine they are like water and covered in mirrored gems that reflect glory upon glory, the throne she dreamed of when she played at being a princess as a child. If she climbs the ladder and sits in that throne, then everyone to the furthest reaches of the valleys that surround her pinnacle will obey her softest command: "Share," or "Heal," or, "Love." The light that comes from that throne refracts into rainbows, -- and this looks like God. Wherever she looks, this looks like God.
belovedchild
This looks like the heavens opened up, and a voice calling her home, to the place where she belongs, where she will be clothed in finest robes and honored like an eldest daughter, where she will be God's princess child and where her siblings and children will gather, uncountably numerous, to feast with her and to worship her Parent. No one will be lonely, and no one will know what hunger means. Home.
belovedchild
A God who comes to her tenderly, who tastes of love and deepest sacrifice, who feels like her mother, and a little like herself, the God who named her, and who summoned her into the wilderness -- the God of love and family and pleasure and joy, who demands worship and evokes awe, the God who summons her home to Galilee, where it all begins.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
[translation] John 1:5
I spent this Advent exploring John 1:5, rendering it in various ways. It was an Advent with much darkness, as you know, but also an Advent of brilliant Light that we celebrate today.
So I offer this verse as a Christmas present:
(I am of course much endebted to both the NRSV and the NIV.)
+++++
The Light enlightens the darkness, and the darkness will never take hold of it.
And the Light in the darkness shines, and the darkness does not overwhelm it.
And in darkness the Light shines, and the Light is never outshone in darkness.
The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not comprehend it.
And the Light in darkness shines
It keeps on shining.
And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
And the Light illumines the darkness, and the darkness cannot comprehend it.
Light shines in darkness; darkness cannot overwhelm it.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
The Light brightens the darkness, and the darkness is faint.
In darkness, undimmed Light.
Light
in
darkness.
Light
in
darkness.
Light
in
darkness.
Shining in obscurity, undaunted by midnight: the Light of the world.
The Light illumines the darkness, but the darkness doesn't understand.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not understand it
in every dark time, Light forever.
This Light that's shining in the shadow places? Those shadows can't even begin to grapple with it.
Light
Even in the dark
especially in the dark
Light
++++
Bright Christmastide to all,
Ruth Ellen
So I offer this verse as a Christmas present:
(I am of course much endebted to both the NRSV and the NIV.)
+++++
The Light enlightens the darkness, and the darkness will never take hold of it.
And the Light in the darkness shines, and the darkness does not overwhelm it.
And in darkness the Light shines, and the Light is never outshone in darkness.
The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not comprehend it.
And the Light in darkness shines
It keeps on shining.
And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
And the Light illumines the darkness, and the darkness cannot comprehend it.
Light shines in darkness; darkness cannot overwhelm it.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
The Light brightens the darkness, and the darkness is faint.
In darkness, undimmed Light.
Light
in
darkness.
Light
in
darkness.
Light
in
darkness.
Shining in obscurity, undaunted by midnight: the Light of the world.
The Light illumines the darkness, but the darkness doesn't understand.
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not understand it
in every dark time, Light forever.
This Light that's shining in the shadow places? Those shadows can't even begin to grapple with it.
Light
Even in the dark
especially in the dark
Light
++++
Bright Christmastide to all,
Ruth Ellen
Thursday, October 11, 2012
[liturgy] Outing God: Prayers of Confession and Forgiveness for National Coming Out Day
One: Abram, scared, said, "Sarai's my sister, not my wife."
Many: We've evaded.
One: Naomi, bitter, told Ruth, "Marry a man, it's easier."
Many: We've bearded ourselves.
One: Jonah, angry, abandoned God's calling and tried to live a different life.
Many: We've run away.
One: Peter, terrified, denied he knew Jesus.
Many: We've lied.
One: Like the saints throughout the ages, we've tried to hide,
Many: and in hiding ourselves, we've closeted YOU.
One: Scared of your truth, we've hidden in lies. We deny the lives you gave us and the ways you made us. We stay in the closet. We live double lives. We are cautious and careful. We avoid the truth. We internalize shame. We hate the children you love.
Many: Forgive us.
One: Beloved, I share with you good news. The God who made you has been closeted too, by false prophets and idolaters who worship law instead of God. Hear this truth: God is wildly in love with you and made you exactly as you are, a precious child, a beloved friend, a cherished partner in the work of re-creating the world.
God will use you to give birth to nations and beget kings. Through you God proclaims forgiveness to sinners and Good News to all peoples. God is hidden in your heart and revealed in your life. God lurks in your shadows, whispering hope. God sleeps in your secrets, dreaming of truth.
God knows your true name, your passions, your fears. God loves you and wants to share you with the whole world.
Many: God, we love you, and want to share you with the whole world.
One: Some name you as Father,
Many: and we know you as our strong Mother and tender Daddy, as a wise Grandmother who gentles her grandbaby and as an ecstatic new Parent who rejoices at every marvelous fingernail of hir new child.
One: Some name you as a human rabbi,
Many: and we know you as the Child of God, the eternally creating Word who took flesh for our sake and delighted to be vulnerable with us. We know you as Wisdom, handmaiden of the Most High, who lived and taught among us.
One: Some name you as divine, infallible, impassible
Many: and we know you as one of us, exhausted by travel and hungry for bread, angry and sad, sarcastic and kind, bound by old prejudices and challenged by God, a mortal sinner like us who saved us forever from sin and death.
One: Some say you are dead.
Many: We know that You live.
One: Some claim to understand you.
Many: We love you in a paradox.
One: Some say that you hate us,
Many: and we know that's not true.
One: Some think your work is finished,
Many: and we receive your challenge, acknowledge your forgiveness, accept your grace, and name you as our own, our Creator, our Savior, our Comfort.
One: Beloved, will you come out?
Many: With God as our guide, we will search ourselves, and with God as our companion, we will live with integrity. We will reclaim the pieces of ourselves that we've forgotten and abandoned, rejected and denied, loving ourselves as God loves us.
One: Beloved, will you out God?
Many: When evil is done in God's name, we will do good more boldly. Where injustice dwells in God's church, we will exorcise it. We will reclaim the sacred book that's been turned into a weapon. We will reclaim the sacred house that's become a den of thieves. We will reclaim the name of God that's been used to instill fear and to separate God's children from each other. We will reclaim the name Christian and live in the world as little Christs, sharing gentle justice and fierce love.
One: Go, then, and bring God out with you into the world.
Many: We go in peace; thanks be to God.
Many: We've evaded.
One: Naomi, bitter, told Ruth, "Marry a man, it's easier."
Many: We've bearded ourselves.
One: Jonah, angry, abandoned God's calling and tried to live a different life.
Many: We've run away.
One: Peter, terrified, denied he knew Jesus.
Many: We've lied.
One: Like the saints throughout the ages, we've tried to hide,
Many: and in hiding ourselves, we've closeted YOU.
One: Scared of your truth, we've hidden in lies. We deny the lives you gave us and the ways you made us. We stay in the closet. We live double lives. We are cautious and careful. We avoid the truth. We internalize shame. We hate the children you love.
Many: Forgive us.
One: Beloved, I share with you good news. The God who made you has been closeted too, by false prophets and idolaters who worship law instead of God. Hear this truth: God is wildly in love with you and made you exactly as you are, a precious child, a beloved friend, a cherished partner in the work of re-creating the world.
God will use you to give birth to nations and beget kings. Through you God proclaims forgiveness to sinners and Good News to all peoples. God is hidden in your heart and revealed in your life. God lurks in your shadows, whispering hope. God sleeps in your secrets, dreaming of truth.
God knows your true name, your passions, your fears. God loves you and wants to share you with the whole world.
Many: God, we love you, and want to share you with the whole world.
One: Some name you as Father,
Many: and we know you as our strong Mother and tender Daddy, as a wise Grandmother who gentles her grandbaby and as an ecstatic new Parent who rejoices at every marvelous fingernail of hir new child.
One: Some name you as a human rabbi,
Many: and we know you as the Child of God, the eternally creating Word who took flesh for our sake and delighted to be vulnerable with us. We know you as Wisdom, handmaiden of the Most High, who lived and taught among us.
One: Some name you as divine, infallible, impassible
Many: and we know you as one of us, exhausted by travel and hungry for bread, angry and sad, sarcastic and kind, bound by old prejudices and challenged by God, a mortal sinner like us who saved us forever from sin and death.
One: Some say you are dead.
Many: We know that You live.
One: Some claim to understand you.
Many: We love you in a paradox.
One: Some say that you hate us,
Many: and we know that's not true.
One: Some think your work is finished,
Many: and we receive your challenge, acknowledge your forgiveness, accept your grace, and name you as our own, our Creator, our Savior, our Comfort.
One: Beloved, will you come out?
Many: With God as our guide, we will search ourselves, and with God as our companion, we will live with integrity. We will reclaim the pieces of ourselves that we've forgotten and abandoned, rejected and denied, loving ourselves as God loves us.
One: Beloved, will you out God?
Many: When evil is done in God's name, we will do good more boldly. Where injustice dwells in God's church, we will exorcise it. We will reclaim the sacred book that's been turned into a weapon. We will reclaim the sacred house that's become a den of thieves. We will reclaim the name of God that's been used to instill fear and to separate God's children from each other. We will reclaim the name Christian and live in the world as little Christs, sharing gentle justice and fierce love.
One: Go, then, and bring God out with you into the world.
Many: We go in peace; thanks be to God.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
[worship] the macaroni metaphor
I'm working on a new project to be posted at this blog, and I suspect I will refer to this image a lot, so I wanted to give it a special post. I also, of course, hope that everyone in the field will adopt this model for theologies of liturgy, but that's a different issue.
The Kingdom of God is like this: in Sunday school, when I was young, we made Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day presents for our parents. For our mothers, we made jewelry boxes, for our fathers, paperweights. The medium was the same, though. We took an object (jewelry box, rock), glued macaroni to it, and spray-painted the whole project gold. Our parents (I imagine and can only hope) loved those projects, not because our parents lacked any basic aesthetic sense, but because we were our parents' children, and they loved us, and they knew we had spent time and love to make this gift that was, therefore, infinitely precious.
Our worship is like that. And it is exceedingly pleasing to our Divine Parent.
The Kingdom of God is like this: in Sunday school, when I was young, we made Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day presents for our parents. For our mothers, we made jewelry boxes, for our fathers, paperweights. The medium was the same, though. We took an object (jewelry box, rock), glued macaroni to it, and spray-painted the whole project gold. Our parents (I imagine and can only hope) loved those projects, not because our parents lacked any basic aesthetic sense, but because we were our parents' children, and they loved us, and they knew we had spent time and love to make this gift that was, therefore, infinitely precious.
Our worship is like that. And it is exceedingly pleasing to our Divine Parent.
[all are welcome] let us/let us build a house/a house where love can dwell
The gathering hymn this morning is "All Are Welcome." It is #641 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (c)2006. It can be found in the section of hymns categorized as being about "Community in Christ." It was written and scored by Marty Haugen. Words and music are (c) 1994. Here are the lyrics if you want to follow along at home.
So, a couple of words about this hymn. One, it was cited at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America [ELCA]'s Churchwide Assembly in 2009 as an argument in favor of the pro-lgb* resolutions (the issues on the table were ordination and marriage), and two, we sang it at my home church to celebrate the passage of those resolutions and three, we sing it at my home church as often as we can get away with it. It's a pretty great hymn.
*t intentionally left off; trans issues weren't addressed at Churchwide
It starts like this:
The hymn is in the imperative voice. But it's a special kind of imperative. It's the kind of imperative with which people say, "Let's be friends." "Let's get married." "Let's start trying for a baby."
It's the kind of imperative to which the implicit answer is, "Yes. Let's." Let us do that thing that sounds so good when you put it like that. In fact, it reminds me a bit of this image from Baptized, We Live: Lutheranism as a Way of Life written and illustrated by Daniel Erlander:
[image shows a priest in chasuble and alb and a nun in habit and wimple. She wears a cross necklace and a rosary dangles from her waist. The priest's hand is open and reaches to the nun. The nuns hands aren't visible. He says, "Would you help me set up a Lutheran parsonage?" She says, "I thought you'd never ask."]
The priest is, in fact, saying, "Let us build a house where love can dwell," and the nun answers, "Yes. Let's."
When we sing "All Are Welcome," we are the singers and the sung-to. We are the speakers and the one addressed. This hymn, like many in the section of the hymnal labeled "Community in Christ," takes advantage of the core reality of the genre hymn -- a hymn is meant to be sung by a congregation of the faithful. When we sing we sing each one to each other, reminding ourselves of our stories, our beliefs, our call, our relationship with each other. All hymns do this; hymns like this one do so textually. The primary meanings in this hymn can be found by understanding the words as being sung by and to members of a Christian community. The hymn is, in fact, very like a vision statement for a church -- we will do this thing (we will build a house where love can dwell; this is what it will look like). The imperative tone offers a gentle, ready challenge -- Let us. Yes, let's.
Because this is a sacred text, though, both speaker and hearer may also be understood as God. In some hymns (e.g., "I Was There To Hear Your Borning Cry,") the image of the Divine Speaker and the human speaker are deliberately confused, tangled, become metaphors for each other. Nothing so complicated happens here, and yet -- this hymn is meant to be sung in a worship service in which the Holy Spirit has been invoked, and She is, in fact, the Master Builder. Any Christian project has implicit in its conception the participation of the Holy Spirit; without Her guidance we and all our projects are doomed to futility.
And just so, the words of this hymn are a gentle challenge not just from our fellow worshipers but from God. God is building a house where love can dwell, you see, and we are invited, asked, and encouraged to build that house with Him.
Let us build a house.
The house is, clearly, a church. It is also The Church. It is also the coming Kingdom of God. These meanings cannot be divorced from each other; Christian grammar demands that each layer implies the next. When we build our house, we are, in fact, building one room in a House of many rooms. But it is not an isolated building block, our house. Its relationship with the rest of the House is like the relationship of the various organs to a body, the relationship of all our worshipers to our church. Each different, each vital. When we build a house, we are building part of God's House, and the kitchen doesn't say, "I wish I were a roof," and the billiard room doesn't say, "I wish I were connected to the lounge via a secret passage!" All the rooms are essential and they are all connected, and in building our house, we build up the House.
Let us build a house where love can dwell.
"Love" here is not capitalized. That doesn't mean it's not a metaphor for God, though. God is love. When we build a house where love can dwell, we build a place where God can dwell. But this is a dwelling-place for God conceptualized differently from the Holy of Holies or any cathedral you have seen. The important thing about this house is not how much gilt adorns its pillars. This will only be a house where God can dwell inasmuch as it is a house where love, plain, uncapitalized, everyday love, can also dwell.
Yeah, uncapitalized love is really a sacrament of capitalized Love. It is one of the ways God chooses to make Godself known to us. When we build a house where love can dwell, the Love of God will be present there too.
The rest of the hymn will elaborate on what it means to build a house where love can dwell, and we'll look at it together. Most of the hymn is future and/or imperative. The refrain, "All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place," is present tense declarative, and I'll talk more about what that means (as a declaration, a prophetic word, a moment of eschatological immanence) when we come around to the first refrain. I'd also like to use the five refrains to discuss concrete issues of welcome that contemporary churches face, what it takes to bring that promise into reality.
So, a couple of words about this hymn. One, it was cited at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America [ELCA]'s Churchwide Assembly in 2009 as an argument in favor of the pro-lgb* resolutions (the issues on the table were ordination and marriage), and two, we sang it at my home church to celebrate the passage of those resolutions and three, we sing it at my home church as often as we can get away with it. It's a pretty great hymn.
*t intentionally left off; trans issues weren't addressed at Churchwide
It starts like this:
Let us build a house where love can dwell
The hymn is in the imperative voice. But it's a special kind of imperative. It's the kind of imperative with which people say, "Let's be friends." "Let's get married." "Let's start trying for a baby."
It's the kind of imperative to which the implicit answer is, "Yes. Let's." Let us do that thing that sounds so good when you put it like that. In fact, it reminds me a bit of this image from Baptized, We Live: Lutheranism as a Way of Life written and illustrated by Daniel Erlander:
[image shows a priest in chasuble and alb and a nun in habit and wimple. She wears a cross necklace and a rosary dangles from her waist. The priest's hand is open and reaches to the nun. The nuns hands aren't visible. He says, "Would you help me set up a Lutheran parsonage?" She says, "I thought you'd never ask."]
The priest is, in fact, saying, "Let us build a house where love can dwell," and the nun answers, "Yes. Let's."
When we sing "All Are Welcome," we are the singers and the sung-to. We are the speakers and the one addressed. This hymn, like many in the section of the hymnal labeled "Community in Christ," takes advantage of the core reality of the genre hymn -- a hymn is meant to be sung by a congregation of the faithful. When we sing we sing each one to each other, reminding ourselves of our stories, our beliefs, our call, our relationship with each other. All hymns do this; hymns like this one do so textually. The primary meanings in this hymn can be found by understanding the words as being sung by and to members of a Christian community. The hymn is, in fact, very like a vision statement for a church -- we will do this thing (we will build a house where love can dwell; this is what it will look like). The imperative tone offers a gentle, ready challenge -- Let us. Yes, let's.
Because this is a sacred text, though, both speaker and hearer may also be understood as God. In some hymns (e.g., "I Was There To Hear Your Borning Cry,") the image of the Divine Speaker and the human speaker are deliberately confused, tangled, become metaphors for each other. Nothing so complicated happens here, and yet -- this hymn is meant to be sung in a worship service in which the Holy Spirit has been invoked, and She is, in fact, the Master Builder. Any Christian project has implicit in its conception the participation of the Holy Spirit; without Her guidance we and all our projects are doomed to futility.
And just so, the words of this hymn are a gentle challenge not just from our fellow worshipers but from God. God is building a house where love can dwell, you see, and we are invited, asked, and encouraged to build that house with Him.
Let us build a house.
The house is, clearly, a church. It is also The Church. It is also the coming Kingdom of God. These meanings cannot be divorced from each other; Christian grammar demands that each layer implies the next. When we build our house, we are, in fact, building one room in a House of many rooms. But it is not an isolated building block, our house. Its relationship with the rest of the House is like the relationship of the various organs to a body, the relationship of all our worshipers to our church. Each different, each vital. When we build a house, we are building part of God's House, and the kitchen doesn't say, "I wish I were a roof," and the billiard room doesn't say, "I wish I were connected to the lounge via a secret passage!" All the rooms are essential and they are all connected, and in building our house, we build up the House.
Let us build a house where love can dwell.
"Love" here is not capitalized. That doesn't mean it's not a metaphor for God, though. God is love. When we build a house where love can dwell, we build a place where God can dwell. But this is a dwelling-place for God conceptualized differently from the Holy of Holies or any cathedral you have seen. The important thing about this house is not how much gilt adorns its pillars. This will only be a house where God can dwell inasmuch as it is a house where love, plain, uncapitalized, everyday love, can also dwell.
Yeah, uncapitalized love is really a sacrament of capitalized Love. It is one of the ways God chooses to make Godself known to us. When we build a house where love can dwell, the Love of God will be present there too.
The rest of the hymn will elaborate on what it means to build a house where love can dwell, and we'll look at it together. Most of the hymn is future and/or imperative. The refrain, "All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place," is present tense declarative, and I'll talk more about what that means (as a declaration, a prophetic word, a moment of eschatological immanence) when we come around to the first refrain. I'd also like to use the five refrains to discuss concrete issues of welcome that contemporary churches face, what it takes to bring that promise into reality.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
[sermon] the cancer sermon (no snazzy title)
[Sermon for the people of Abiding Peace Lutheran Church, preached 2010-07-25. Colossians 2: 6-19. Parts of this sermon have been (re)written and expanded and differ from the original proclaimed sermon.]
I don't usually use anecdotes about members of the congregation as sermon illustrations, because I was a preacher's kid and it didn't take me long to get royally tired of hearing stories about my bad behavior from the pulpit. But I am going to talk about a member of our congregation today.
Annie's not worshiping with us today, this precious little red dog, because she had this growth on her ear that turned out to be cancerous. She had surgery to remove the growth and the ear flap too, and now she's not doing so well, and her mother keeps freaking out when she sees little fatty growths on her dog's body because, let's face it --
-- growth is scary.
Paul tells the Colossians that the Body of Christ, the Church, "Grows with a growth that is from God," and that's Good News. But how do you distinguish it from the other kind of growth, the scary, creepy, insidious growth that is cancer?
That's the fear, right? If we grow, if we change, if the church shifts, maybe we won't be the Body of Christ anymore. Maybe we'll be a tumor.
Cancer is mutation. The DNA in cells mutates, and the mutated cells reproduce, and the cancer spreads and crowds out the Gospel cells.
The Body of Christ is doing its job (our job) when we're replicating the Gospel DNA at our core, spreading the Good News. There is one Gospel, but many ways to name it -- "God became flesh and dwelt among us," "In Christ we are forgiven," "Love your neighbor as yourself, and everyone is your neighbor," - and there are other articulations in word and song and art and dance and most importantly in these sacraments [touch water, bread] -- so this morning we're going to use Paul's articulation of the Gospel and remember that it points to the rest. Paul says that we died with Christ through baptism and are raised with Christ through faith in God. We are dead to sin and evil, we are not subject to death -- we are part of Christ, part of Christ's very Body. Good News. Good News indeed.
We share one Gospel the way every cell in your body shares DNA, but like DNA the Gospel is an amazing set of instructions. Each part of the Body of Christ serves the Gospel -- but we it in so many diverse ways.
So what is cancer? Cancer is anything that thwarts the Gospel, that holds at its core not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but some other message.
There are parts of the church that do not directly serve the Gospel, of course. The church is a millennia-old institution, and there is plenty of graft. If we were to go through our church we'd find plenty of paper and words and liturgy that aren't essential to the Gospel. They are beautiful and even useful, but they are not the core of our faith. We could lose the hymnal and still be Christians.
But that's fine. Or at least, that's inevitable. There are benign growths in the church, things that have been added on to the core of the Gospel that don't detract from the real work of living that Gospel. A budget, for example, is not essential. It doesn't, in itself, proclaim the Good News of our death and resurrection with Christ. But it is darned useful.
The worry comes when the mutant cells spread, when their importance overpowers the Gospel, replaces the Gospel. Paul gives us examples of cancers that threatened the church in his time --
like secular philosophy. That's something that comes into the church easily, and sometimes it's helpful. Secular feminism provided and continues to provide a powerful critique of the patriarchal institutions that inhabit Christianity -- a patriarchy that is itself cancerous, a patriarchy that seemed to be essential to the church but in fact masked the Gospel, which is a liberating word to all people.
I am a feminist. I am a big fan of secular feminism; it is one of my favorite secular philosophies. Feminism has a place in the church. But if feminism overpowers the Gospel, if the church starts spreading feminism and advocating for women's issues at the expense of being a Gospel church - then feminism has turned cancerous. It has distorted the original message of the Gospel.
Paul also gives the example of angel worship. "Angels", in Greek, are "messengers" - the same root as "evangelist," a Good-News-Bringer. There is certainly a cult of angel worship in our country, a belief in guardian angels and a delight in angel kitsch -- but there's a deeper kind of angel worship that arises when we begin worshiping the messenger instead of living the message. When we start worshiping the Bible instead of the living Word that is Christ, when we devote our energy to preserving the edifice of the church instead of living as Christ's Body -- then we are worshiping angels instead of sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the angel worship has become cancerous.
So, how do we tell the difference? When our church grows -- and let me give you a hint; this period of discernment that we're in is about growth -- how do we tell?
It is important that we know what the Gospel is, and judge all things against it. If we know who we are and what we believe, then the growth that comes will be Gospel growth.
But we must be prepared to fight cancer. The treatments for cancer are painful and hurt the whole Body -- chemotherapy is poison -- and it is difficult to eradicate deep-rooted growths. We must be prepared for surgery, prepared to remove parts of the Body -- keeping in mind that these parts may be structures or institutions but never people -- people are creatures, and sinners, and redeemable, and can never be entirely cancerous.
And we must be prepared, as we examine our growths, to be surprised. Those lumps on the back of the Body of Christ? Just may be wings. Amen.
[A week after I preached this, Annie, precious little red dog, went to be with God. I assume she has both ears now, and also wings.]
I don't usually use anecdotes about members of the congregation as sermon illustrations, because I was a preacher's kid and it didn't take me long to get royally tired of hearing stories about my bad behavior from the pulpit. But I am going to talk about a member of our congregation today.
Annie's not worshiping with us today, this precious little red dog, because she had this growth on her ear that turned out to be cancerous. She had surgery to remove the growth and the ear flap too, and now she's not doing so well, and her mother keeps freaking out when she sees little fatty growths on her dog's body because, let's face it --
-- growth is scary.
Paul tells the Colossians that the Body of Christ, the Church, "Grows with a growth that is from God," and that's Good News. But how do you distinguish it from the other kind of growth, the scary, creepy, insidious growth that is cancer?
That's the fear, right? If we grow, if we change, if the church shifts, maybe we won't be the Body of Christ anymore. Maybe we'll be a tumor.
Cancer is mutation. The DNA in cells mutates, and the mutated cells reproduce, and the cancer spreads and crowds out the Gospel cells.
The Body of Christ is doing its job (our job) when we're replicating the Gospel DNA at our core, spreading the Good News. There is one Gospel, but many ways to name it -- "God became flesh and dwelt among us," "In Christ we are forgiven," "Love your neighbor as yourself, and everyone is your neighbor," - and there are other articulations in word and song and art and dance and most importantly in these sacraments [touch water, bread] -- so this morning we're going to use Paul's articulation of the Gospel and remember that it points to the rest. Paul says that we died with Christ through baptism and are raised with Christ through faith in God. We are dead to sin and evil, we are not subject to death -- we are part of Christ, part of Christ's very Body. Good News. Good News indeed.
We share one Gospel the way every cell in your body shares DNA, but like DNA the Gospel is an amazing set of instructions. Each part of the Body of Christ serves the Gospel -- but we it in so many diverse ways.
So what is cancer? Cancer is anything that thwarts the Gospel, that holds at its core not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but some other message.
There are parts of the church that do not directly serve the Gospel, of course. The church is a millennia-old institution, and there is plenty of graft. If we were to go through our church we'd find plenty of paper and words and liturgy that aren't essential to the Gospel. They are beautiful and even useful, but they are not the core of our faith. We could lose the hymnal and still be Christians.
But that's fine. Or at least, that's inevitable. There are benign growths in the church, things that have been added on to the core of the Gospel that don't detract from the real work of living that Gospel. A budget, for example, is not essential. It doesn't, in itself, proclaim the Good News of our death and resurrection with Christ. But it is darned useful.
The worry comes when the mutant cells spread, when their importance overpowers the Gospel, replaces the Gospel. Paul gives us examples of cancers that threatened the church in his time --
like secular philosophy. That's something that comes into the church easily, and sometimes it's helpful. Secular feminism provided and continues to provide a powerful critique of the patriarchal institutions that inhabit Christianity -- a patriarchy that is itself cancerous, a patriarchy that seemed to be essential to the church but in fact masked the Gospel, which is a liberating word to all people.
I am a feminist. I am a big fan of secular feminism; it is one of my favorite secular philosophies. Feminism has a place in the church. But if feminism overpowers the Gospel, if the church starts spreading feminism and advocating for women's issues at the expense of being a Gospel church - then feminism has turned cancerous. It has distorted the original message of the Gospel.
Paul also gives the example of angel worship. "Angels", in Greek, are "messengers" - the same root as "evangelist," a Good-News-Bringer. There is certainly a cult of angel worship in our country, a belief in guardian angels and a delight in angel kitsch -- but there's a deeper kind of angel worship that arises when we begin worshiping the messenger instead of living the message. When we start worshiping the Bible instead of the living Word that is Christ, when we devote our energy to preserving the edifice of the church instead of living as Christ's Body -- then we are worshiping angels instead of sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the angel worship has become cancerous.
So, how do we tell the difference? When our church grows -- and let me give you a hint; this period of discernment that we're in is about growth -- how do we tell?
It is important that we know what the Gospel is, and judge all things against it. If we know who we are and what we believe, then the growth that comes will be Gospel growth.
But we must be prepared to fight cancer. The treatments for cancer are painful and hurt the whole Body -- chemotherapy is poison -- and it is difficult to eradicate deep-rooted growths. We must be prepared for surgery, prepared to remove parts of the Body -- keeping in mind that these parts may be structures or institutions but never people -- people are creatures, and sinners, and redeemable, and can never be entirely cancerous.
And we must be prepared, as we examine our growths, to be surprised. Those lumps on the back of the Body of Christ? Just may be wings. Amen.
[A week after I preached this, Annie, precious little red dog, went to be with God. I assume she has both ears now, and also wings.]
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