Sermon for the people of St. Mark Hope and Peace 2015-06-28
Primary Preaching Text: Mark 5:21-43
Secondary Text: 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
I fully intended to talk about David today.
If you're my friend on Facebook you might have seen that weeks ago I posted excitedly about this text being appointed for this day, the eve of the 46th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. The love of David and Jonathan, and particularly this text from Second Samuel is beloved in many lgbtq Christian and Jewish spaces because we can so easily claim David as one of our own -- especially for gay and bisexual men, this is a story that we can look to and say unabashedly, David is one of ours. Rev. Nancy Wilson, current moderator of the Metropolitan Community Church, says, exuberantly and with exclamation points, that David is the most clearly bisexual figure in the whole Bible.1
I was planning to preach about David until yesterday afternoon, when I finally noticed the woman who'd been tugging at my sleeve all week. My plans to talk about David, central to the institutions of both church and state, and what Rev. Wilson calls, a bit anachronistically, his "same-sex, lifelong relationship" with Jonathan, were disrupted and interrupted by a person on the very fringes of society, a person in desperate need who demanded -- and demands to be seen and heard and healed.
In this complicated moment in our nation, when joyous news from the Supreme Court and tragic news from Charleston compete for our emotions, the woman with a flow of blood speaks more fully to my identity as a queer person and our identity as a Reconciling in Christ church than does King David with all his power.
The woman with the flow of blood is the filling in a sandwich story about the healing of Jairus's daughter. Jairus is a person of power and influence, a leader in the synagogue. He summons Jesus to heal his sick daughter, and Jesus goes with him, and on their way, they're interrupted by a woman who has suffered in many ways for the way her body is made.
There are physical torments of her constant hemorrhaging, and the ungentle and unsuccessful cures she's endured from a stream of doctors, and then there is the cultural torment of being perpetually unclean. She is excluded from her society, rendered untouchable by the flow of blood she can't control.
She has nothing to lose. She's spent all her money on ineffective doctors and she had no social capital to begin with. Her physical condition has deteriorated, and she constantly endures rejection. Everything in her culture has taught her that bodies like hers, and her body in particular, are shameful.
So she reaches the point beyond shame, beyond propriety, beyond fear, where her need for healing is greater than any force that would constrain her.
Forty-six years ago, the patrons of Stonewall reached this point. The police raided a gay bar, as the police did. And that night, when tempers were hot, when activism was in the air -- Vietnam, civil rights, women's liberation -- that night drag queens and trans women, bulldykes and sex workers, homeless youth, most of them people of color, all of them people who had nothing to lose and so nothing to fear -- that night those patrons of Stonewall Inn refused to comply.
A few years earlier, transgender and transsexual patrons of Compton's Cafeteria reached that point, and they threw first coffee, and then dishes and furniture at police in protest of harassment and mistreatment.
The nineteen-eighties and nineties were full of those moments, and ACT UP, (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) picketed and protested to draw attention to the AIDS crisis, to demand access to medical intervention, to share accurate information about HIV transmission and safer sex. A people dying of AIDS screamed that "SILENCE=DEATH" and refused to be silent.
This past Wednesday, Jennicet Gutiérrez, an undocumented trans Latina activist, reached this point at the White House LGBT Pride Month Reception. She interrupted President Obama's speech to shout, "Release all GLBTQ immigrants from detention and stop all deportations!" She later wrote, "In the tradition of how Pride started, I interrupted his speech because it is time for our issues and struggles to be heard."2
Indeed.
In the tradition of Pride, and in a tradition older than Pride. In the tradition of Jesus, who announced in the Nazareth synagogue that he had been sent to proclaim release to the captives, and in the tradition of Isaiah, whom Jesus was quoting.
And in the tradition of a nameless woman with a hemorrhage, who had endured all that she could endure.
She didn't ask.
She took.
When we remember the activism of the previous century, we sometimes sugarcoat it. Last fall we saw many white lgbtq people deride the protests in Ferguson, crying, "Remember Stonewall! Peaceful protest is totally possible!"
Oh yes. Remember Stonewall, with thrown pennies, thrown bottles, thrown shoes. Remember the patrons who thought to set the bar on fire.
We don't need to condone violence to remember that it's part of our history.
The path that led to the Supreme Court decision this week that legalized same-sex marriage across the country was not always peaceful and it was not always nice. It did involve middle-class gay men and women asking nicely if they could please have their rights now, if it's not too much of a bother.
And it involved thrown shoes and burning police cars and groups called Lesbian Avengers and Queer Nation and Transexual Menace. It involved shouting and crying and name-calling.
There are couples who have waited patiently for decades to get married, and we rejoice with them this week.
And there are couples who got married decades ago who fudged applications for marriage licenses, people who changed their names to more gender neutral alternatives.3 Further back in time, there are people who didn't ask, but simply lived as members of their true genders, butches and trans men who married women and were their husbands.
There are Lutheran pastors who waited patiently for ELCA policy to change. And there are Lutheran pastors who were ordained extraordinarily years before the 2009 Churchwide Assembly.
There are people like Jairus, people with power and with a lot to lose, who got on their knees and begged.
And there are people like the woman with a flow of blood, people with no institutional power and nothing at all to lose, who reached out and claimed power, demanded healing.
Violence is still not God's will for God's people. God still doesn't want us to harm each other; God doesn't want us to take what's not ours. God has made that perfectly clear. We can and should feel conflicted about those parts of our history. Reaching out and touching a person in a crowd -- on purpose and without permission -- is a blatant violation of bodily autonomy, and that is also not okay.
But it's understandable.
Activism is not pretty, because it arises from the mess we've made of the world.
There is a point of desperation where everything falls away but the need for healing.
From the outside, it's a stillframe, a single moment in time of explosive rage, or uncontrollable weeping, or a woman reaching out her hand.
But inside, it's year upon year of oppression and pain.
It's the experience of an African-American woman, a single mother working two minimum wage jobs, whose body bears the aches of standing all day every day, of working through illness, of walking the long mile from work to the bus stop, the half mile from the bus stop to day care, from tensing whenever she sees a police officer. Whose face aches from smiling at customers and wishing them a nice day. Whose heart aches from the death of her husband to gang violence, the incarceration of her brother, and the endless, endless news stories about anti-black violence, and the stories her friends tell that don't make the news.
It's the experience of a transgender woman whose body aches with an undiagnosed condition because she can't access a health care provider who will treat her with dignity, whose muscles are tense from cringing whenever she walks alone after dark, who spends day after day warding off crude sexual advances but who can't find a partner who loves her for herself.
It's the experience of an African-American man, perhaps the most powerful man in the world, whose body aches from sleepless nights, whose head aches from recalcitrant congresspersons, and mostly, whose heart aches with the death of his siblings in the place that was their sanctuary. It's the experience of President Obama, whose wisdom and education and credentials and deep faith are invisible to those who, still, after eight years, see only the color of his skin.
It's the experience of the heroines and heroes of Stonewall, women like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha Johnson, who sold sex and took drugs and sometimes lived on the streets and felt themselves excluded from the movement they'd started, pushed to the side for the sake of the politics of respectability.
It's the experience of a woman whose body is despised by her society, who's been abused by the medical establishment, and who lives in poverty, alone and outcast.
Let me be clear, these experiences, all of them, are only part of the story of people's lives. There are moments too of transcendent joy, moments of beauty and love and laughter.
But in this time of grief, in Ferguson and Charleston and all the places in between-- this is a moment that's poured onto people already hurting from year after year of violence and fear.
This is a moment of pain, but also a moment of possibility, a moment of promise.
Those moments in scripture, those moments in history, this moment now --
The moment when survival is more important than manners, when the only words that will give voice to anguish are not polite words, when power that's been stolen from people and hoarded by institutions must be reclaimed --
that moment when with thrown rocks and raised voices and a hand lifted up to touch the fringes of power
that moment of desperate hope reaching up from anguish
it's that moment when God's power flows like lightening into the hands of God's people.
God can transform a bleeding woman's desperate faith into healing and restoration. God can transform angry arson and vandalism into the rainbow people who rejoiced on Friday. God transforms debt into jubilee, slavery into freedom, death into life.
The world fills us with shame -- for the shape of our bodies and the depth of our grief, for our passions and our pleasures, for the places we live and the clothes we wear, for the color of our skin and the fluency of our language, for who we love and for who we are.
Activism is the moment when people who have been made ashamed become shameless, because we have nothing left to lose and no other recourse left.
And grace is the moment when shame and shamelessness alike are transformed into pride.
Amen.
1Wilson, Nancy L. Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus, and the Bible. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995. Print. 146.
2Guttiérez, Jennicet. "I Interrupted Obama Because We Need to Be Heard." Washington Blade. Brown, Naff, Pitts Omnimedia, Inc, 25 June 2015. Web. 28 June 2015.
3Eckholm, Erik. "The Same-Sex Couple Who Got a Marriage License in 1971." The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 16 May 2015. Web. 28 June 2015.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Monday, June 22, 2015
[sermon] on David & Goliath
Sermon for the people of St. Mark Hope and Peace Lutheran Church
preached 2015-06-21
Primary Preaching Text: Selections from I Samuel 17
Secondary Text: Mark 4:35-41
It might be pleasant to believe that God orchestrated David’s entire life to prepare for this moment, that God sent the bears and the lions for David to practice on, whispered in Jesse’s ear about the ten cheeses, set those five smooth stones in the brook.
Because if that’s so, then every difficulty we encounter has also been orchestrated by God. God has a plan.
The Philistines had a plan. Goliath had a plan. They had advance preparation. Goliath had been a warrior from his youth. He was prepared to do battle and to do it well. Everything in his life had led up to the moment when he challenged any Israelite who dared to try his strength. For the most part, God doesn't have plans like that.
What God has are fantastic improvisation skills.
We do not have a God who stirs up storms or raises up giants to prove God’s power. We do have a God who confronts storms and giants and deficit budgets and the horrors of institutional racism with power and creativity and whatever tools are at hand.
David has trained his whole life for this – not by preparing for battle with a giant, but by doing the things he’s called to do – shepherding, playing the harp, carrying cheeses.
If we don't have physical strength, God will use our skills with a slingshot.
If we aren't gifted orators, God will give us siblings who will do the talking and use our faithfulness and leadership abilities.
If our faith is weak, God may roll God's eyes, but God will guide us to use our seamanship to weather storms.
If our pockets are not deep, God will use our creativity and our generosity and our friendship networks and our attics overfull of antiques.
Saul offers David armor, and David tries to wear it, but he can barely walk. Logic and tradition say there's a certain thing you wear when you fight giants, that it's foolish to go into battle without a sword, but it's even more foolish to go into battle wearing armor that doesn't fit. A slingshot is the right tool for this job, not because it's the only thing that will fell a giant, but because it's the tool that David is best equipped to use.
When we find ourselves facing giants, or storms, or lions and tigers and bears --
Whether they as devastating and inhuman as an earthquake or as insidiously, terribly human as systemic racism...
Giants taunt and torment us, and if we try to do battle on their terms, they will always win.
That doesn't mean we aren't required to be flexible. We are, exceedingly. But we have to flex the muscles we have, not the ones we wish we had.
We also want to take care with the gifts that we choose to develop. The old truism that if you have a hammer, all the world's a nail is not at all humorous if you consider the NRA board member who claimed earlier this week that murder could have been prevented if members of the Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston had taken guns to midweek worship. I'm pretty sure guns are the wrong tools for dismantling systems of racism and violence. Audre Lorde is right -- the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
There is another side to this, deeper and more difficult. God uses our giftedness with slingshots or ships. But God also uses our flaws.
If you were here last fall, you might remember that we last encountered David at a moment of disastrous sin, when he abducted Bathsheba and had her husband killed. Not a proud moment in David's life, not how we want to remember him. We much prefer the story in front of us today, for all its gore and violence.
We are going to walk with David for the next four weeks. It is definitely odd, to join up with David at this moment in his life, knowing that he will become a king who sometimes abused his kingship in terrible ways.
But right now David is just a kid. A young man, taught from childhood to despise the Other, that Philistines are less than human, that killing them is doing the world a service. Perhaps hearing his soldier brothers boast of the numbers of Philistines they've killed.
This is the third story in the Bible about David. The first is the story of how David's father, Jesse, paraded all his sons before the prophet Samuel, and it was David, youngest and least, who was off tending the sheep, who was anointed by Samuel.
The second is the story of how David was a talented harpist who entered into Saul's service to soothe him when he was tormented with an evil spirit.
And the third, and best known, is the story of David and Goliath. There are some contradictions in the particulars of the stories about David -- but the themes are consistent. This is what Israel remembered about her beloved king: that he was handsome and charismatic, skilled at music as well as war, that he came from humble origins, a youngest son, a shepherd, an armor bearer in Saul's army. That he was full of courage, and that he was full of God.
This is what we know about Goliath: Goliath is a big man. When you're nine and a half feet tall, that's certainly the first and frequently the only thing people notice about you. If it's how everyone around you defines you, it becomes part of your identity too. Goliath is a big man, and he was trained from youth to be a warrior.
When we tell this story to children, we talk about the boy hero David, who defended Israel from a giant the way he defended lambs from bears and lions, and the giant, like lions and bears, becomes an inhuman, monstrous figure. We tell children about the stone that killed Goliath, but we mention less frequently that he cut off Goliath's head with Goliath's own sword, and less frequently still that he carried Goliath's severed head all the way to Jerusalem, a trophy of war.
Those parts of the story make us a little uneasy.
We should feel uneasy about David. We should be uneasy of the gore and violence in this story.
We should remember that David is not God, and we should remember that Goliath too was God's child, and that God grieved his death.
We need to know that sometimes there are no good solutions, just solutions that are less bad, and that God's creativity and God's redemptive power are endless. God uses sinful broken people because that's the only kind of person there is. But we also need to know that war is not God's will for humankind.
So here we are, a people of peace -- peace in our name and peace in our mission -- people committed to proclaiming peace -- and we have in front of us a story of violence. It's hard to face that violence. We'd rather ignore it, or treat it like video game violence. This is folklore, after all; it did not really happen exactly like that. We treat it as a metaphor, say that we "do battle with" systemic evil, identify our giants with faceless, inhuman systems -- the payday loan industry, white supremacy, terrorism. Perhaps that metaphor is helpful, sometimes. If nothing else it reminds us that the stakes are life or death, that people who would deny others health care, people who would deny others a living wage, would deny people life. But if the stakes are life or death, we must be on the side of life.
I would like to ignore the violence, or make it into a metaphor.
I can't look away from it, not this week. Not when nine people are dead in Charleston because a young man -- a Lutheran, our brother -- so awfully and tragically misunderstood what God wanted. Because he believed about black people the things that David believed about Philistines.
So David slew a giant. A charming young man who was sure he was doing what God wanted kills a man who has been threatening his people. And yes, Goliath was, quite literally, asking for it, and yes, it was war and that's the nature of war, and doubtless more lives would have been taken if they hadn't resolved it with single combat... but it is still death, and God still grieved, and when we think about the tools we have at hand, it's not enough just to say that God will use whatever is available, although, yes, God, being endlessly resourceful and creative, will use whatever is available.
We can acknowledge the painful truth that sometimes there doesn't seem to be a nonviolent solution. There was no peacemaker or negotiator between Socoh and Azekah, where the Israelites pitched their tents, but there was David, David and his slingshot and the five smooth stones from the brook.
And God's redemptive power is greater than the greatest evil we can do.
God does not sanction or condone or encourage warfare. But God does God's redemptive work through the means that we provide.
And to join in God's work in the world means using the tools we have, the gifts and skills we're given and the smooth stones we find, to work God's redemption. It means seeking out brokenness and working to transform it. It means confronting the concrete realities of injustice and racism, deeply unpleasant and difficult as that is.
Violence and sacrifice and death are some of humanity's favorite tools. The perpetual battle between Philistines and Israelites demonstrates that. So does the tragedy in Charleston. And so does the cross. And nothing demonstrates God's ability to take tragedy and transform it into redemption better than the cross.
Sometimes there is no good solution. That's not particularly heartening news, perhaps, but it is true. Sometimes the giants in our lives can only be slain, not redeemed. Sometimes we capsize. Sometimes people are murdered at Bible study. Sometimes God makes God's way to the cross.
This is true.
And in the bleakest of hours, God is present, building hope, proclaiming peace, and using God's people to redeem and transform and resurrect everything that is broken.
This is also most certainly true.
Amen.
preached 2015-06-21
Primary Preaching Text: Selections from I Samuel 17
Secondary Text: Mark 4:35-41
It might be pleasant to believe that God orchestrated David’s entire life to prepare for this moment, that God sent the bears and the lions for David to practice on, whispered in Jesse’s ear about the ten cheeses, set those five smooth stones in the brook.
Because if that’s so, then every difficulty we encounter has also been orchestrated by God. God has a plan.
The Philistines had a plan. Goliath had a plan. They had advance preparation. Goliath had been a warrior from his youth. He was prepared to do battle and to do it well. Everything in his life had led up to the moment when he challenged any Israelite who dared to try his strength. For the most part, God doesn't have plans like that.
What God has are fantastic improvisation skills.
We do not have a God who stirs up storms or raises up giants to prove God’s power. We do have a God who confronts storms and giants and deficit budgets and the horrors of institutional racism with power and creativity and whatever tools are at hand.
David has trained his whole life for this – not by preparing for battle with a giant, but by doing the things he’s called to do – shepherding, playing the harp, carrying cheeses.
If we don't have physical strength, God will use our skills with a slingshot.
If we aren't gifted orators, God will give us siblings who will do the talking and use our faithfulness and leadership abilities.
If our faith is weak, God may roll God's eyes, but God will guide us to use our seamanship to weather storms.
If our pockets are not deep, God will use our creativity and our generosity and our friendship networks and our attics overfull of antiques.
Saul offers David armor, and David tries to wear it, but he can barely walk. Logic and tradition say there's a certain thing you wear when you fight giants, that it's foolish to go into battle without a sword, but it's even more foolish to go into battle wearing armor that doesn't fit. A slingshot is the right tool for this job, not because it's the only thing that will fell a giant, but because it's the tool that David is best equipped to use.
When we find ourselves facing giants, or storms, or lions and tigers and bears --
Whether they as devastating and inhuman as an earthquake or as insidiously, terribly human as systemic racism...
Giants taunt and torment us, and if we try to do battle on their terms, they will always win.
That doesn't mean we aren't required to be flexible. We are, exceedingly. But we have to flex the muscles we have, not the ones we wish we had.
We also want to take care with the gifts that we choose to develop. The old truism that if you have a hammer, all the world's a nail is not at all humorous if you consider the NRA board member who claimed earlier this week that murder could have been prevented if members of the Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston had taken guns to midweek worship. I'm pretty sure guns are the wrong tools for dismantling systems of racism and violence. Audre Lorde is right -- the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
There is another side to this, deeper and more difficult. God uses our giftedness with slingshots or ships. But God also uses our flaws.
If you were here last fall, you might remember that we last encountered David at a moment of disastrous sin, when he abducted Bathsheba and had her husband killed. Not a proud moment in David's life, not how we want to remember him. We much prefer the story in front of us today, for all its gore and violence.
We are going to walk with David for the next four weeks. It is definitely odd, to join up with David at this moment in his life, knowing that he will become a king who sometimes abused his kingship in terrible ways.
But right now David is just a kid. A young man, taught from childhood to despise the Other, that Philistines are less than human, that killing them is doing the world a service. Perhaps hearing his soldier brothers boast of the numbers of Philistines they've killed.
This is the third story in the Bible about David. The first is the story of how David's father, Jesse, paraded all his sons before the prophet Samuel, and it was David, youngest and least, who was off tending the sheep, who was anointed by Samuel.
The second is the story of how David was a talented harpist who entered into Saul's service to soothe him when he was tormented with an evil spirit.
And the third, and best known, is the story of David and Goliath. There are some contradictions in the particulars of the stories about David -- but the themes are consistent. This is what Israel remembered about her beloved king: that he was handsome and charismatic, skilled at music as well as war, that he came from humble origins, a youngest son, a shepherd, an armor bearer in Saul's army. That he was full of courage, and that he was full of God.
This is what we know about Goliath: Goliath is a big man. When you're nine and a half feet tall, that's certainly the first and frequently the only thing people notice about you. If it's how everyone around you defines you, it becomes part of your identity too. Goliath is a big man, and he was trained from youth to be a warrior.
When we tell this story to children, we talk about the boy hero David, who defended Israel from a giant the way he defended lambs from bears and lions, and the giant, like lions and bears, becomes an inhuman, monstrous figure. We tell children about the stone that killed Goliath, but we mention less frequently that he cut off Goliath's head with Goliath's own sword, and less frequently still that he carried Goliath's severed head all the way to Jerusalem, a trophy of war.
Those parts of the story make us a little uneasy.
We should feel uneasy about David. We should be uneasy of the gore and violence in this story.
We should remember that David is not God, and we should remember that Goliath too was God's child, and that God grieved his death.
We need to know that sometimes there are no good solutions, just solutions that are less bad, and that God's creativity and God's redemptive power are endless. God uses sinful broken people because that's the only kind of person there is. But we also need to know that war is not God's will for humankind.
So here we are, a people of peace -- peace in our name and peace in our mission -- people committed to proclaiming peace -- and we have in front of us a story of violence. It's hard to face that violence. We'd rather ignore it, or treat it like video game violence. This is folklore, after all; it did not really happen exactly like that. We treat it as a metaphor, say that we "do battle with" systemic evil, identify our giants with faceless, inhuman systems -- the payday loan industry, white supremacy, terrorism. Perhaps that metaphor is helpful, sometimes. If nothing else it reminds us that the stakes are life or death, that people who would deny others health care, people who would deny others a living wage, would deny people life. But if the stakes are life or death, we must be on the side of life.
I would like to ignore the violence, or make it into a metaphor.
I can't look away from it, not this week. Not when nine people are dead in Charleston because a young man -- a Lutheran, our brother -- so awfully and tragically misunderstood what God wanted. Because he believed about black people the things that David believed about Philistines.
So David slew a giant. A charming young man who was sure he was doing what God wanted kills a man who has been threatening his people. And yes, Goliath was, quite literally, asking for it, and yes, it was war and that's the nature of war, and doubtless more lives would have been taken if they hadn't resolved it with single combat... but it is still death, and God still grieved, and when we think about the tools we have at hand, it's not enough just to say that God will use whatever is available, although, yes, God, being endlessly resourceful and creative, will use whatever is available.
We can acknowledge the painful truth that sometimes there doesn't seem to be a nonviolent solution. There was no peacemaker or negotiator between Socoh and Azekah, where the Israelites pitched their tents, but there was David, David and his slingshot and the five smooth stones from the brook.
And God's redemptive power is greater than the greatest evil we can do.
God does not sanction or condone or encourage warfare. But God does God's redemptive work through the means that we provide.
And to join in God's work in the world means using the tools we have, the gifts and skills we're given and the smooth stones we find, to work God's redemption. It means seeking out brokenness and working to transform it. It means confronting the concrete realities of injustice and racism, deeply unpleasant and difficult as that is.
Violence and sacrifice and death are some of humanity's favorite tools. The perpetual battle between Philistines and Israelites demonstrates that. So does the tragedy in Charleston. And so does the cross. And nothing demonstrates God's ability to take tragedy and transform it into redemption better than the cross.
Sometimes there is no good solution. That's not particularly heartening news, perhaps, but it is true. Sometimes the giants in our lives can only be slain, not redeemed. Sometimes we capsize. Sometimes people are murdered at Bible study. Sometimes God makes God's way to the cross.
This is true.
And in the bleakest of hours, God is present, building hope, proclaiming peace, and using God's people to redeem and transform and resurrect everything that is broken.
This is also most certainly true.
Amen.
Friday, April 3, 2015
[sonnet] Martha
She sweeps detritus from the table top,
love's residue, crumbs of laughter, date pits,
grape stems, and scattered promises all dropped
by men who've left the table where she sits.
She strains to hear the echo of the hymn
that they all sang as Jesus left, drunk friends
in tow. Their hearts (and hers) held fast the slim
hope there's some other way the story ends.
With willing hands to knead the sabbath bread
the garden-goers come to clean spilled broth,
to share the news that even Peter fled,
to cry, to help her with the tablecloth.
Each takes a corner of the linen, fine,
undyed, but stained bloodred with love and wine.
love's residue, crumbs of laughter, date pits,
grape stems, and scattered promises all dropped
by men who've left the table where she sits.
She strains to hear the echo of the hymn
that they all sang as Jesus left, drunk friends
in tow. Their hearts (and hers) held fast the slim
hope there's some other way the story ends.
With willing hands to knead the sabbath bread
the garden-goers come to clean spilled broth,
to share the news that even Peter fled,
to cry, to help her with the tablecloth.
Each takes a corner of the linen, fine,
undyed, but stained bloodred with love and wine.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
[pride] Litany of Binding and Loosing
[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.
[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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)