Blog
Faith-in-Flesh
Evil is well worth our anger, our outrage, our fury, our deep indignation. Violence too is a worthy recipient of our defensiveness, our horror, our disquiet, even our fear. To rage against the injustices of the world is an appropriate response of Christian faith.
And yet…
Carrying all that rage and fear around on our shoulders as if they are the yoke of Jesus is not faithful living. Holding anger tightly within our bodies—in a knot in our backs, in the tension of our hips, in the shallowness of our breath—is not a spiritual practice. Allowing fear to establish a residence in our guts, hunching our shoulders permanently forward to guard our hearts, fatiguing our minds with the obsession of resentment—these are not the disciplines to which Christ calls us.
If we were called to a faith of rage, we would be followers of Peter with his sword swinging wildly in the Garden of Gethsemane.
If we were called to a faith of fear, we would be adherents in the church of Ananias and Sapphira with their hands clenched tightly around security and their hearts racing with anxiety.
If we were called to a faith of self-righteousness, we would be siblings to the sons of Zebedee in our clamor for seats of judgment and control.
And if we were called to a faith of stiff necks and tense backs, we would be known by the sign of a millstone rather than the sign of the cross, weighed down by worry, tripping over our own doubt.
Instead…
We are called to a faith of radical love and abundant life. We are called to displace the bitter anger from our bodies with a strong backbone of love, the kind of loving backbone that moves easily to make room and holds steady to protect joy. We are called to exhale fear from our guts, to breathe in the expansiveness of hope. We are called to throw off the burden of anxiety from our shoulders, so that we have room to bear the light yoke of Christ.
Anger and fear and heartache have their place in faith—God knows!—but when they sink their roots into our bodies, psyches, and nervous systems, we are hindered from faith. So we choose to love from our physical core, trading fear for community. We love from our hips and our backs, releasing resentment in favor of hope. We love with our whole bodies, because Christ did too. We love, and God is known.
cross-posted with Witness for Justice (a ucc.org publication)
Recognition
On that same day, two disciples were going to a village called Emmaus and talking with each other about all that had happened. While they were discussing these events, Jesus came and walked with them, but they didn’t recognize him. He asked what they were discussing, and the disciples stopped for a moment, looking sad – Luke 24:13-17 (adapted)
On the same day that Mary, Joanna, another Mary, and several other women went together to Jesus’s tomb, two disciples left Jerusalem and headed to Emmaus. On the same day that the women didn’t recognize the angels, the two disciples didn’t recognize Jesus.
Grief has a peculiar way of twisting perception.
So does disappointment.
To believe fervently in the divine anointing of a leader, to follow him and learn from him and feel empowered by him, to believe “This is it!” and throw yourself into a movement, only to have the leader publicly destroyed and the community scattered … it takes the breath out of your spirit. It cuts deeply into your identity, spoils your appetite for possibility. It yanks you so far into yourself that any external awareness is muted, even distorted.
Friends look like strangers when you feel isolated by grief.
Strangers look like enemies when you’re displaced by the unexpected.
You feel like a caricature of yourself, unable to recognize God through the fog of self-doubt and shame.
It’s not uncommon to lose sight of others when you’re going through it. Too often I have not recognized and appreciated a beloved child of God in front of me when I’m disoriented by anxiety. Mary, Joanna, the other Mary, the disciples … their hearts were so focused on grief that they momentarily didn’t recognize joy.
Thank God that didn’t stop Jesus from showing up. Thank God, it still doesn’t.
Prayer: Risen Jesus, forgive my tunnel vision of fear. Living Jesus, do not abandon me when I get lost in my own head and heart.
cross-posted with the Daily Devotional
Shepherded
We want, O Shepherd -- how much we want! To be esteemed, to be secure, to be carefree, and we hoard to fill our insatiable egos. Feed us with the unlimited harvest of love, in all and through all and for all. We are tired, O Shepherd. Let us lie down, guard us as we...
At the Table
You make me lie down in green pastures; you lead me beside still waters. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. - Psalm 23:2 & 5 (NRSV) Green pastures aren’t hard to come by when you grow up in...
Protest (A Psalm)
The Holy One has been rejected so that routine might not be disrupted. Cry out, O Brokenhearted! The Holy One has suffered so that the murderer might walk free. Cry out, O Brokenbodied! Raise your lament, all you who are witnesses. Do not hold back your rage before...
Heart and Soul
Here is my heart, O Holy Life: ancient with the dust of stars, new as the day I was born. What use can it possibly have if it beats only for itself? Here is my soul, O Mystery: reluctantly tethered to flesh, marked with scars and calluses. Who else can recognize it...
Sunset
Light runs out before love is finished -- some days, I think, even before love begins -- and the horizon blazes with the angry grief of time we wish we'd had, moments we missed, stories we didn't begin to write together or could've written differently if the sun had...
Easter Feast
Who will break the fast? Joyful Jesus, how dare we continue to feed upon scarcity when there is a rich feast spread over endless banquet tables so that all who are hungry may know peace? We raise a glass to you -- Holy Abundance, Open Invitation, Broken Bread....
Harrowed
I'm not interested in your pain having purpose, my Friend, only in the space to grieve what has been done to you. Let no one call these harrowing days a hallowing. The broken flesh is not a fruit to harvest. The tortured earth is not a fortune to reap. The spilled...
Pit of Despair
Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away. - Psalm 31:9-10 (NRSV) I do not wish...
Hyssop
Sprinkle death with truth, O Mercy, to dispel its plague upon the living. Mark every doorway with wisdom to guard against violent hatred that courses through the streets. Purge evil with fragrant hyssop. Bind up broken spirits and bones with cleansing joy. Make of...
