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
One of Another
Blessed are you, one of another, and most blessed is the other with whom you are one. Blessed is the rock and holy is the river, and beautiful are the shapes & spaces they cannot make without the other. Blessed is the breath and holy is the heart, and precious are...
Praise
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O God, is the smoke that clouds the air with the prayers of the wayfarers and the downtrodden, with the songs of grief and hope, protest and sacrifice. Sweet, sweet, sweet, O God, is the oil that blesses the heads of the ancestors and pours down...
Killing the Messenger
We are not fond of messengers -- O God, we confess it! What is there to love about one who comes dressed unapologetically in freedom to inquire into our weariness? We prefer such a messenger beholden to our labor. What is there to heed in the questions of one who...
Treading Water
In advanced swimming lessons and in lifeguard training, many years ago, treading water was my favorite part of the final tests. Far from being a challenge to exert as much energy and strength as possible, treading water was a challenge to conserve energy as much as...
Wrestling
Let me behold your face, I prayed, but instead you met me in the dark and bent me into painful knots. Let me be relieved, I pleaded, and instead you laid a path among my adversaries. Let me prove my heart, I declared, but instead you withdrew to tend the song of...
At a Distance
Then God said to Moses, “Come up to the LORD, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship at a distance. Moses alone shall come near the LORD; but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.” -...
Still, Still, Still
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things to great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother. - Psalm 131:1-2a (NRSV) Maybe you’ve been feeling this...
Milcah’s Inheritance
Milcah sang a lullaby to her granddaughter Rebekah, born to Bethuel, You are a queen, gifted and beautiful, a sovereign over kings. You are the gladness of ancestors, and the celebration of the future. And Rebekah believed her grandmother Milcah, owned the inheritance...
Confession
We have listened to the wrong gods, O Holy Life, to the ones that say "Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" and the ones that say "Your help is in the rat race." Hear your people protest: "How long?" Hear your people confess: "No more!" We have said our prayers to...
