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
Advent II: Earth
"Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain." Isaiah 40:4, NRSV Peace to the valley, the cradle of death. Peace to the mountain, the beacon of change. Peace to the...
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Walk on the water, O Sister; leave behind the weight of fears that anchor you to a battered and sinking boat. Walk on the water, O Sibling; step onto the miraculous expanse by which life is nurtured, eroded, and renewed. Walk on the water, O Brother; dare to trust the...
Satisfied
You silence the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples. You visit the earth … and water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. You crown the year with your bounty. - Psalm...
Stop the Clocks
Joshua said in the sight of the people, “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and Moon, in the valley of Aijalon.” And the sun stopped in mid-heaven and did not hurry to set for a whole day. There has been no day like it before or ever since, when God heeded such a...
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Blessed are the unwavering, the resolute, for theirs is the unstretched heart. Blessed are the bold, the undaunted, for theirs is the unbended knee. Blessed are the unapologetic, the loyal, for theirs are the judgmental eyes. Do not trade eye for eye; take what you...
To What End?
The Israelites came into the wilderness of Zin. Now there was no water for the [people], so they quarreled with Moses and said, “Why have you brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness for us and our livestock to die here? Why have you brought us up out of...
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Moses said to the people, “Remember this day on which you came out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; no leavened bread shall be eaten. Today, in the month of Abib, you are going out. When the [Sovereign] brings you into a land flowing with milk and honey, you...
The Sandwich Generation
These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. … Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and that whole generation. -...
Dreaming of God
On his way from Beersheba to Haran, Jacob stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven …...
