Swimming during General Conference

Posted on February 25, 2019 by admin

Warm Up

Today you start with breaststroke, the one where your hands scoop in close to your heart and then out towards the world again, like a prayer. But that’s not why you start here. Your head needs to be above water for a while. You need more air while you get your bearings, letting the water hold you up again. It feels good to be surrounded and buoyed and to focus on your breath.

You remember the goodtheology – God gathering together the waters of creation, Jesus baptized in the Jordan, Jesus stilling the stormy waters lapping at the scared disciples, the baby-head damp of your own baptism, flowing into your ordination and marriage vows.

Backstroke gives you even more air. You usually wait to swim backstroke until you’re tired but today you’re already tired. Face up toward the ceiling, as much air as you can get.

Drills

Remember your stroke mechanics. Focus on arm placement and high elbows. Practice breathing to both sides. Use this time to get ready for the long set ahead.

Freestyle

Or maybe today you will call it “crawl” like the Australians. Today, time is the least of your worries, though you’ve been watching that count down clock in the corner of the live feed for hours. It’s OK to crawl sometimes.

Dig in. Freestyle pull set, 1000 yards. It’s only in the last 200 yards you notice how tired your neck and shoulders are, how you completely forgot to use your hips. Small adjustments give surprising results. Remember this when you add the kick back later.

Butterfly

You feel like a bad ass, swimming this at the end of a work out.

All consuming, it clears your mind. You wonder about installing a pool on the floor of General Conference.

You notice the lap-at-a-time boys headed to the locker room, the ones who dart off the wall in the neighboring lane whenever you are about to turn for the next lap. They like to race you, but only for one lap. Not everyone is made for a long workout, or for butterfly.

Warm Down

Today’s swim was about 4 minutes slower than normal for the distance. You didn’t realize how heavy your load was, even dragging along through the water.

You haul yourself out and gravity resumes.

But the lingering scent of chlorine, like the invasive, pestering, life-changing One we know as Trinity, clings to you. You are not alone or left behind.

The Pillow

Posted on June 24, 2018 by admin

A sermon preached on Mark 4: 35-41, at Wesley Memorial UMC on June 24, 2018.

One morning last week while we were having breakfast with the news on, I actually said to Woody, “Isn’t that enough for me to be appalled by right now?” I was tired, I was still working on that all-important cup #2 of coffee, and the news was relentless. Again.

It feels like I can’t come up for enough air to withstand it sometimes. Just when I think “this is the worst it can get,” I’m proven wrong. Again. Late last fall, I held my breath each morning to see what famous man had been accused of sexual assault. When Woody or a student or a colleague would say, “Did you see what happened?” I would brace to hear who it was. After one of our hardest years, in Charlottesville right now we are putting people on trial who were defending themselves and our city during last summer’s white supremacist rally. The residents of Flint, Michigan, stilldon’t have clean water. Ordinary citizens are living in tree houses to protest energy companies seizing their lands for pipelines – pipelines which are supposed to be the safest most spill-proof ever, and which, inevitably do spill. Our president cruelly decided to take children away from their parents at our southern border and house them in cages, claiming he was powerless to change this policy. Then, whimsically changed it again when almost the entire country spoke out. Now those families get to stay together – but their detention will be indefinite, which itself is illegal.

It’s relentless. I know there has always been bad news. I know that in some American communities and in some other parts of the world, sadly, they are used to incessant bad news as the norm. I can remember riding in the car with my parents when I was about 8, when the news on the radio said a word I didn’t yet know: “rape.” I’m sure that day, when they had to define that word for me, my parents thought the news was too much and too bad. Still, it does feel like we are in an especially torrential time.

Like the disciples in the boat crossing the Sea of Galilee, the weather has gone menacing and the waves are lapping into the boat, threatening to sink it. It’s not that they don’t know how to handle a boat on choppy water. Jesus chose several fishermen to be his disciples, so these aren’t nervous sailors. Mark tells us “the boat was already being swamped”[i]when the disciples approached Jesus about the situation. Where’s Jesus?

He’s right there in the same boat with them – but he is napping through all of this commotion. On a pillow. That’s the part that really gets me and, I imagine, the disciples. This story is told in all three of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke)[ii]but Mark is the only one who includes the pillow. That pillow delights and confounds me. As a reader at a safe distance from those events, I love it. It’s a delicious detail and it means Jesus was really settled in for a good solid nap. But when I consider the perspective of the disciples, I think it must irk them just a wee bit to see that not only is Jesus managing to sleep his way through the storm, but that he is resting his head on a pillow.

The pillow is a symbol of incomprehensible rest and relaxation. How could anyone sleep through the threatening storm? How could anyone allow themselves to relax and become peaceful enough to sleep with all of this raging weather?

When the disciples approach Jesus, they don’t ask for his secret meditation app so that they, too, might relax. They don’t even ask him to quell the storm. They blurt out, accusingly, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”[iii]

That pillow really got to them.

What does Jesus do? He wakes up, rebukes the wind, and calms the sea. Then, he turns to the disciples and says, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”[iv] One biblical commentator describes the scene like this: “Faith means trust. Jesus seems to imply, ‘Don’t you have any trust that you’re going to be cared for? I’m telling you that God has come near, that the kingdom of God is breaking in, and you’re worried about the wind?’”[v] In their fear and panic, the disciples don’t even ask for what they need. They don’t ask for help. Instead, they accuse Jesus of not caring enough. You know, Jesus, who is right there in the same boat and the same storm with them.

They are crossing from the Jewish to the Gentile side of the lake. Right before this in Mark’s gospel, Jesus tells parable after parable, all illustrations and promises about God’s in-breaking reign or kingdom. I think the commentator is on to something with her rephrasing “’I’m telling you that God has come near, that the kingdom of God is breaking in, and you’re worried about the wind?’” Maybe there is something about being exposed on the water in a ferocious storm, while also heading away from known territory and into unknown territory that overtakes the disciples’ common sense and faith. Maybe some unfaithful questions lodged in their hearts and minds: Where are we? What’s going to happen next? Why are we going to those places? Who are those people?

I’m conflicted about fear and its role in faith. It’s obviously an impediment since the first thing almost any angel or messenger of God says anywhere in the Bible is “Fear not.” Whatever other message they have to impart, most begin by reminding folks not to be afraid by what comes next. But a lot of fear is involuntary. If I hear a noise in the dark when I think I’m alone, something primal and automatic takes over in me. I don’t engage in a rational self-debate about whether that may have been a tree limb or an intruder, I’m already gripped by fear and on alert. And, whichever way that scenario turns out, fear is at least useful in alerting me to something that could be dangerous. How is it unfaithful or “un-trustful” to experience fear, especially when it’s not a conscious choice? And yet, some of my most faithful moments involve me feeling fear and choosing to act against the advice of that fear. Finally saying “yes” to God’s relentless call to ordained ministry falls into this category of fear.

What if Jesus is telling the disciples that fear is playing an outsized role in their actions on the boat? What if he isn’t chastising them so much as illustrating in the midst of a real-life example how giving in to fear obscures what’s really happening?

Because it seems to me that the disciples miss the rather important fact that Jesus is in the same boat with them. Literally. They are so fearful – and perhaps so rankled by that pillow and the “nerve” of Jesus to be resting when they are fretting – that they miss the point that Jesus is resting. What if, instead of accusing Jesus of apathy, they had pushed their fear aside enough to wonder at Jesus’s nap? Maybe they would have thought,Well, if he can sleep now, maybe I’ve mis-assessed the situation. Maybe we will make it across the lake after all.

Fear about what comes next is causing us to mis-assess, too. There are some in our country who are so fearful about what will happen “if we let them in” that they want to close all borders to all people and operate on lock-down. There are others who are so fearful about our government’s actions on the border that we think we are abandoned – we forget Jesus is in this boat with us, too.

Last week at Annual Conference, right before our closing worship, I was hurrying from the upstairs bathrooms back down to the convention hall. When I got to the escalators, there was a little girl standing at the top, holding onto the glass side, yelling down to her sisters who were already near the bottom of the escalator. They had gone on without her and she was scared to step onto the moving steps. As I approached, I noticed a white man standing a couple feet back from her, not offering help and not pushing past her to get on the escalator. I don’t know how long he’d been there, but he seemed to be wrestling with how to help. The little girl was black. When I got to the escalator, I bent down and said, “Do you need someone to hold your hand?” She shot her hand straight up for me to hold, still looking forward, to her sisters now impatiently waiting for her at the bottom of the escalator. No look, no questions asked. I talked her through the scary moment of stepping out onto the forming step: “OK, we are going to step onto that part right there. One, two, three, ok now…” I kept holding her hand and telling her she was doing a great job. By the time we were halfway down, she looked at me and said, “I used to be scared to do this but now I’m not.” When we got near the bottom, we did the one-two-three again to step off and then I hi-fived her and told her that she was very brave and that it’s hard to have courage when we are scared but that she did it.

Her fear was transformed into confidence. She had it all in her the whole time; she just needed someone to stand with her while she learned to do it. She needed a hand to hold so she could feel her own bravery and faith. My hope is that, besides being her own moment of personal growth, it will be one of many such moments when she can rely on grown ups and on white people to befriend her and stand with her.

I was rushing back for worship that day and I don’t know why I took notice of that little girl in need of a helping hand. I do know that I’ve been trying to pay attention. Ever since the Black Lives Matter movement began, I’ve been challenging myself to take a second look. At my own motivations or preconceptions, and at the way someone “looks” to me on the street, at what I assume about him or her based on only a first glance. Like most white people in our culture, I have absorbed racist notions I didn’t recognize as such. It’s one thing to be scared when confronted by someone with a gun; it’s another thing entirely to walk around assuming that all black men are dangerous.

Centuries of racist fear-mongering have encouraged us to see threats instead of people. I recognize this sin in myself and I see it in the bad news from the border. Surely we need immigration reform, but when we see threats in the innocent faces of children and we think indefinite detention in cages is the best way to proceed, our fear has obscured our vision and compromised our faith. When a Salvadoran family scares us more than a government without compassion or justice, we are afraid of the wrong thing.

There is a ferocious storm out there and it’s scary as hell and I’m not in a position to tell you to have no fear. I’m scared, too, no matter what the angels say. But we have to act in spite of it. In the face of it. Against it.

These are dangerous waters but we are not alone, and we follow the One who told us that when we welcome the stranger, we welcome Christ.[vi] Those faces we see crying for their parents are Christ’s. When the morning news is relentless mayhem and your fear tells you God is absent or not acting quickly enough, remember that the pillow Jesus is sleeping on now is on a floor in a tent in Texas, covered by a space blanket. And he is waiting for us to offer to hold his hand.

Thanks be to God!

[i]Mark 4:37, The Harper Collins Study Bible (NRSV)

[ii]Matthew 8:23-27 and Luke 8:22-25

[iii]Mark 4:38b

[iv]Mark 4:39-40

[vi]Matthew 25:31-46

Rewriting History

Posted on August 27, 2017 by admin

Taking the next step…

A sermon preached on Exodus 1:8-2:10, at Wesley Memorial UMC on August 27, 2017.

I wonder if those midwives saw it coming.

When the Pharaoh shows up to speak to them directly, are they ready? Have they noticed the nervous decrees coming from the king’s palace, first forcing the Hebrew people into work gangs with harsh overseers and finally enslaving them (vv. 11-13)? What complaints and laments have Shiphrah and Puah heard as they spend hours at the bedsides of laboring women – women with husbands still out in fields and making bricks and forced into “all kinds of other cruel work” (v. 14)? Do they know their history – how it hasn’t always been this way between the Hebrews and Egyptians? Do they see how close the injustice and oppression are getting to their own door and the work of their own hands before they hear the Pharaoh’s knock?

Let’s say they do.

Let’s say they know it will come to this, eventually, this murderous decree in which they will each be complicit: “When you are helping the Hebrew women give birth and you see the baby being born, if it’s a boy, kill him. But if it’s a girl, you can let her live” (vv. 15-16). Let’s say they see it from a mile away and they know exactly how bad it will be and what they will be asked to do. How long do they watch it get closer? How many hushed conversations do they share with one another before the knock sounds? Do they rehearse different scenarios or do they know all along that they will lie straight to his face and save every last baby?

Do they know the next step after that?

I imagine they know they’ll get away with it for a little while, birthing being the domain of women. It will be easy to birth the babies without the king or his men seeing what happens. But after that, when Pharaoh’s snoops notice girl and boy babies, what then? Are Shiphrah and Puah ready with the next step or do they find it along the way?

This time he calls them in to his house and challenges them directly: “Why are you doing this? Why are you letting the baby boys live?” Well, sir, Hebrew women are much stronger and they give birth before we even arrive on the scene (vv. 18-19). And, birthing being the domain of women, he doesn’t have any information to the contrary so he buys it.

The next time, he takes another course. He gives up on the midwives and goes straight to his own men, commanding them to throw live baby boys into the Nile to drown (v. 22).

But justice is a team sport.

Though none of them is named at this point in the story, we move now to the family of Moses. His mother gives birth to him and, like God surveying the light and the waters and the animals at creation, she sees that her baby is good and she keeps him hidden and safe with her for three months (cf. Genesis creation and Exodus 2:2, as noted by Karla Suomaia at Working Preacher). When she thinks it’s too dangerous to keep him hidden any longer, she puts him in a waterproofed-with-tar basket and floats it in amongst the reeds at the river’s shallow edge (2: 2-3).

And while the baby is floating there the Pharaoh’s own daughter happens to be bathing nearby and she finds the basket. And she feels sorry for the baby. The prescribed response for someone in her social and family position is to have the baby killed or at least to show the basket of insubordination to her father. But she steps out of her prescribed role and feels sorry for the baby, and her response is compassion (vv. 5-6).

At which point, the baby’s sister, who’s been nearby, watching protectively ever since her mother gently placed the basket in the river, steps up to the Pharaoh’s daughter. Helpful royal subject that she is, she offers, “Would you like me to find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” (v. 7).

This is a handy solution for everyone involved: The baby goes back home, of course. But maybe the Pharaoh’s daughter judiciously buys some time. Would her father kill the baby himself if she brings him home that day? Does she know that in a few months, when the baby is a toddler, he will be out of danger?

The last leg of the insurrectionist journey – at least in this part of the baby’s story – is the day his own mother hands him over to the daughter of the Pharaoh, right into the family of the man who wanted him killed before his first breath. What does she do when she gets back home? Does she hatch plans to free him from the palace or does she hang around the gates hoping for a glimpse of him as he grows up? Does she know what she will do if she ever sees her boy again?

I’m asking a lot of questions because this story demands it. (Be suspicious of anyone who wants to tell you once-and-for-all, case-closed, exactly what a biblical text means.) This story is the against-all-odds origin story of the man we know by the last verse of the passage is Moses – the man God will continue to call out of the water and into new lands and up mountains and across deserts, leading a nation behind him. It’s a foundational story, on which a huge swath of the Jewish and then Christian story builds.

And right there, at the very beginning, are Shiphrah and Puah. Without them, the rest of it can’t happen. Notice how crucial their bravery is. Notice how they are able to influence the beginning of a nation from their precise social situation, in the course of their every day work.

Do Shiphrah and Puah see it coming? Does the baby’s mother know what she will do after those first three months? Does his sister know what she will do next, from her perch by the riverside, waiting to see who will happen upon her baby brother? Does the baby’s mother break her own heart every day she nurses her own son while wondering what will happen when he is weaned?

I don’t know about y’all, but I have a fondness for plans. I like knowing the next step. I find comfort in the thought that my efforts are “going somewhere.” Even if you have a more relaxed relationship to planning, you know our culture loves the idea of “cost-benefit analysis” and “demonstrated results.” As a people, we tend to be reluctant to risk when we can’t see the payoff. Even when it comes to something we are passionate about, we might want to study it a while longer and be sure that if we set off in a certain direction, we will get where we think we are headed.

This is what intrigues me about Shiphrah and Puah. I don’t think they have this luxury or this hang-up. They seem guided by their knowledge of and relationship with God, so that it is crystal clear to them that they will never be killing babies for Pharaoh. I doubt the rest of the story is clear. I doubt they have any idea of their next step until they take it.

I want to be more like Shiphrah and Puah. I’m afraid that if I were in their situation I might say very “reasonable” sounding things like, So I don’t kill the babies and then what? Someone else kills them anyway – and then comes to kill me? How does that help our cause?

Or, closer to home: So we take down some statues, and then what? What part of history do we “rewrite” next?

But they don’t have to know the next step – only the one right in front of them at that moment. And they take it. They do everything in their power, at each point in time where any bit of power is in their hands, to do the next right thing. And when the story moves away from them – when the power to act moves into the womb and the hands of the baby’s mother – she does the next right thing. And then her daughter and the Pharaoh’s daughter each do their things. The ball gets passed – inelegantly, surprisingly, in a completely unplanned fashion – from one woman to the next, resisting and refusing to cooperate with evil, one decision at a time.

Justice is a team sport and it’s also a marathon, not a sprint. Shiphrah and Puah don’t complete the mission – just their mission. It’s the combined efforts of all of these women, one by one, over time that moves the needle of justice and begins the building of a nation.

None of us needs to know where this will end in order to risk for Love. None of us needs to be an expert in American or Confederate history in order to listen to the pain spoken by our black and brown and Jewish and LGBTQ brothers and sisters. I don’t have to know, specifically, what I’ll do next week in order to take a step for justice right now. And if obscure Hebrew midwives like Shiphrah and Puah have enough power to start something important enough to become a nation, then so do we.

Whether you saw it coming or not, whether you joined the counter-protests when the white supremacists marched here two weeks ago or not, there is a faithful next step. You do not have to know what city council should do or how to fix Virginia’s open carry laws. You do not have to re-learn and broaden your knowledge of history before you make a move, though reading might be one next step. On August 12^th, Jan was stationed at the jail and our United Methodist colleagues Robert and Phil were providing safe space and medical care at First church; other ecumenical colleagues like Seth and Brittany were on the front lines, staring evil in the face. We are not all called to the same next step. Justice is a team sport and it’s a marathon. There will be more headed our way. If the invitation to cooperate with evil can find its way to Shiphrah and Puah, it will pound on our doors, too. Again.

I don’t just mean the doors of our town. The church has work to do. The United Methodist church has been complicit in the evils of racism, once splitting into northern and southern churches over it and, even earlier, birthing the AME Church by our refusal to recognize Richard Allen’s call to preach. We have been content to offer charity when we’ve been called to work for justice. We are all called to be midwives for God, helping to bring about the kingdom of God and to live here in this community as if that reality is already here in its fullness. We are all already set free to do this justice work. In Christ, we have been made one family: neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female (Galatians 3: 28)… Which does not mean Yeah, we’ve treated one another poorly in the past but Jesus fixed all that. Nor does it mean that the church has already arrived. Evil pounds on these doors, too. And sometimes, as in the culture at large, we can’t hear it or we call it by other names like “law” or “custom” or “how it’s always been” or “what the bible says.”

We are set free to live radically loving, rule-breaking, decree-defying, justice-flowing lives – and we are called to start from exactly where we are without much time to plan and with whatever tools we have on hand. Right where we are in the birthing room, the board room, the lecture hall, the barista counter, the cookout, the family dinner, the school PTA meeting…

Without Shiphrah and Puah and the women who took the ball after them, we might have an entirely different story. It’s the same here in Charlottesville and in our country right now.

We’ll be writing history, one way or another. One step at a time.

All you have to know right now is which direction Love is.

Thanks be to God!

Photo © Woody Sherman, used with permission.

Swimming at the JCC

Posted on March 14, 2017 by admin

As I’ve mentioned, I’m determined to keep up my physical-mental-spiritual-emotional practice of swimming my butt off this winter. As I’ve also mentioned, I’ve had to make special arrangements to swim while out of town for work, something I often do with the help of this handy guide for finding a pool wherever you might find yourself.

In both January and February I spent most of a week in Richmond, and I’ve swum at the Weinstein Jewish Community Center each time. I didn’t grow up in towns with JCCs and had never been to one before my first January swim there. I asked my friend Jake if there were any cultural things I should know about being a good guest in the space and he patiently explained it would be pretty much like using the YMCA – not everyone at a JCC is necessarily Jewish and I wouldn’t stand out immediately as the obvious Christian in the mix.

From the membership coordinator I spoke with on the phone to set up my guest pass, to the front desk guy ready with a “Good morning” and a dry wit, to the concierge-style lifeguard, this is a place that does hospitality well. And I’m not kidding about Pete the lifeguard. He greets each swimmer by name when they enter the pool deck (he knew mine by the second day and remembered me when I showed up again in February) and gets off his chair to assist swimmers adding into lanes when they are all full. Seriously, he motioned and directed me to my lane, as he walked over to the swimmer already in the lane, saying, “I’ll let him know you’re joining him,” and then he tapped the other swimmer as he approached the wall to let him know he’d have company. It was like being shown to my table at a fine restaurant. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, necessary, since swimmers mostly work these things out on their own. But it was oddly nice – especially standing there, vulnerable, in only a swimsuit and my weak-prescription goggles – to be treated like a valued member of the pool community and offered a particular place within it.

“Love your neighbor” has resonated more than any other goal or descriptor of our life and ministry at Wesley this year. Not because we are doing it well all the time, but because we don’t know a better way to respond to hate and xenophobia than with this simple, all-encompassing, daily reminder from Jesus (Matthew 22: 36-40). I’m here to tell you that being welcomed as a guest, greeted by name, and offered a place in the pool is a fantastic embodiment of loving one’s neighbor.

In the first weeks of the New Year, before I swam at the WJCC the first time, a rash of bomb threats began at JCCs around the country. They are still happening. The first day I navigated my way to the unfamiliar pool in January, in the dark early morning on nearly empty streets, a pick up truck followed closely behind me for several blocks before I arrived. It went its own way before I got there but in this time of threat and hate, I noticed and briefly worried. By my February visit, I’d seen news reports of JCCs being evacuated during bomb threats, and I considered what to have ready in my poolside bag in case we had to evacuate in the middle of my swim. I didn’t consider not going.

This past week, the lobby was full of preparations for Purim celebrations, the Hamantaschen-laden holiday when Esther’s story is remembered and humorously re-enacted. It’s a short book and worth the read, if you don’t know it or if it’s been a while. Esther ends up in a position to make her voice heard and influence a king. She needs a little convincing that sticking her neck out is worth the risk. She’s told her silence won’t guarantee her safety and, “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this?” (Esther 4: 12-14).

My neighbor-loving neighbors at the WJCC know how to stick their necks out. Given the national climate and current threats, I wouldn’t have been surprised or angry if they had closed ranks and temporarily stopped offering guest passes to unknown non-JCC members just passing through town. But they know Whose and who they are, and what they have to offer at just such a time as this.

Frankly, even if the Swimmers Guide showed me a closer pool somewhere else, I’d choose to keep going back to the WJCC when I visit Richmond for work. Not just for laps or for the kind and gracious lifeguard, but because these are my neighbors.

Jesus Promises They Will Hate Us

Posted on November 14, 2016 by admin

Walking into Oceti Sakowin Camp with the sun rising, Standing Rock Sioux Nation, 11/3/16

A sermon preached on Luke 21: 5-19 and Isaiah 65: 17-25, on November 13, 2016, at the Wesley Foundation at UVA.

As I think you all know by now, last week I traveled to North Dakota, to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. I had been watching the news for more than a month, learning about the multiple Native tribes who had come together to camp out on the prairie to protect the water of the Missouri River, where a company from Texas has been making its way across four states with an oil pipeline (called the Dakota Access Pipeline), including plans to tunnel under the Missouri River, just north of the Standing Rock reservation. I had read about the original route for the pipeline, which was supposed to cross under the river north of Bismarck (about an hour’s drive north of the reservation). But the people in Bismarck thought that sounded dangerous and risky to them and their water, so the plans changed to avoid that town – but not to avoid the risks to water contamination all together. I had read about the peaceful prayerful protests and about indigenous people from all over the globe traveling to North Dakota to support and stand with the Standing Rock Sioux. Since last April, thousands of people have been camping and protesting and trying to protect the water. In the last month, a highly militarized police and security force began shooting rubber bullets at peaceful protestors and at even at their horses. A private militia hired by the oil company set dogs on protestors, some of whom were mauled. Authorities in riot gear have used pepper spray and sound cannons on peaceful, prayerful protestors exercising their first amendment rights – protestors and water protectors who are bathed every day in prayer and who pray daily for those officers. Authorities have locked up journalists who have tried to cover the events and have thrown over 400 people in jail on contrived charges in attempts to intimidate them into stopping and disbanding. In jail they have needlessly strip-searched people in order to humiliate and further intimidate them. They have shipped some of those in custody to jails several hours away, to make it harder to get back home again or find rides when they are eventually released, sometimes on bail as high as $1500 per person. When their court dates come around, they will be required to travel hours back to those other towns to appear. Police are using helicopters and drones constantly circling overhead and they have road blocked the main highway between the reservation and Bismarck. They constantly stand guard at the roadblock with additional forces keeping watch from the nearby ridges.[i]

As things came to a head and became violent in this past month, the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and other Native groups I’ve been following began asking explicitly for more people to join them. We need numbers, they said. We need them to see we won’t go away and we aren’t alone. Please help us. I kept reading and following and praying. I didn’t really think about going. It’s the middle of the semester. It’s a really long way away. Wouldn’t it be better to send them money for winter supplies? It didn’t seem reasonable or feasible. Then Rev. John Floberg, a feisty crusty old Episcopal priest who’s been serving in the communities on and near the Reservation for 25 years, sent out a call to clergy. It’s time to come, he said. I know it’s inconvenient and this is short notice but this is it. They need us. We can provide a protective witness for their struggle. He was hoping to get 100 clergy and over 500 of us answered the call. But I told colleagues and friends who were going “no” at least twice before I changed my mind. I told God “no” more than that. But it wouldn’t leave me alone. All the same “reasonable” things popped up – money, time, effort, inconvenience, family commitments… As I pondered and said “no” and delayed, the airline tickets kept going up. Wouldn’t it be better to send them $1000 for food and warm clothes and winter camping supplies? What am I going to do? But the Holy Spirit would not leave me alone and the people of Standing Rock kept saying, We need help. We need you to come. At some point in that epic week of wrestling with God about this decision, I realized that, unlike so many many things in the world, this is something I am qualified to do. I am a person who prays; I am a visible sign of the church; I have a body and I’m able and well enough to travel. I don’t know what to replace pipelines with or how to implement renewable energy plans. I don’t know how to map an alternate route for this pipeline. I couldn’t convene a meeting with President Obama or film a documentary about this struggle. But I was absolutely qualified to put on my clergy garb and say “yes” to my far away neighbors who needed help I could provide, and spend some money and travel in the middle of the night and stand in the middle of the prairie with them and pray.

I am not telling you this so you will praise me or come tell me after worship how amazing it is that I went. I do appreciate the support and prayers from Wesley folks and others in Charlottesville as I answered that call, but that’s not why I’m telling you this now. I’m trying to let you in on, as best I can, how inelegant and clumsy and wrestling-match-like my discernment was – and how blessed I was by choosing to go where and when I was asked, to offer what was asked of me, and not to rationalize or monetize my way out of it.

Most importantly, I am telling you this in the hopes that when you hear someone’s request or see someone in need of help and solidarity, you won’t take as long as I did to wrestle it out.

The pipeline may or may not be stopped or re-routed and you may or may not think pipelines are a bad idea – but there are not “two sides” to this situation. For Christians, the only side is to stand up for and to stand with those who are being beaten and jailed and harassed and intimated without any just cause.

This sermon is not about the election, exactly. It’s about how Christians are called to act no matter who is in power, no matter how prosperous and peaceable the times, no matter how war-torn and uncertain.

Luke records Jesus saying, as the disciples admired the stonework and the architecture of the temple, “As for the things you are admiring, the time is coming when not even one stone will be left upon another. All will be demolished.” When Luke writes down those prophetic words of Jesus the temple’s destruction is already 15 years ago for Luke’s own audience.

Jesus says, This is impressive and beautiful but it will be dust. It will not stand the test of time. It will be destroyed. He stands in the shadow of the empire and the religious institutions of his day telling his band of followers that everything will crumble and war will break out and they will be arrested and persecuted – but that, even in the midst of all that, God is still counting the hairs on each of their heads. By enduring, holding tight to God alone, they will “gain their lives” (v. 18).

Jesus does not promise wealth or peace between the nations of the world. He does not promise that the institutions and the things they love about the current regime will be spared. He promises natural and human-made destruction, famine, health epidemics, kingdoms collapsing, prison, religious persecution, and betrayal by loved ones. Jesus promises that people will hate us because of him.

Since Election Day incidents of hate speech, graffiti, and intimidation, targeted at Muslims, Blacks, immigrants, and women, have increased. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center and as of 5pm on Friday night, there were over 200 such incidents since Election Day. People have been approached in the street, found graffiti on their apartment doors, been directly put down and threatened in school cafeterias, and more, told to “get out of our country” and “If you aren’t born here, pack your bags.” A Black woman was standing at a traffic light in Louisiana when a truckload of white men pulled up and shouted at her, “F*** your black life!” They laughed and chanted “Trump!” as they drove off. According to Inside Higher Ed, at New York University’s engineering college someone defaced the door to a designated Muslim prayer room, by scrawling “Trump!” across it. Even before Tuesday’s results, we here at UVA have experienced a spate of hateful speech and harassment directed towards Jews, the LGBTQ community, Black students, Muslims, and women. We have seen enough of this here that a collection of student organizations has come together under the name Eliminate the Hate and they are sponsoring a week of activities and events on Grounds this week, to speak out and up against this rising tide.

In the middle of another tumultuous and destructive time, Isaiah wrote (Isaiah 65: 17-19):

For I am about to create new heavens

and a new earth;

the former things shall not be remembered

or come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever

in what I am creating;

for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,

and its people as a delight.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem,

and delight in my people;

no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,

or the cry of distress.

Isaiah wrote these words to the war-torn remnant of Israel who were finally returning home after 60 years as captives in Babylon. They are words of hope but they must have been a teary and anguished hope to the people’s ears as their eyes took in their destroyed homes and vineyards and towns. Nothing was intact or as they had left it. They had to start over again. “The former things shall not be remembered or come to mind”…”be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating”…It must have seemed impossible to those returning exiles that they would forget what had happened, that standing in the rubble of their former lives they could ever forget the world-shifting loss or that moment or any of those long 60 years. It must have seemed insane to stand in that situation in that moment and be told to “rejoice” in what God was creating. Where, God? Exactly where in this mess is your beautiful handiwork?

But God promises that the houses and vineyards they build will not be in vain. They will make it through to live in them and to harvest the fruit. Their hard and faithful work of rebuilding will not be in vain. God promises to answer before the people even ask, before they call out again.

Spoken into a broken time of uncertainty and great fear, Isaiah proclaims that even though you may not be able to see it yet, God is still working. What looks ugly and destroyed is the fertile soil for what grows next. Hang on and hope, because here’s what you will see soon.

Sunrise over Oceti Sakowin Camp, Standing Rock Sioux Nation, 11/3/16

One of the things I noticed at Standing Rock was how the Native people referred to others as “relatives.” There is a loudspeaker in the camp and as the morning was getting started around the sacred fire, someone came on and said, “Good morning, relatives!” When indigenous people from around the world arrive at Standing Rock, they say, “Our relatives from New Zealand and Hawaii are here.” This deep recognition of their connection as indigenous people, across country and landscape, is the basis for this huge gathering of tribes (nothing like this has been seen in more than a hundred years).

Since I returned home, I’ve been following Lyla June Johnston, a Navajo woman who spoke to the clergy group and joined us in our prayer and protective action. She impressed and humbled me when she described the Walk of Forgiveness she was organizing for the Sunday after we were there. She talked about how important it was for all of us to join them in their stand and encouraged those of us who are white, descendants of colonizing settlers, to be proud of our own family lineage but also to admit to what our people have done. She said, “Your job is to acknowledge what happened and Native peoples’ job is to forgive.”

This week after the election she posted this prayer to Facebook: “Creator may you bless my dear uncle Donald Trump. May you help him to heal. May you help him to feel Your Love. May you help to ease his fears and help him to sense Your True Blessing. Help him to forgive himself and others so he may be free. And most of all, just give whatever blessing you would have for Your son, and my uncle. May we continue to retain our nature in the spirit of Your unconditional and restorative love and forgiveness. May we continue to work for health and justice with love for the unhealthy and the unjust. #NotMyPresident #JustMyUncle #Ké” [K’é means kinship]

This is the result of seeing one another as relatives. This is what a Christian prayer ought to sound like. This prayer has meat on it and it’s more daring and courageous and faithful than the mere lip service we sometimes give to the theological understanding that we are “brothers” and “sisters” in Christ. This is the kind of prayer that seeks to create connection and solidarity with some people – and might also make others hate you. Just as Jesus promised.

I don’t think it is a surprise to many of us that we live in a divided country. But it seems this week that we were surprised by just how divided. Almost no one thought Trump would win the election. No one thought the vote would be half and half.

However you voted, half of our brothers and sisters, our relations, voted differently than you did. What I’ve heard most Americans saying this week is “They” didn’t know how many of us there were, or, “They” didn’t know how dangerous their vote was. I have not heard most Americans this week confessing that we have been just fine up until now not knowing or caring about those other relations in that other half. Those aren’t my neighbors.

Rev. John Floberg, who called us out to Standing Rock, reminded us on the night before our protective witness with the Native people, that the police officers we would see across the divide, that barricaded highway bridge, were not our enemies. He reminded us that on the cross Jesus did not rebuke, he forgave – with his dying breath. So, John Floberg said, “We greet the officers with prayer and love and compassion, too.”

This is hard.

Those stones are beautiful but they will be rubble one day. This will not stand.

My life is not in the Democratic Party or even my personal shero Hillary Clinton. My neighbor’s life is not in Trump or the Republican Party or Bernie or any candidates or parties. Our lives, patriotic and democracy-inspired as they may be, are not in these United States. Or in the dream of moving to Canada or making this country “great again.”

Our lives are in Jesus Christ. They will hate us because of Jesus. Keep going. All this destruction and despair? Raw materials for the beautiful new creation of God.

This is not the time to keep your head down and wait for the uneasiness to pass. This is not the time to think I’m not a racist/ I love Muslims/ I don’t sexually assault women/ I welcome immigrants / I care for the disabled and then be done with it as if you have completed your task. This is not the time to think I’m happy with my vote and I’m nice to people and that’s enough.

The election may or may not have gone in the direction you hoped for – but there are not “two sides” to this situation of increased, targeted hate crimes and speech. For Christians, the only side is to stand up for and to stand with those who are being harassed and intimated simply because they are Black or Muslim or immigrants or people with disabilities or women or….

This is not the time to put your head down in prayer and hope it will pass. This is the time to lift your head up, take in the destruction you see, and stare straight in the face of hate while you proclaim and enact and witness to Love.

Love in these times means refusing to eliminate half of our country when you consider who your neighbors are. That means you don’t have “elite” and “uneducated” neighbors; you simply have neighbors with different life experiences than yours and if you don’t understand those, it’s time to learn and to meet some new people, and work on loving them. Love in these times means resisting and standing up to hate in its many insidious forms. Speak out, stand with, and offer to walk alongside those in this community who are targets of bigotry. Literally, offer to walk with students in unsafe situations around Grounds. Use the Just Report It system. Call for help. Keep watch when something seems off. Do not remain silent when people are degrading and demeaning and intimidating and targeting others in speech or action. State unequivocally that hate speech and “us” and “them” commentary is not OK with you. Attend the Eliminate the Hate teach-in to learn about your own blind spots and to walk across some of our community’s divides to meet your relations.

No matter how uncertain and fearful the times, no matter how unfamiliar the landscape, no matter how unknown and un-relatable our neighbors, our relatives – God is creating a new heaven and earth, right now. In the middle of this huge mess. Believe it.

The only temple that will not fall – not even in the face of death itself – is Love. Let’s work with God to build it.

Thanks be to God!

Photos are my own.

Endnote:

[i] This is a compiled account from months of reading and following the news. A few good places to learn more and follow the ongoing stand are: https://www.facebook.com/Indigenousrisingmedia/

http://www.democracynow.org/topics/dakota_access

http://standwithstandingrock.net

http://ictmn.lughstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/DAPL-Magazine-2016_PREVIEW_r1.pdf

http://westernjurisdictionumc.org/wjumc-bishops-send-letter-to-president-obama-in-support-of-standing-rock-sioux-nation/

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-showdown-at-standing-rock-20161108-story.html

Prayer, pizza, and blazing signs of hope

Posted on November 11, 2016 by admin

post-election-prayer-and-pizza-at-wesley-at-uva-on-11-9-16

The table was set at Wesley last Wednesday night, and they came.

It’s been a long week, folks. If you are preparing to preach or to listen to preaching this weekend, you have my heartfelt sympathy and blessings as you make your way to that moment and beyond. In the midst of all this, it’s been a hope-filled week in campus ministry. I hope you will head over to Ministry Matters today to read my latest reflection.

Snow Day

Space to play, rest, create, feast.

Tag Archives: #loveyourneighbor

Swimming during General Conference

The Pillow

Rewriting History

Swimming at the JCC

Jesus Promises They Will Hate Us

Prayer, pizza, and blazing signs of hope