Listening #queenlatifah #nakiajones #trevornoah

Below are a few links to black people speaking in the wake of the two police shootings this week of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile as well as the sniper attacks on Dallas police officers guarding peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights.  Listening to these people is especially helpful for me out of the many listened to this week.

Nakia Jones: Police Officer and Mother, Facebook video

Trevor Noah: The Daily Show, You Can Be Pro-Cop and Pro-Black

Queen Latifah: Musician, Actress, "Black Wherever I Go...I'm Also the Daughter of a Cop, Sister of a Cop, Cousin of a Cop, Niece of Cops

As a white, Christian pastor, wife, and mother, my heart goes out first and foremost to everyone who lost people they love this week - black, white, and blue.  The shock and grief is unimaginable.  At the same time, my mind is challenged by the complexity of the problems needing solutions. I'm open to being a part of the solutions.  

God's plan: Why it is by faith that do NOT invoke it...

Individual or collective experiences of violence shine a light on just how twisted people can be.  Recent events include Orlando, Charleston, Baylor University's sexual assault tolerance, Brock Turner rape crime, to name a few. Whether in the nightly news or during the pastoral care and counseling that I do, people often say some variation of the following comment, “I know that God has a plan.”  In pastoral care, there may or may not be a response in the moment to the comment depending on how the conversation goes and how reassuring this idea is to the person.  In the news during national crises, there's usually the token interview with a pastor who's willing to say that it's part of God's plan.  

Here’s what I know for me: “God’s plan” is difficult to invoke for myself or anyone else after having a father die when he was 50 years old following his homelessness due to intractable schizophrenia. It's galling that anyone would claim that his suffering and the subsequent suffering of his family was randomly inflicted by God or in any way deserved. The way that I’ve come to terms with my father’s life, illness and death is through the cross.  And, when I say it that way, what I really mean is Jesus on the cross.  

All kinds of things can be said to try to make sense of the cross.  I spend a lot of sermon time saying them.  At it's core, Jesus’ death on the cross is nonsensical, dark, mysterious, incomprehensible, etc.  Yet, the cross is where the nonsensical, dark things in life meet a glimmer of hope.

Hope is what I hear in the classic Bible verse often invoked regarding God’s plan:

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.   (Jeremiah 29:11)  God’s plan is “for your welfare and not for harm.”  These words land in the paradox between God’s plan and a broken world – two things that are true at the same time and seem irreconcilable except for the cross in between them.

I hang onto the cross because God sunk into humanity in Jesus and was executed by the worst of what people can dish out. In this self-sacrifice, God did not raise a hand in violence against the very people who committed the violence. Rather, God redeemed into holiness what seems utterly unredeemable. But this isn't only about the grandiose, public violence that other people commit. It's also about the small acts of violence I commit in a million ways that hurts other people and myself. My complicity in systems of violence that breeds communities in which solo shooters are possible. God's holy work in me by way of the cross is the hope that I hang onto as those places of violence in me find redemption and new life.

Ash Wednesday - Sweet Relief

"Isn't it crazy to think that the minute we are born we start dying, " I said to my 18 year old son.  Without hesitating, he replied, "Yes, but we are also living."  My kids are used to me winging out all kinds of statements. That moment was no exception.  And it pretty sums up Ash Wednesday for me. There is a raw honesty to the words that perfectly describe my body's fragility and the gratitude to be breathing today.  My nursing and pastoral work means I've seen a lot of death. My loss of two fathers brings the grief close to home.  I said to my daughter recently that if we knew we were dying tomorrow the beauty of today would look really different.  She said (with patient affection), "Mom, it's so you to say that kind of thing."

The things that I tell my kids spout out randomly.  It's like me trying to figure out how to live in those realities but feeling so far from being able to it.  Ash Wednesday frees me up just a little.  I'm reminded that the reality of utter dependence and lack of control is true.  It's not something to figure out or live into.  It just, simply, IS.  So today I'll hear the words and receive the ashes as gift and reminder that control is an illusion.  

There's this great sound and feeling when the ashes are put on my forehead. I can feel the grit and hear the sound. It's earthy and stark. It's the paradox of dying while living and living while dying - time bending to expand.  It's sweet relief from striving, from lack of discipline, from the mess of life, while acknowledging the beauty of it. 

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Mardi Gras, Manning, and Newton [disclaimer: I like football]

It's not lost on me that the Broncos' parade celebrating their Super Bowl win coincides with Mardi Gras this year. My mind is full of images of Newton's smile and swagger.  He's delightfully fun and larger than life. Manning's career includes such a long list of "the most" and "the best" that I regularly wonder what data the NFL doesn't collect.  Reading his comments on leadership, team work, practice, resiliency, and staying in the moment often inspires reflection.

My mind is also full of images of the fragility of the body and the spirit. Manning's 39 year old body is no longer as willing or able as his mind. The Broncos' win really did take a team of "53" even though his leadership is included in that number. The Carolina Panthers' loss shrunk Newton into a shadow of himself. The criticism of his press conference behavior has become an intellectual feeding frenzy.

The fun of watching football includes: the surreal athleticism; the complexity of the game; the social dynamics of institution, fans, players, leaders, and followers; the guilty pleasure of cheering heroes and booing villains even if contrived categories; and hanging out with my husband.  The struggle of watching football is the greed, the institutionalism, the injuries, the rage, and the hangers-on that feed off the NFL like sex traffickers and gambling conglomerates.

Here's what I can't shake as a Broncos fan and as a pastor this Mardi Gras, the day before Ash Wednesday. This last week of football fits these two days.  Mardi Gras, in the most simplest of explanations, is a big party of excess before the austerity and repentance of the six weeks of Lent that lead up to Easter.  This development of "let's sin a bunch before we have to repent" is more recent in its history.

There are glaring excesses and abuses within the NFL.  Hence, the Mardi Gras comparison. The excesses and abuses are well documented elsewhere and, along with the fragility of Manning and the shadow of Newton, scream Ash Wednesday to me. On Ash Wednesday, there is an honesty about ourselves that includes acknowledging our brokenness.  The churchy language is confession of sin.  There is also an honesty about our fragile bodies as ashes are put on our forehead with the words spoken, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  We hear these words and more as we're told that there is nothing we can do or not do that would make God love us any more or any less.

On Ash Wednesday, I look forward to the honesty, accountability, and love.  It's real and raw and hopeful.  It's a relief sweeter than any king cake could possibly be.

3 Years A Pastor

Three years ago today my world became very big and very small all at once as I was ordained a pastor, called through the people of Augustana Lutheran Church. Feeling the love again through the pictures and memories: my family showed up supportive and wondered what this would mean; friends and neighbors showed up whether or not the church makes sense to them; church friends showed up knowing the wild, disrupting and sustaining force of faith in community; clergy friends showed up knowing the complex joy and challenge of congregational life; and new Augustana friends showed up in support and curiosity about their new pastor. God's love showed up through all these people on that day. Crazy!

Being a pastor is surreal - looking out at everyone over the pulpit or across the communion table, proclaiming faith, hope, and love in the name of Jesus feels like a dream from which I don't want to wake. And being a pastor is real, oh so real - real people, real stories, real love, real hours, real grief, real disagreement, real mess, real life.  I'm exhausted.  I'm grateful.  I'm ready for more.


Charge from Ordination:

Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God's mysteries. (1 Corinthians 4:1)

Caitlin, care for God's people, bear their burdens, and do not betray their confidence. So discipline yourself in life and teaching that you preserve the truth, giving no occasion for false security or illusory hope. Witness faithfully in word and deed to all people. Give and receive comfort as you serve within the church. And be of good courage, for God has called you, and your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Syrian Refugees and Schizophrenia In My Family

11.6 million people displaced in Syria and the surrounding countries.  Unreal.  Unreal unless you're there.  One of the people on the move.  In my own world, schizophrenia is present again.  First my father, now my niece.  Also unreal.  Unless you're in my family.  The two seem completely disconnected. But they're not to me.  The common threads are fear and wanting to stay present.  To be present, connected, and thoughtful when it would just be easier to not think about any of it.

So, for my family, I do that in all kinds of ways - by telephone, Facebook, prayer, conversation with friends, and my own counseling to work through family history and family now.

For the refugees, I'm trying to keep it present and prayerful.  Some of you know that with my nursing background and with my theology this is also about bodies for me.  Some people in my church asked council members for a way to respond to the refugee crisis.  We're doing something we've done before for Lutheran World Relief by making personal care kits (http://lwr.org/personalcarekits).  I've never made one.  This time I did.  In part, it's about people and their bodies so it makes sense to me. I went and bought a few towels, nail clippers, toothbrushes, soap, and combs.  Watched the video on the LWR website so I could wrap the kits to hold together for shipment across oceans to the camps.

As I put together each kit, they became my prayer for each person. There was something about putting those few items together and imaging somebody opening it up. They are unmarked - no names, no religious or patriotic symbols, no identifiers. A personal care kit wrapped by one person who remembers that another person needs care.  It's a human act for another human that can't be replicated by governments or NGOs.  It's one to one.  Being present across distance. Remembering and being remembered.  That is all.

Christian Freedom: A Theology of Imperfection (A sermon for today) - Mark 6:1-13 and 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

[sermon begins after 2 Bible readings]

Mark 6:1-13  He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2 On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. 4 Then Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." 5 And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. 6 And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching. 7 He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; 9 but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. 10 He said to them, "Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. 11 If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them." 12 So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13 They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

2 Corinthians 12:2-10  I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. 3 And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows— 4 was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. 5 On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. 6 But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, 7 even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. 8 Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, 9 but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

[sermon begins]

There are more than a few ways in which I’m like my mother.  One similarity we share is that we’re both complete softies when it comes to children peddling their wares in the name of fundraising.  There’s a Christmas cactus in my church office that Monica, now a young woman, sold me a least a decade ago. I have a double-spoon rest that I pull out when I have company so that the mashed potatoes or gravy or whatever it is dripping off the spoon stays off the counter.  However, there’s one fundraiser to which I’m utterly immune no matter how darling the young person.  Magazines. 

Magazines are easy for me to resist, in part, because they become a must-read project.  My mother does not have these inhibitions.  When she’s approached by a grandchild or someone else’s grandchild selling magazines, she goes for it.  Thanks to my mother’s willingness to buy magazines, I am the recipient of Smithsonian magazine.  I believe a sibling or two of mine also receives this magazine.  It covers two of my mother’s favorite things – supporting kid fundraisers and making sure her kids are up to speed on their history. 

Honestly?  I delight in this magazine.  I learn stuff.  I don’t get to every issue but every issue I get to gives me something.  (I don’t get kickbacks for talking this up, I promise.)  My mother asks me every year in the spring whether or not I want to renew and I say, “Yes!” The bi-monthly issue just came this past week.[1]  It includes some brain science, a status update on the city of Pompeii, and the soon-to-be-released book controversially attributed to Harper Lee along with an update on her home town of Monroeville, Alabama and her life since the 1960 publishing of To Kill a Mockingbird.

There is also a series of articles under the heading “The Presence of the Past.”  There’s an article about Ferguson, Missouri and a photo-essay of the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War 150 years after the war.  These last two articles are why I opened the magazine the same day that I received it.  I’ve also read different perspectives about the killings at Emanuel AME church and the burning black churches as Confederate battle flags come down in the South as well as the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage.  A lot is happening in America in a short period of time and I can’t seem to get enough reading material.

I’ve also read today’s Bible passages.  Thank the good Lord Jesus because these bits of Bible couldn’t have come soon enough to disrupt my study of systemic racism in America and same-gendered relationships in Christianity.  The verses in Mark, and maybe especially the second Corinthians, are reminders of the main things. 

In Mark, the apostles are heading into the villages two-by-two.  Jesus sends them off with strict instructions to travel with no bags, no money, and no extra clothes.  In modern parlance, they don’t even have a carry-on bag.  They have shoes and a walking stick.  Off they go!  And what are they to say to people they meet?  Repent.  That is all.  Repent.  And what are they to do?  Heal.

In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he talks about various ways people validate themselves as sent from God.  He tells a story about someone who had a vision. The vision itself is not boast-worthy nor is it divine authorization to do anything.  So if fancy-pants personal visions don’t get him anywhere, what does?  Paul keeps this really simple.  Weakness.  Christ’s power is perfected in weakness.

The apostles go marching into towns, two-by-two, to preach repentance.  And how do they do this?  Through their utter dependence on the hospitality given to them.  They can’t pay for it, they can’t nibble on snacks packed along for a dry spell.  They go out to preach repentance not out of strength and power but out of the vulnerability.  They witness out of their hunger, their poverty, and their dusty shirts.  Jesus doesn’t say that you can be my disciples if you have your act together.  Jesus tells these apostles to go survive on whatever other people are willing to give them and preach repentance to them. 

What does this mean?  Well, maybe it means a few things.  Maybe it means when you’re new to a community, that you allow the community to offer you hope and healing through your weakness.  Maybe it means that, if you’ve been part of a community for a while, radical hospitality given to the stranger may teach you something about God through your own weakness.

Last week, at Bob Olson’s funeral, Bob’s life preached in this way.  As skilled and gifted as Bob was as an engineer, in my conversations with Bob he was acutely aware of his imperfections – the limits of how far his humanity could get him with God and with other people.  This is where his testimony as a Christian is so powerful.  He worshiped Sunday after Sunday with the awareness and humility of needing to hear Jesus’ promise of forgiveness of sin.  His vulnerability was a proclamation of his need for Jesus.  It was that simple.

Listen again to Paul words to the Corinthians:

“…but [the Lord] said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me; Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”  

Paul’s words are part of the freedom of a Christian that Martin Luther wrote about almost 500 years ago, quoting Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.[2]  The meme version of Luther’s treatise comes at the beginning of his essay and reads this way:

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.

A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.[3]

Hear that again:

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.

A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.[4]

Jesus’ sending of the apostles out with nothing, the apostle Paul’s assertion of boasting in weakness, and Luther’s paradox of Christian freedom are significant as part of the conversation in America today with a lot of people talking loudly about religious freedom. 

When we gather on Sunday mornings to worship, we are a bit like the people who the apostles set out to visit.  It can be easier to close the door on their message of repentance.  To tell those dirty, needy apostles, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and watch the dust shake off of them as they walk away.  But then we miss the sweet relief of faith, the healing and wholeness given though the cross of Christ as we repent of our sin. 

The national conversation about freedom is an important one.  All the reading, conversation, and taking action are a part of America’s ethos from its constitutional inception.  However, the rhetoric of freedom takes an unhelpful turn when we claim only its perfection as a model without repenting for the human imperfections and sin that are necessarily embedded in it, robbing people of the very freedom it claims to offer. 

This is where Jesus comes into the mix and assures us that his “power is made perfect in weakness.”  Jesus is not resorting to perfection to accomplish faith in us or anyone else.  My fellow Christians, Christ sets us free from sin and death through his death on a cross then sends us out, imperfect and vulnerable, for the sake of Christ and for the sake of other people.  This is good news indeed.  Amen.

---

[1] Smithsonian, July-August 2015. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issue/july-2015/

[2] Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520)” in Three Treatises: from the American Edition of Luther’s Works 31. (Philadephia: Fortress Press, 1947), p. 290. Read full text by Martin Luther at this link: http://users.polisci.wisc.edu/avramenko/The%20Freedom%20of%20a%20Christian.pdf

[3] Ibid, p. 277.

[4] Ibid, p. 277.