Hagar at the center

Sermon for Laurel Heights UMC, San Antonio
Genesis 21:8-21

We are living in a moment of stories. Certainly it’s a moment of many other things—masks and a frightening new virus, working from home and online church. But this is also a moment of stories. Some are reflections we share on our new, COVID-induced lifestyle. Some have come as testimonies from health care and other frontline workers, as our nation figures out how to be safe and make a living, and what it means to value each other’s lives.

Still other stories have come to us from the news—stunning stories of Black American men and women killed without justification in the street and in their homes, sometimes by law enforcement and sometimes by fellow citizens. These stories are not new; what is new is the breadth of the audience hearing and digesting them. Cell phone cameras, social media platforms—these have called the attention of Americans to a reality, a lived story of brutality and systemic oppression against Black people and other people of color, that we have since forever not wanted to believe but whose truth is incontrovertible, clearly unfolding before our eyes.

We, as twenty-first century American citizens and Christians, particularly those of us who are white, are facing a moment of decision. The tragic stories of this moment and the people whose lives they represent are asking us, are you willing to be part of crafting a new narrative? Are you willing to take a hard, different look at what you’ve thought you knew, in order to learn something different? Will you lay down the stories you think you know and the meaning you’ve learned to give them? And are you willing to live differently as a result, for the sake of love, mercy, and justice, so that all fellow human beings on your watch might not just survive, but thrive?

I heard a quote in a podcast this week: “If you don’t own the story, the story owns you. And if you don’t own the story, you can’t write the ending.” Here the word “own” doesn’t just mean to possess the rights to the story, or to hold authority over what the story means. To actively own the story means to reckon with it, to honestly encounter and absorb the full truth of it, even where it’s disturbing or feels threatening. It means to stand before that truth, without trying to change its existence. For us, in this nation, it’s time to own some stories.

Today’s Genesis text tells a story that invites us to read in a new and different way, a way of reading that could serve us in our current national moment of challenge and decision and help us own our story. One of the greatest tools for discernment and learning when we engage Biblical texts is to put ourselves in the place of different characters, and not just the one we automatically identify with or see as familiar. In Genesis 21, instead of seeing this as one more chapter in the long saga of Abraham and Sarah, I want to invite you to read from the perspective of Hagar. Hagar is a slave, a girl, a dark-skinned foreigner. Yet despite her vulnerability and lack of social power, if we read this right, she is the protagonist of her own story. And the fact that white or European readers have not generally encountered her in that role is itself part of our story.

I want to note here that today I’m drawing from the work of Dr. Delores S. Williams and her book, Sisters in the Wilderness, which hit me like a ton of bricks back in seminary. Williams identifies in the figure of Hagar a prototype for the struggle and bold survival of African American women. I recommend it as a way to learn about racial injustice from a Biblical angle. I am grateful for the ways Dr. Williams has challenged and changed my thinking, and I’m grateful to share her wisdom today.

Today’s passage from Genesis 21 has its roots in Genesis 16 and really cannot be understood outside that context, so I’m going to tell some of that back story. I invite you to find that chapter in your own Bible. Abraham and Sarah are old people and are having trouble trusting that God is actually going to do what God has said, which is to give them a whole nation of descendants. Sarah in her impatience decides to act, to help God out, as it were, and she gives her slave to her husband as his second wife. That word “wife” means that any child born to the slave can be counted as a legitimate heir and relieve Sarah of the burden of not having her own child. Sarah is exercising her complete control over not just Hagar’s labor as her slave, but over the intimacy of her body and its life-giving power. Some have imagined that being handed over to Abraham in this way might have been an honor or a step up for Hagar. But—and I hope you’ll excuse me for getting real about this here in church—but there’s a word for sex without consent, without a woman’s voice or decision-making power over her own body. Though we try to soften it by putting it through a filter of slavery in a foreign land, thousands of years ago, and however well it fit into the customs of the time, today we would call this rape, or at least forced surrogacy. That would be a more accurate description of what happened to Hagar at the hands of Sarah and Abraham.

When Hagar became pregnant, the story says she viewed Sarah with contempt. Was this a jab at Sarah’s childlessness? Or resentment for her having turned Hagar over to Abraham? We don’t know—the person recording this story wasn’t worried about the internal workings of women’s lives. But we do know that as soon as Sarah’s plan turned out just the way she planned it, she no longer wanted it that way. Sarah complained to Abraham, who fully cooperated with her plan. And even with his potential heir already growing in Hagar’s body—this is their plan—Abraham tells Sarah that Hagar is hers to control. He tells his wife, “Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please.” Sarah “dealt harshly” with Hagar, the text says, and Hagar made the decision to run away into the wilderness, to escape the abuse.

This, to me, is a very hard story to hear. From my perspective as a white person and a person of faith, a person of this book, it’s a hard story to begin to own.

As chapter 16 continues, despite the many dangers that surround her, Hagar’s path is one of life, thanks to her own courage and the provision of God. She makes her way to a spring of water, and there the angel of the Lord finds her and speaks to her. The voice of God counsels her to go back home, as there is surely no safe place for her, pregnant and alone, in the desert. As Dr. Williams notes, this moment is about survival, not liberation. God promises Hagar that the baby inside her will live and become a great nation, in a promise that sounds very similar to the one God made to Abraham. And then Hagar does what no other person in the Bible does—she gives God a new name. As one who has seen and been seen by God, she gives God the name El Roi—“God Who Sees.” She returns from the wilderness. She bears her child and names him Ishmael, which means “God hears.”

We fast forward to Genesis 21, where Sarah has finally given birth to Isaac, and we find Ishmael playing with his little brother. Jealousy spikes in Sarah upon seeing them together, and once again she uses her power to make the story go the way she wants. She demands that Abraham get rid of Ishmael and Hagar. Again, they are cast away from the safety of home and into the wilderness. Once the water they carried is gone, Hagar cries out, unable to bear seeing the death of her son. But God hears Ishmael, and God opens Hagar’s eyes, and instead of death, she sees a well. This time she does not return to Abraham and Sarah but goes on to raise up her boy and to find a wife for him from her homeland. And Ishmael grew and flourished, and as a man, he became the father of Islam.

It’s quite a story, especially when you read it with Hagar at the center. I know this is a heavy word in a heavy moment. But I can only dare to believe that this is a hopeful moment as well. Power relationships, injustice, and rationalization have been at work between human beings for a long time, probably since the beginning. We certainly see them shot through even the most ancient parts of the Biblical witness. We see, too, that the constructs of race and slavery have played their insidious role in American society—and, honestly, in the American church—since our collective beginning. This truth owns us right now. But if we can look it squarely in the eye, empowered by the love and grace of God at work within us, we might get to be part of the holy work of turning it around.

What story do you need to own in your heart of hearts? Where can you find space to learn from a new voice? And what difference will it make in what you do next? Go back and re-read our history, centering new characters whose voices have cried out for centuries but whom we have not heard. Engage new people in real conversations, trusting and being trustworthy enough to bear their pain and share your own, and discover their beauty and giftedness. Find a place to give your money or your time to open a closed door or relieve a heavy burden. And stay connected with your faith family, where we share with each other God’s life-giving truth.

In closing, I want to name three more Black women protagonists who lived in times of hardship and danger. There are books and movies about them, so you can learn their stories. I share their names as beacons of hope. Henrietta Lacks, a poor woman whose resilient cells were taken from her body without her permission and whose genetic material changed the course of medical research; Ruby Bridges, who at six years old in her little dress bravely walked down the stairs and integrated an all-white Louisiana school; and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman, who testified, “God's time is always near. He set the North Star in the heavens; He gave me the strength in my limbs; He meant I should be free.”

Take heart, beloved ones, for God’s time is always near. May the God who sees, the God who listens, inspire us to be people who see and listen. And may this same God, who gave Hagar water and hope in the wilderness, lead us to own this story, so that together we might write for it a new and gracious ending.

Silence is complicity...

Silence in this moment is complicity; yes. Also, I am aware that as a well-meaning white person, I often open my mouth thinking I know things that I don’t necessarily know, and I don’t quite trust myself. I’ve already been stupid and had to apologize recently, more than once, and I worry about saying anything at all. So. But. Here I am, talking.

This week I’ve tried to listen in a different way, to new voices, but also to voices from my own past. My father set the ground level of my heart, as one who was the spokesman for lunch counter sit-ins in Dallas in about 1960, when he was in seminary. I listened to his preaching all my life and knew that, as hard a time as he would give most people for many different reasons, Black people were off limits, period. Justice for them was a cause he championed all his life, a deep conviction I never saw him betray and which I often saw him uphold.

(This, of course, is my opinion and my perspective on my father. He was born Mexican American and raised basically white. To think he escaped cooperating with the racist nature of this society is naïve. But from what I saw, he spoke and acted for justice with consistency and courage. I also have a story about my own relationship to my Latino heritage, which is a subject for a different day.)

I remember the racist water I swam in, especially in junior high and high school. Austin started busing Black students across town in 1971, in response to a court desegregation order. I attended Webb Sixth Grade Center in 1974 and began at Burnet Junior High in 1975. I remember white boys fighting Black boys and wearing it as a badge of honor. I watched as junior high friends’ families decided to move north of town to send them to high school. I learned the term “white flight.”

My high school was named after Sidney Lanier, known as “the poet of the Confederacy.” I looked at other Austin high schools and wondered why one named after William B. Travis, a hero of the Alamo (which is itself a-whole-nother story to unpack), would use “Dixie” as their fight song and run the Confederate battle flag up and down the sidelines when they scored. There were lots of brown kids who attended that school. And the school which must have had the highest concentration of African American students in town was named after Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston. These things were curious to me, but I don’t remember seeing them as a larger pattern.

There was racism in my school, too. I won’t repeat the things I heard people say. Some of them were blatantly and intentionally offensive, and I remember objecting. Others were in the form of jokes, not at individual people, but still clearly racist, and I remember not objecting.

One summer after college, I served as a tour guide in downtown Austin. As I led groups at the State Capitol, I learned for the first time the deep salute to the Confederacy that was woven throughout that beloved building and its grounds. As a white person who grew up feeling proud to be more Texan than American, I hadn’t thought Texas was really the South. I gradually began to see that I was wrong, but the idea felt foreign to what I thought I knew about my identity, our identity. Our schoolbooks had done a good job of hiding it, but how much evidence before my own eyes did I need? The examples I’ve named are only the beginning of a very long list. How was it so hard for me to recognize the purposeful pattern, this blatant way of claiming the territory, lest any wonder or try to forget who ran things?

As I try to remember my past, I do know that what I learned from my father did not always translate to resistance or right action on my own part. Somehow, I was—am—able to sincerely desire to be on the side of racial justice yet still be complicit in injustice. Both those voices lived inside of me then and still do today.

I’ve since learned about Tulsa and Rosewood, redlining and contract homes, the lynching my grandpa remembered from his boyhood, the fact that the north was different, but not kinder than the south. In seminary, I read James Cone’s description of Martin and Malcolm—how the former began to see and call out the global footprint of our nation’s oppression, and the latter began to see a possibility for unity he hadn’t before. And how they were both gunned down, as they grew in their danger to the American status quo. During my recent time stuck at home, I finished the enormous Chernow biography of Alexander Hamilton and learned that white people have been raising fists and weapons at each other over politics since the very beginning. We were talking about civil war over slavery in the 1700s. (There’s much more reading and learning ahead about that.)

This is our national DNA, and if you know anything about churches or families, you know what it takes to overcome that kind of programming. It takes telling hard truths and an act of the will to do what initially feels unnatural. It takes disorientation, making room for new voices and new agency, and a claim on the vision of an alternative life.

Now I’m working on listening to new voices. Reading national Black writers I had always said I’d get around to, listening to podcasts and webinars, listening to colleagues. I’m looking for local places to give and to serve, once I’ve listened. I’m looking at my own job and how to work for the changes we have to make as a church and a conference. As I said, I am convinced of the validity and importance of the cause of justice for Black people, Indigenous people, and all People of Color. I have attempted to give myself to this cause in other venues. Yet I’m still part of the problem. I don’t always know, but I think and act as if I do know, blind to my own bias. I do harm that way; I know I do. And as a person of power in a larger institution, I help that institution do harm as well. I need to learn, and I feel both disturbed and grateful to be doing so. Our institution needs to learn as well.

I haven’t really posted until now, partly in an attempt to examine my own motives. Facebook can be a hard place to navigate. It has been most helpful to me during this time when folk have been honest about telling their stories or when they’ve shared resources I need to check out. I’m just trying to do the former, not seeking justification or affirmation.

The Maya Angelou quote is full of grace for me: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." I’m trying to know better and do better. And I trust that God, who made us diverse, beautiful, and precious, the God who grieves and cries out with the murdered and oppressed, will not let us rest until we confront and amend our sin. I appreciate all that many of you are doing, often in courageous ways, to help me along that path.

Pentecost 2020

I have lost count of the number of times Pentecost has followed right on the heels of a severe Central Texas storm. Late May and early June are a ripe time here for this kind of weather—torrential rain, flooding, tornadoes, hail, and wind. Just this week, my roof and both my cars got beat up by hail, my numerous live oaks lost what seems to be half their volume, and my daughter and I huddled in our dark house as the most powerful wind I can remember tore across our patio and yard.

Ten years ago, I experienced a storm just like this, at this same time of the year. I was preparing for a new ministry role and scared to death, convinced that the jig was up, and I would finally be revealed as an imposter. Late Saturday afternoon before Pentecost, I drove over an hour through a blinding storm to see a parishioner in the hospital. Once I arrived, I thought I had survived the worst. But all the way home, lightning fired through the sky every few seconds, making the night seem as day, for miles and miles. I hoped that what I’d learned as a kid—that my car’s rubber tires would protect me from electrocution—was really true.

I pulled over not far from home at a high spot that normally boasts a spectacular view. I had come to trust that I wouldn’t die on this trip after all, and I began to feel like perhaps the storm was a sign that God and I were headed off on an exciting adventure. I imagined that it might be a big show, but that I would be safe, tucked into the front seat, held by a divine seatbelt. I felt grateful and secure.

I resumed my drive, and when I rounded the final corner for home, what I saw made me catch my breath. Covering the whole road was a thick carpet of brilliant green. Inches deep, the green had been ripped out of the trees that lined the road. I was used to self-pruning live oaks, with wind routinely bringing down dead branches. I was used to raking and sweeping and composting the copious dead leaves that fell from these trees. But this was different. This was fresh, green, living parts of trees, torn and shredded, littering the ground. I remember feeling shocked and saddened—of course this was natural, too, but the sight shook me. Because what I heard in my heart as I turned that corner was that the adventure before me was neither of my choosing nor under my control. I was likely to lose some things along the way, and they might not all be old and dead; some of my loss might involve stuff I wasn’t ready to let go of yet. Rather than riding as co-pilot with God, I saw that I too was a creature of the sovereign Lord of Life, subject to transformation and pruning.

And so it has been. Not always, if I could help or avoid it. But the storms and the trimming have come. The transformation, normally not of my choosing, has come.

We generally celebrate Pentecost as the birthday of the church, the time when Christ’s waiting people received a new baptism, a new energy surge. It’s a story of initiation and power and fresh, full possibility. The church born in that room went on to transform the world, even as its members themselves experienced transformation. They gave up their possessions and shared with the whole. They learned new roles. They taught and listened and argued over the details. And a whole bunch of them had their minds and hearts changed. What was once unclean and cast out became beloved. What had been divided by a wall of history, practice, and belief was brought together with the kiss of peace. Strangers and foreigners and enemies became family.

Now, we know better than to think that any of that was the church folks’ idea. We know better, because the Bible tells us so. They didn’t like it, Paul didn’t like it, Peter didn’t like it. They didn’t pick it. But the Risen Jesus and the Holy Spirit, over and over, came to them and said, “HEY! Get with the program! Here, this way, is the way to life. Choose this. You don’t have to know how, but you have to be willing. Allow me to make you over and change your mind. But you’re gonna have to leave some stuff behind and do some new things instead.” Thanks be to God, they did.

Today, amidst Pentecost, its rushing, violent wind and tongues of fire; amidst the late spring Central Texas wind and hail; and amidst the staying-at-home and the devastation of COVID-19 to people’s lives and livelihoods, there’s another storm that has cut through our nation—the storm of racism. It’s not a new storm, and it’s not one that comes and goes, observing one season over another. It’s a storm that rages all the time, wreaking destruction and devastation every single day. Some of our people might think it’s gotten worse lately, but black people and other people of color know better. As someone wrote, it’s just that now white people have started seeing the videos.

I want to say that the way out of this storm is going to require some pruning and shredding, and not in some way that we get to be in charge of. Especially if you’re a white American, you are going to have to get ready and willing to lose some stuff you’ve never had to consider. It might be your quickness to speak, your trust in your own good intentions, your right to achieve and be first in line, or your assumption that you can have the first idea of what it feels like to be a descendant of 400 years of systematic violence and oppression. (And when I say “you’re” going to have to do these things, what I mean is I’m going to have to do these things.) I don’t know what it will be, but it’s gonna have to be something.

Because we are not going to be an easy nut to crack. This country is evidently very reluctant to offer itself up for the kind of transformation of the heart I believe Jesus asks of Christians. Obviously we’re not all Christians, but can you imagine if all of us who supposedly are starting taking that seriously? Let’s remember—or if you never learned it, go and learn it now—this nation and its supposed freedoms were founded on the backs of black, brutalized people. During our sheltering time, I finally finished the Chernow biography of Alexander Hamilton, and in his story, our American DNA shone painfully clear. White people in this country have taken up fists and weapons against each other due to political differences since the very beginning. We started talking about civil war within ten years of the nation’s birth. We have been at this for a very long time, we white folks, and black people have suffered from it the whole time.

While I knew this on some level, reading about the brawling and dirty politics and rowdy armed gangs of white people, in the context of the day we’re now living, sent a chill through me. I know the power of legacy, in families and in churches. A church that starts because a bunch of people got mad and left the old church will find the same thing happening to the new one. Families pass down traditions of abuse and addiction. Nations do the same. Some have tried break those patterns—South Africa and its Truth and Reconciliation Commission comes to mind. Even then, historically oppressed people in those countries continue to suffer. And the civil rights movement and legislation aside, our nation has not begun to be honest about our past and to tell the full truth of what white people have done to black people and other people of color, for centuries.

We will be a hard nut to crack, because patterns and attitudes that old sink in and become privilege that white people do not see and are invested in not seeing.

If we white American Christians want to be agents of reconciliation in this society, if we want to live as people of peace, transformed by the Prince of Peace, we’re going to have to humble ourselves, remove ourselves from the driver’s seat or the front seat, or as our bishop says, make discomfort a spiritual discipline. Our transformation will require a holy storm and a burning flame and a stiff wind. It will have to happen to us, and we will also have to bend over and pick it up. We will have to let ourselves be pruned, and shut up, and listen, and learn how to choose life and not death, first for the suffering, and then for ourselves.

I don’t know how many different themes or storms can pile onto one another, how much sorting we can do in this one moment. My heart breaks for all the heartbroken, angry, exhausted-body-and-spirit people. But if we as people of God have ever found hope in the story of Pentecost, today is the day to claim that hope. I hope today that love can teach me the humility to hold my tongue when I want to justify myself; that I can listen deeply without thinking simultaneously about my response; that I can learn the courage to confront more boldly the injustice I currently observe in silence. May the Spirit of the Living God blow and burn where it must, and may it console and strengthen where the burning has already happened for far too long.

The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl,           
and strips the forest bare;           
and in his temple all say, “Glory!”

Psalm 29:9

Self-Care for the Long Haul

Attempting to write a piece on self-care for clergy during a pandemic is an exercise in dodging multiple pitfalls. The resulting word needs to not pile on more expectation in an environment of overwhelmed overworking. It should not provoke irritation by suggesting the obvious or sounding tone deaf regarding the challenges of the day (“Just let your kids indulge in a little screen time while you take a half hour to pamper yourself…”). Nor should it leave people feeling worse or less capable than they already do.

This, therefore, is not a list of boxes to check on your proper self-care agenda. There are many good lists already out there. This is, instead, a set of assumptions and questions that I hope will lead to a word of life based on reality, experience, and the promises of God.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

— Matthew 11:28-30

First of all, know that you are good and beloved. Start your self-care from a place of gentleness. For real. Just as you filter the snippy or short-sighted responses of people around you, knowing they’re under stress and doing the best they can, afford yourself the same grace. Between the carbs and the short temper, the social media and vices of every sort, you are not alone, but in good company. None other than the Apostle Paul admitted, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19). This time is hard for everyone, and the normal ways we’ve managed ourselves have largely been thrown out the window.

Then just notice. Think about what feels out of whack in your life, at least regarding the things you can actually control. Where are the pressure points for you, the places where you’d like to think or act differently?

Wonder to yourself about what you need most, right now, and what might change the rhythm of your day. What do you already know about yourself? Do you routinely need re-grounding in your body when things get hard? Do you need quiet or solitude? Laughter with a friendly face? A walk around the block, by yourself? A nap? A particular spiritual practice? 

Think about how you’re spending your work time. Did you rush in with high adrenaline at the beginning? Is that pace sustainable, or is something going to have to give?

Look for choices. You are a finite resource, and you cannot do everything. Despite all that feels out of control in your life and in your mind and heart, think about where the places of choice might exist for you. Is there something you started doing during the initial rush that has stopped being helpful? What would be lost if you let go?

What’s likely to give you life today? How do we choose life-giving things, when they’re not always our first choice or impulse under stress, or when circumstances make it hard? What might help interrupt a difficult behavior loop?  What would work for you as a prompt or reminder so that you can choose something life-giving every day?

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

— John 10:10

 Who is in it with you? In this time of social distancing, there is a subtle pull toward isolation. Who might you check in with (by phone, video, or even email), to help you with the choices you’d like to make? A partner, buddy, spiritual director or counselor? If you’re carrying worry about the health or survival of your congregation, how can you speak this out loud in a safe place? We all know better than to go it alone, but sometimes when we’re stressed, we don’t notice the ways we’ve pulled away from others. Take note. Who is on this journey with you? How can you draw them in?

There’s no one right answer to any of this. Maybe you’ll take stock of where you are and decide, even if it’s not pretty, you’re actually ok. Hallelujah! Or you go in and out of ok, day by day or hour by hour. The point is to allow yourself to engage in self-reflection, in a spirit of love. Often, just allowing your heart’s truth to come to the surface is very healing. If you find the truth uncomfortable or embarrassing, that’s all the more reason to let it out, rather than leaving it to fester inside you.

There are a lot of very good recommendations on how to take care of yourself during a time of quarantine at home. Take a walk, eat a vegetable, sleep when you feel sleepy. Use the oddness of our extended time at home to take breaks as you need to. I heard someone say to treat yourself like you would a toddler—with patience, kindness, and forbearance. I also heard my bishop say that runners recognize an important truth—if you wait to drink until you’re thirsty, you’ve waited too long. Take care of yourself regularly, now, with an eye toward the long haul.

In all things, love. However you can manage it, leave space to hear God’s word of grace and love for you, and listen for the prayer of your heart in response. And remember that you are not alone.

“But now thus says the LORD,
he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

— Isaiah 43:1-3a

Prayers of Lament

This meditation was shared in the context of a prayer webinar for Rio Texas Conference clergy.

I heard it said in a podcast this week, that we have officially, collectively, hit weary. Some of us have lived on adrenaline and carbohydrates for two or three weeks, but the blood sugar is plummeting, literally or figuratively. School may now be out forever, and Facebook crashes on Sunday morning, and we’ve rescheduled our virtual selves up to the ears, with many of you preachers working harder now than you ever have before. Some of our churches were already fragile, and we don’t know what this season will mean. We have kids with us and kids far from us. We have aging parents and family members working in hospitals or without jobs at all. We’re starting to have people die and need funerals, when we can’t be with them, and they can’t be with each other. And, of course, there’s Holy Week. On a screen. 

We are carrying a lot. Others are too, but for now, we’re going to take the time together to pour out our hearts before the Lord of life and before each other. We’re going to do this, because as we lead our people during this time, part of our work as resident theologians will be to recover a theology or practice of lament. And we’re going to start with our own lives, our own souls, our own lament. It’s important that we do this for several reasons.

One—you know and I know that much of what we are feeling right now is grief. And we also know what happens to unacknowledged, unexpressed grief. It does not dissolve into the ether but buries itself and waits. The problem is that it doesn’t stay buried well—it spills out in disguise, as irritability, insomnia, crappy food or too much drink, frenetic activity or restlessness, or an effort to control things or people—to name a few. The discomfort and crankiness we feel is often, at its heart, a sense of loss and the grief and fear that go with it. We cannot escape this, as I’m sure you’ve counseled parishioners. The only way through grief and fear, is through.

Second—it is fitting and right to express all of this, the grief and all its disguises, in the presence of God. We know this because the Bible tells us so, and we know it because that’s what living relationships are for—telling the truth, sharing what’s real. The psalms are full of this witness, some of which we’ll read this week as we walk with Jesus to the cross.

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?” (42:3)

How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? (13:2)

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? On my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest. (22:1)

The psalmist is not ashamed to cry out and in fact to demand an answer from God. Whether that answer is to fix the problem or just to come alongside in trouble, to quiet the troubled spirit or offer hope for the future—telling the truth about what’s hard in our lives is a legacy of practice handed down to us as people of God. It’s what our ancestors taught us, as members of the family. It’s what Jesus himself taught us as he knelt in the garden. Lament properly belongs to the Christian life.

Finally—we need to share our lament as a witness to this world. Especially in the U.S. context, we’ve clothed Jesus with everything from the American flag to the prosperity gospel. Our people, our churches have taught and learned that, in addition to dressing up for worship, we need to show only our put-together side to the world. Trouble or worry or uncertainty or grief for many seem evidence of a lack of faith. And this need to pretend can feel doubly true for us as pastors. We are walking through a dark time as a nation, as a global community, and the extent of the resulting individual and corporate death is yet to be seen. We will need a sturdy, trustworthy faith. A flimsy, Easter Bunny Jesus who glosses over the immensity of our grief will not be enough to see us through. The suffering people of this world need to know of the real Savior. They and we need to hear that he weeps with us and dies with us. We need to know that he is big enough to hold our grief and big enough to hold our life.

So it is that we come to pour out our prayers of lament this day. During this time, you may want to lift up the names of people you know and love, or people you don’t know but still love. You can also share any other sort of burden on your heart. This is a time to say the words and let the emotion come. And if you know it’s there, but you don’t feel you can let it come right now, make sure to set a time for yourself, soon. Tell a friend, write in a journal, listen to music that will connect you to the deep reaches of your heart.

This reflection was followed by a time of sharing prayers via chat on Zoom. Afterwards we did the same with prayers of hope and praise, celebrating the new life springing up all around us, even in the midst of death.

At the Grave - John 11:1-44

Devotional for the Rio Texas General/Jurisdictional Conference Delegation - March 26, 2020

So, fellow delegates, if we thought things were weird before, we just didn’t quite have all the information. From the denominational perspective, the amount of flux we’re having to get our heads around during this pandemic is tremendous. General Conference, postponed to more than a year out. Jurisdictional Conference, a date to be set by the Council of Bishops, who represent many places and positions. Annual Conference, scheduled for Corpus in June, which could easily have to be canceled but hasn’t been yet. So we wait in the unknowing.

Of course, the unknowing extends way beyond dates of when things will and won’t happen. How will we United Methodists, who only barely made it out of St. Louis still standing, and who were driven to the mediating table by our utter failure, continue to live in the same house for another year and a half? What will happen to complaints and abeyance and churches and people who are all ready to start a new thing? This Book of Discipline, which has been a good guide to us but which also burdens and constrains nearly everyone, no matter what side you’re on—how do we keep living under these rules?

As surely you’re all accustomed to answering your children, your parishioners, your friends—I don’t know. But when I don’t know, I always try to look again for what I do know.

I am intrigued by this week’s intersection between the lectionary gospel text and the moment our country and our world are experiencing. I know a bunch of you don’t follow the lectionary, but the Lenten cycle in Year A is one of the most meaningful series of scriptures there is for me. This week’s story is John’s account of the raising of Lazarus. Jesus, who seemingly waits to go to Bethany until Lazarus is good and dead; his visceral anger at the grief he finds there among his friends; the physicality of this dead body, which has begun to stink and decompose, already making its way back to the earth from which it came. Jesus stands there, at the gate between life and death, right at the spot where the hinge opens and closes for us, the place of our ultimate powerlessness. There stands Jesus.

As we stand in that sort of doorway, we’ve all heard tales recalled of the influenza epidemic of 1918. The stunning graph that speaks to us from over a century ago, proving the value of putting physical distance between us to slow the spike of contagion and giving us the term, “flattening the curve.” Accounts of the impact of sunshine and fresh air on recovery rates. Trying to imagine what it would have felt like as a nation to be at war, already sending our young into harm’s way, and watching soldiers, whole swaths of them, struck down by the virus before they even reached the battlefield, before they even crossed the ocean.

I recall the stories from my own family—how my grandfather, then a seven year-old, watched his mother die in November 1918 and then spent the next 93 years, until his own death at the age of 100, never having gotten over the death of his mother. My grandmother’s cousin, a five year-old that same year, who at her mother’s funeral kept trying to climb into the casket with her mother’s body.

I recount these memories, not to be morose. I tell them in part because I wonder what the mark of that time felt like to the society as a whole. We have largely forgotten now, and hopefully our historians can go back and help us remember. But that sort of collective trauma or grief must have left its mark on those people, as I believe we will happen to us in this current crisis. It definitely marked the individuals who lived through it. A very unscientific study of my own family shows that these who suffered so as little ones yet somehow lived long, full lives that overflowed with service and blessing for others. That wasn’t the whole story, but alongside the grief they carried, it was part of their legacy for the world, by God’s grace.

What will be the story for us? Will the time of economic breakdown, distancing, illness and even death that lies before us make us different? Will it impact the polarization in our society and the fight over irreconcilable differences in our church? We know of so many times in recent memory when we’ve been willing to suspend our fighting, our judgments, in order to respond in compassion to our neighbors. 9-11. Hurricanes, from Katrina to Harvey. Even in our churches, when the tragic death occurs, the casseroles and memorial checks come from all sides. Social psychologists help us understand why that is, but we also know that the duration of the golden moment is limited. We always seem to snap back to our old patterns of seeing and relating to one another. In this case, my morose wondering is, especially if we start putting bodies in the ground, bodies of people we know and love, what will the impact be on us and on our journey as a church?

I’m sorry this is all so dark. But we are in darkness, in this moment of unknowing, wandering in the depths of our hearts as we try to examine them during this most extraordinary Lent—and in this moment, Jesus stands in the doorway and proclaims, “I am the resurrection and the life.” When we weep, he weeps with us. When we die, he even dies with us. And yet. He stands in that doorway with us as the one who holds the key. He speaks and invites us, at the grave itself, into life that is incorruptible, that shines brilliant, giving off light and heat, burning off the death that clings so closely.

I learned from sermons I heard long ago that only the dead are available for resurrection. Pretending this is not happening to us and that it will not change us, that we will not in some ways die—as families, as a society, as a church—is both futile and an ignorance of the gift our Lord seeks to give us.  Because the flip side of saying that only the truly dead can be resurrected is that there is no grave that can keep hold of a body called out by Jesus. There is no doorway closed to him. And we don’t have to wait for the trumpet to sound on the last day to find that out. This victorious life in Christ is his gift to us right now. He speaks life into our death, right now.

A friend noted the ways our fragile earth is already responding to the coronavirus crisis. The cloudy waters in Venetian canals have settled. The smog-laden air over places in China is measurably clearer. We are for now taking to the streets, meeting our neighbors (from a safe distance), leaving gifts of art and humor for each other along the way. These are not full or permanent shifts, to be sure, but they are signs to us, signs like one Jesus showed his people in the gospel of John. What we see is not all there is. It’s not all that can be.

So we are entering both a time that is unimaginable for us and one when we will most need our imagination. What might lie on the other side of this crisis? What redemption might come of our suffering? As a church, what fight or structure might die that needed to go, and what life-filled body might take its place? How will Jesus use us during this time to call out life to the world, especially to those whose suffering started way before COVID-19?

As Jesus tells us over and over, do not fear. Not because the moment is not fearsome, for it is. We fear not, because the Lord of life stands with us, calling your name and mine, and he has conquered even the grave itself.

Our Life as a Tree

Recently I got to stay with some friends at a beautiful ranch house in the Texas Hill Country. It belongs to a church member of a pastor friend of mine, and it was the perfect place for a weekend retreat. The lady who owns it had apologized for the remains of a big live oak that had been toppled in a storm, down the road from the house. She said she was sorry the whole unsightly mess hadn’t been hauled off yet. 

Soon after our arrival, I walked to the place where the tree had stood. It was very large and had been split right down the middle, with the two halves splayed out opposite each other, in dramatic fashion. It appeared that the tree had been hollow and was already partly dead. One of the halves lying on the ground had borne leaves, so it had clearly still been alive when it fell. The hollow center, however, must have weakened the tree and made it susceptible to the external forces that caused it to split and fall.

It was a startling sight, and the first thought that came to me was the moment in which we find ourselves as the UMC. Everything is a metaphor in my mind—was this a metaphor for us? I didn’t and don’t want to think so. Rotten, empty in the middle. Split into two halves that turned out to be dead or nearly dead all along. Branches cracked off and lying to the side. Or at best, just an organism that reached the end of its life cycle, as organisms do. Of course something will one day sprout from this center, but how many years would it take for that to become a tree again? 

I looked at the pattern in the wood, the rings visible and broken places covered over by the bark. I wondered about all the times the tree had seen before this. What storms had caused other branches to fall? I marveled at the tree’s ability to heal itself and thought about the water and nutrients the great trunk had taken from the ground. I thought about the way the bark protected the living heart of the tree. Looking at the open break, which ring represents the great drought of the 1950s? What other conditions left their mark here? What story and beauty might we see if we cut and polished a slice of this wood? 

I pocketed a chunk of wood from the inside of the trunk, one with dark lines and varied colors. Disturbed and dissatisfied by the thought that this tree told the whole story of our church, I went looking for other trees, other metaphors. 

Across the stock tank, I saw another tree, a different type, perhaps another oak, based on the shape of the dried leaves at my feet. (Note to self: learn more about which trees are which.) This enormous tree stood looking entirely bare from a distance, with one half of what had been a double trunk clearly broken off. As I drew closer, I realized that the part still standing was full of new buds. I imagined this tree bursting into bloom in a few weeks and remembered the words to “Hymn of Promise”—“In the bulb there is a flower, in the seed an apple tree…” This living thing had at one point lost half of itself, a break still clearly visible. Yet it was old and well-established, healthy and fruitful.

I felt comforted by this tree and its living presence. I also acknowledged that there would likely be no one tree that would be the magical symbol of where we are headed as the UMC. That’s partly because there is much we do not know, much we will have to decide and choose and live into. The metaphors in this case, for me, serve to prompt my imagination and open my heart to what I can’t yet see. 

Walking on, I came to some younger live oaks growing in a pattern familiar to those of us who live near these trees. The first one was in effect a double tree. 

Just past the twin tree was a more complex group of four. It had apparently lost at least one other along the way. 

All inextricably connected.

Again the question: are these metaphors for us? Maybe. Maybe not ones that tell the whole story, missing something important related to diversity and form, a difference in fruit and flower and how each fits into the larger ecosystem. Perhaps these are images that help us know  what we do and do not want to work for and live toward. 

My retreat weekend took place as we were just beginning to understand the implications of the coronavirus on our common life, which have now lurched dramatically beyond just washing our hands a lot. Since then, the Council of Bishops has wisely recommended that we cancel the General Conference scheduled for May, to protect the health of all our communities. It was at that conference that many of us had hoped we might make decisions that would free our church from a battle that has been destructive and harmful in a whole range of ways. What this cancellation would mean about our future, or even about our very next step, is hard to see from here. For now, however, I am carrying at least a couple of truths that I learned from the trees.

One is that the risk of an empty heart is great.

That’s a topic worth a bunch of writing and reflection, all on its own. But in this setting, we see where the lack of a strong core leads. The first tree’s fate is not its own fault. We, however, do have agency to decide what will fill us. As individuals and as churches, we can fill our time and space with busyness, striving, and worry, going through the motions for our own protection and comfort. (As Isaiah 55:2 asks, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”) I have known churches like that and people like that. Sometimes I am people like that. 

Instead, of course, we can choose a life that fills us with substance that is knitted together, alive and growing, taking in nutrients that move us to fill out the potential God designed into us. Time for worship and study, relationships that are compassionate and just, goals of generosity, hospitality, and joy, reflecting Christ’s body in ours. I’ve known churches like that and people like that, too. The healthy tree offers shade and shelter, fruit and beauty, and maybe most important, it just inhabits its God-given treeness. All until the day, whenever that may be, when it’s time for the tree to return to the earth from which it sprouted. This tree didn’t decide to let its core go hollow; maybe it was just time. But we do get to choose how we will nourish ourselves, and to what end. This for me will be the most important task for our church going forward, during this time of pandemic, and far beyond. If what we call faith in Jesus Christ doesn’t fill our hearts and our lives, doesn’t change what we do and why we do it, doesn’t lead to relentless love that lays down the self on behalf of the other—then we will be as a hollow tree, waiting for a strong wind to blow us over. 

Another lesson for me is this: I trust that there is yet a vital future for the church-tree of which we are a part. I trust this not because I believe we will choose well with every step that lies before us. I trust because of the ground that has given us life.

We can count on deep connectedness, thanks to God’s provision and to the seeking impulse God planted in the hearts of our forebears, the interaction of root and soil that we cannot see but upon which all else relies. As I’ve told church folk for a long time, the church doesn’t exist because we built it. It exists because Jesus blew his breath into a bunch of knuckleheads, because God granted us the desire to live for the good, because the Spirit continually nudges and even kicks us toward each other and into a life of sacrificial love. That is why we’re here, and whatever form or number our trunk and branches end up taking, whatever needs to break off or heal up, as long as we stay rooted in God, it will be good, because God is good. 

I will confess that today I am fairly reeling from what feels like a torrent of uncertainty, in both our world and our church. I remember from my time in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas how the palm trees bent with the relentless coastal wind, elastic and resilient and tall. As a new storm of disease begins to rage in the life of our country and the world, and as we weigh what’s important in order to make hard decisions in the short and long term, I am content to wait. I’m going to try to plant my feet on the ground that holds my life, and our life, and the life of this tree that is our beloved church—strong, thanks to the love that fills our core, and bending with the storm, until the new day comes. 

On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month;
and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. —Rev. 22:2

Wespath Board Meeting Acts 9:1-20 - May 2, 2019

Acts 9:1-20

Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.”

Don’t you just wish you could hear the voice from heaven? Just once? For God to say something to you that clearly, so you don’t have to wonder what in the world it is that you’re supposed to do, especially in a time of question or doubt? Really it wouldn’t have to actually be a voice. A billboard, an email, a private message via Facebook—just some clarity, please.

In this story from Acts, a lectionary text for this Sunday, the holy voice speaks to Paul and Ananias and calls them to do some really hard things. Clarity indeed. Be careful what you ask for. Each one hears a word from Jesus and a call to do something different, something risky, something that challenges what they think they know and believe. Paul, you’ve gone far enough with the persecution, and I’m taking you out. Ananias, go check on Paul. Touch him, and heal his sight.

Very interestingly, the voice from heaven speaks to these two opposing persons and turns them toward each other, for the sake of a greater mission. When I think about where we are as a church this Easter season, the parallels with this text are intriguing. I don’t want to assign a direct correlation between characters in the story and sides or interests in our current debate as a denomination; to do so would be facile and misleading. Instead I wonder about the emotional positions of Paul and Ananias and how, whoever we are, we might find ourselves in them.

Paul, in his bold certainty and cockiness, cannot and will not hear the truth about the crucified and risen Christ or his followers. He cannot and will not see the truth until something jars him, pops him, hard. He thinks he knows what his life is for, what God

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wants from him. Or perhaps, as we do, he has conflated what he wants with what he thinks God wants. Because “breathing threats and murder”? He didn’t hear that from a voice out of heaven or learn that from Judaism. The Torah doesn’t teach threats and murder against anyone as a focus for a faithful life. Paul by some other path had decided he knew what he knew. He was single-minded, and as it turned out, as these things do, God made good use of that mind and that persistence. He just needed a dramatic reset, on his backside in the dirt, a radical reorientation of his purpose. His personal introduction to the Lord Jesus Christ. Nice to meet you.

Ananias appears as a more clear and open spirit. He knows both the truth about Christ and the truth about Paul—what he has done and the threat he poses to the fledgling Christian community. It’s a big risk to do what the voice is telling him. Maybe it’s even a trap; maybe Ananias himself will be the next one bound and dragged to Jerusalem by Paul. So he states his concern, and then he listens and trusts Christ’s response. “Go anyway. Don’t worry about him. I’ve got plans for him that will contribute to your same purpose. Do not worry. I’ve got this.” Said Jesus. So Ananias goes and risks and does as he is told.

The mystery of this story is that it took the courage and faithfulness and obedience of Ananias for Paul to become able to see. It wasn’t something Paul had to do, though Jesus does say Paul was praying, so he was open and listening. But it was the task of Ananias to embody the message and healing and transforming power of Christ in a risky, conflicted situation. Jesus surely could have just reached out and healed Paul, but think about the connection that happened instead, Paul’s vulnerability and reliance on someone whom he had seen as an enemy. As Christ said to Ananias, Paul too would have his share of risky, painful situations where he would have to bear the gospel. “I

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myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” But the fruitful future of Paul, which would literally change the course of history, hinged on the present courage of Ananias.

We are so polarized right now—maybe y’all are immune to that, maybe in here there’s just one side, Wespath’s side! And I’m not sure exactly who needs to talk or reach out to whom. But this image of people risking themselves for the sake of the movement, this way God shifts people and transforms the world, not by big booming pronouncements from on high, but through people touching other people—this is powerful. While there is a lot we do not know or understand, we can know this. God seeks to use each of us in this way, in this moment in the life of our church and our world, to advance the agenda of life-giving love.

I hope you can find a part of yourself in both these characters. Maybe you’ll have the privilege of an actual voice speaking to you; maybe you won’t. But God is calling you all the same, and if you’ll listen, you’ll hear it. You might get knocked to the ground, or you might have to find courage to speak love and healing where you don’t want to. Maybe scales will fall from your eyes, or maybe you’ll list all your objections, just to have them wiped away by the gracious hand of Christ.

I don’t know what lies ahead for us as a church. But I do believe that our need for conversion and Christ’s call to courage and obedience in joy is what will guide us. And in that we can trust.

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