lenten compassion (on Ukraine)

To hear Brandi read the essay instead, click here: https://youtu.be/KsdKNSJ9W0Q

Volodymyr Zelensky is trying to save his country. This weekend he spoke directly to Israeli lawmakers, and begged them to intervene on Ukraine’s behalf. Israel, among other nations, has been brokering a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. In the nine minute speech, he asked a question that haunts me in an age where many American Christians live as if it is holy to ignore the pain of others: “Mediating without taking sides? You can mediate—but not between good and evil.”

Zelensky has a word for all of us. Many of us were rightly raised to compromise, to find middle ground, to keep the peace whenever possible. While these actions can create communities of belonging, they also provide cover for evil, destructive behavior.  When we confuse peacemaking with peace keeping, we ignore abusers and call it healthy. For anyone who wants to follow Christ, mediating is necessary. We should do all we can take can to promote peace around us. However, there are times when calling for peace or health in a community requires calling out those who block access to peace and health for all. To not specifically name neglect or abuse—wherever it may be found—is to call the status quo good, ignoring the lives of hurting people.

Zelensky’s words hoped to remind Israel of how ugly evil becomes when people choose to look away. Hitler openly demonized Jews and others for most of his rise to power while the majority of the world acted as if apathy, or both sidesing, or handwringing passivity, or not-my-probleming were appropriate responses. When people with power keep the peace instead of actively making peace by speaking up in precise ways, vulnerable people get damaged.

This week our readings remind us that God’s word points us to a Beloved Community that actively values compassion. In this kin-dom, we trust that God takes our pain seriously, asking us to do the same. In the community of God, we can’t expect for ourselves what we won’t also claim for others. I’m not okay if you’re not okay, because we are tied together, bound by both our shared humanity and divinity. This week’s readings remind us that apathy is not a spiritual gift, that staying-out-of-it is not the way of Christ.

I hope you have time to think about how costly love and compassion often are this week. We expect it for ourselves, and there is an invitation here to imagine how we might offer it to each other. When God claims us, God invites us to belong to the Beloved Community in a way that wraps us up in the healing of each other. What a beautiful thing, to belong to each other.

Week Four:  We belong to God and each other

“Isaiah was not rejected simply because he told Israel to worship Yahweh. He was rejected because Isaiah realized that true worship of Yahweh had implications for how one treated their neighbor.”                                                                                                                                  –Esau McCaulley

“But how sobering, that I can bring forth out of my thought-world into the external world either that which leads to life, or that which produces death in other men…we must understand that the reality of communion with God, and loving God, must take place in the inward self.”                               -Francis Shaeffer

 “Contemplative prayer deepens us in the knowledge that we are already free, that we have already found a place to dwell, that we already belong to God, even though everyone and everything around us keep suggesting the opposite.”                                                                                      -Henri Nouwen

3/23 Ps 103; 131

3/24 Isaiah 43:1-7

3/25 Ps 1:1-3; 23

3/26 Habb 3:17-19

3/27 Luke 9:46-48

3/28 Ps 106:1-8

3/29 Eccles 3:1-8; Ps 13

lent and basketball

To hear Brandi read the essay instead, click here: https://youtu.be/m2QeBJ62oZs

It is the third week of Lent, and the first week of the NCAA Basketball tournament. It might seem random to slide these two facts into one sentence, but I’m just tryin’ to keep it real out here in American Christendom. We feel the ache of sacrifice during Lent, and we are giddy with the indulgence of wall-to-wall athletic awesome coming our way. Can I get a witness?

This week’s readings and scriptures speak to another combination that may seem strange to some: Lament and Hope. If you have suffered much then you know these two actions are inextricably linked. If you have not, you might think that hope is the fruit of faith, while lament is unfaithful whining. Anyone familiar with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or of Miriam, Rahab and Mary, knows that hope for God’s presence and provision is baked into knowing God. Hope abounds, and the Gospel work of Jesus fulfills the scriptures and the Jewish people’s longing for rescue. They—like us—begged for God’s unending mercy to manifest itself through God’s justice and transformation. Hope, for the Christ follower, is obvious.

Not so much with lament. I was carried, pushed and led into the church every time the doors opened for my entire childhood. Since then I have learned to root into church communities by gathering with God’s people regularly. It was not until I found welcome in Black churches that I learned of lament as a gift of God. We are all biased, and our theologies and faith-talking reflect those biases. Sitting under Black preachers and leaders taught me of the belonging God offers through lament. The Jewish people knew much of grief, of hope deferred, of senseless and communal pain. When I faced my own soul-crushing grief, the invitation to grieve and lament welcomed me into intimacy with others who hurt, and taught me another way to access hope.

Our life with God is not linear. Many of us don’t come to faith, treasure the promises of God, and then find easy hope for all our days. Some of us abide in Christ and then wonder why God forsakes us, all in the same day. Lament allows us to honestly name the hurt we have done and the hurt done to us. It allows us to name the ways we hope for God and to name the ways we feel abandoned by God. As we tell the truth and cry out in pain, we sometimes find hope. Faith is not linear, but cyclical, coming and going, in hope and lament, as we are gathered by our Maker and carried along in this life.

This week as you think about hope and lament, I pray you will find the courage to name all the things that run through you when you hurt. God created your whole self and God certainly welcomes your whole self. This brings me back to basketball.

My longest, deepest friend is married to a college basketball coach. Their team just made it to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. As I celebrate their incredible accomplishment, I think of all the pain and work it took to get the team to the Dance. The coach is not just a coach to his players, but cares for them as if their whole lives matter deeply to him. He does not treat them as machines who live and die by basketball, but makes it clear that every part of them can show up every time they interact. These players we idolize are college kids figuring out how to be whole people in the world. In a very tangible way, he honors their humanity, and welcomes them to name and bring the hard and the good that they face. Because he has called every part of them significant, his players have transformed, together, into hopeful young men who belong together (and played an incredible season of basketball).

Basketball is just basketball, but there is some divine truth floating in this story. Transformation does not come when we train ourselves to deny or ignore the hard in our lives. God does not reward the stoic with more hope, but promises to move toward those who hurt, every single time. Your lament honors your story, and God responds as if it is costly praise. Explore your lament, and know all the parts of you matter deeply to God.

Week Three: Lament and Hope, together

“To only have a theology of celebration at the cost of the theology of suffering is incomplete. The intersection of the two threads provides the opportunity to engage in the fullness of the gospel message. Lament and praise must go hand in hand.”                                        -Soong Chan Rah

“Peacemaking cannot be separated from truth telling.”                        –Esau McCaulley

“Laying down your life means making your own faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life.” –Henri Nouwen

3/16 Job 42:1-3

3/17 Isaiah 40:21-31

3/18 Ps 142

3/19 Hosea 5:15-6:3

3/20 Luke 18:35-43

3/21 Ps 143:5-10

3/22 Ps 25:4-18; 19:7-14

From Black History Month to Lent

To hear Brandi read this week’s essay, click here: https://youtu.be/B7bo6jGEauk

As Black History Month closes out, I am speaking up again. I didn’t write during February because sometimes being an ally means shutting my mouth and making space for my own heart to pay attention to the wisdom in those around me. (To that end, let me interrupt myself to recommend some incredible Black writers from the last 2 years. Read one and give me a call!

Non-Fiction

Dante Stewart, Shoutin’ in the Fire*

Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black*

Ibram Kendi, How to be an AntiRacist

Jemar Tisby, How to Fight Racism*

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

*From an overtly Christian perspective

Fiction

Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

James McBride, Deacon King Kong

Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer

Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

This concludes our interruption).

Maybe the void I left created room for another voice to rise. It certainly created room to teach me new things about myself and my approach to pursuing justice and reform in the systems in which I participate. One of the things I learned this month is that I often approach the need for equity from a scarcity mindset. I mistakenly believe if I don’t do the work then the work won’t get done. That I care and know more than the average white woman in my world, so it is my job to draw attention to the wrong around us. Like a costumed teenager flipping signs selling subs on a street corner, I think no one will pay attention unless I raise my voice.

My active hushing led me to see the vanity in thinking I’m the only one. I now see the narcissism, sadness and stress I carried when I thought the appetite for change and discomfort are lacking in those around me. My voice is simply one of many, and all of us actively pursue justice for those around us in some small way. My voice and my role matter, but I am wrong to think courage and compassion are scarce. I now see that we live in abundance. We live in hope.

Most of us do love comfort, but all of us easily give it up for people we love. Most of us think our ideas are the best ideas, but we shift and imagine anew when we are at a table of mutual trust. Most of us do think we work harder for less than anyone ever sees, but we find deep wells of compassion when we are moved by the hard work of another. Most of us instinctively center our own experience, but we inconvenience ourselves and step aside when something in us sees the dignity and humanity in a person often pushed aside.

We know how to care for each other sacrificially. We know how to admit we didn’t know as much as thought we did. We know how to challenge the stereotypes that drive us. We know how to apologize and commit to do better. We know how to give second and third chances with no expectation of total reform. We know how to do hard things just to show up for someone else. We do it all the time. We do it for the people we claim as ours.

What would it take to claim more people as worthy of our care? What would it take to see the value in people we usually don’t see? What would it take to expand our us?

For people who find hope in the life and witness of Christ, Lent begins this week. I think Lent is a wonderful time to take inventory of our lives. How do we live, who do we value, where do we find hope, how do we invest in the restoration of our community to the One who made us all to belong? Each week I’ll send daily readings that I hope remind you that the incarnation of God into the body of Jesus is the ultimate gesture of embodied solidarity. God expanded God’s us through the person of Jesus Christ. Join me as I try to go and do likewise…

Remember friends, God’s kindness leads us to repentance, and God’s mercy is sufficient to meet us in every hard place. Silence trains you to listen to God, to find your own voice and to value the voices of others. Stillness reminds you that you are limited (and loved!), and that you are a human being, not fully measured by your productivity or impression on others. Solitude teaches you to know and love the image of God in you, and to embrace the process of each day, seeing every interaction as a gift. Begin a daily practice of silence, stillness and solitude, and embrace Lent to find a new rhythm of grace.

Week One: Commune with God in silence

“God is that way with us, He wants to hold us still with Him in silence…They cannot all be brilliant or rich or beautiful. They cannot all even dream beautiful dreams like God gives some of us. They cannot all enjoy music. Their hearts do not all burn with love. But everybody can learn to hold God…We shall not become like Christ until we give Him more time.”                                                    -Brother Lawrence

“We enter into a patient dialogue trusting that such a discussion is good for our souls.” –Esau McCaulley

“Maybe you search for understanding, but find only one thing for sure, which is that truth comes in small moments and visions, not galaxies and canyons; not the crash of ocean waves and cymbals. Most traditions teach that truth is in these small holy moments.”                                                  -Anne Lamott

3/2 Matthew 5:1-12

3/3 Proverbs 2:1-15

3/4 Ps 94:12-22

3/5 Micah 6:6-8; Mark 7:5-8

3/6 Luke 7:18-23

3/7 Ps 90:12-17; 91:1-2

3/8 Ps 95:1-8