we belong to each other

To hear Brandi read the essays instead, click here: https://youtu.be/I7zfMAhGvbc

I am an American, and I am wired to be independent. I resonate deeply with the ideal of rugged individualism we celebrate here in our country, preferring not just to work alone, but, often, to my dismay, to go it alone. I have had to unlearn patterns of withdrawal, fueled by preferences for efficiency over relationships, and control over collaboration. The truth is that I lie to myself when I pretend I don’t need others. I need people, and I am made to flourish when I respond sacrificially to people’s needs.

This dependence on community is present throughout the Holy Scriptures, and is a necessary part of God’s design for our flourishing. In the Garden of Eden, God claims it isn’t good for man to be alone, so he takes action to create a partner for him. Throughout the early heroes of Israel, we see God calling each leader to care well for their community. As the Biblical record continues, God continually calls individuals into relationships so they can lead, protect or rescue their communities. Finally, Jesus, the God Man who came so we could more intimately know God, consistently surrounds himself with others. He imbeds himself in communities, talking, eating, napping, arguing, praying, crying and doing miracles WITH others. He needed and wanted a community. He was utterly content in his own skin, fulfilled with his own company. AND. He chose to collaborate in making meaning, bearing each other’s burdens and navigating systems of injustice, exclusion and abuse with his friends.

In short, the Bible does not celebrate rugged individualism. When asked about what matters most, Jesus says that two things are required of us all: love God and love others. Period. We are to keep each other, to hold our cares together, to take each other—and our pain—seriously. The American protestant church has a history of theological misalignment in our emphasis on individual salvation and piety at the expense of elevating or investing in caring for our communities. We need to realign ourselves with the Word of God, teaching each other to care deeply for neighbors near and far as an expression of our love for God and our understanding of how God designed us. We are not our own, but belong to our Maker. Our individual abilities have limits, and the simple truth is that we are not enough alone. We need each other.

This week’s readings remind us that God made us to thrive in interdependency. As we enter the longest days of Lent, raise your gaze from your own intentions and feels in order to see the people around you. Ask God to reveal the many ways you belong to others, and commit yourself to explore how love of neighbor reflects and reinforces your love of God.

Week Five: Love your neighbor

“The kind of peace shalom represents is active and engaged…Shalom is communal, holistic and tangible.  There is no private or partial shalom.  The whole community must have shalom or no one has shalom…Shalom is not for the many, while a few suffer; nor is it for the few while many suffer.”                                                                                                                                  -Randy Woodley

“The Son of God becoming human in Jesus Christ…demonstrates the truth that all reconciliation is relational…There is a divine morality that compels us the build or restore relationships with one another.”                                                                                                                 –Jemar Tisby

“We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face-to-face and side-by-side with others in work, love and learning.”                                                     -Robert Bellah

3/30 Ps 101:1-6; 119:9-20

3/31 Micah 4:6-7; Luke 6:20-27

4/1 Ps 22:1-11; 24-31

4/2 Prov 3:1-12

4/3 Matthew 14:13-33

4/4 Song of Sol 8:6-7; Isaiah 41:3-13

4/5 Ps 116:1-9; Ps 127:1-2

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