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

sad advent

To hear Brandi read the essay instead, click here: https://youtu.be/Q5BEUsZkrJg

This year’s hard has felt like a continuation of last year’s awful, so I decided I needed Christmas music early. I listen to NPR pretty much anytime I drive or cook, but during Advent, from Thanksgiving to January, I replace the news with Christmas tunes. It is a lovely thing to spend a 12th of the year revisiting songs that hold keys to the memories of my life. This year, instead of waiting for Turkeys to make my annual switch, I started November 4th.

It occurs, to me, as I write that date, that early November holds significance to my family. The week of November 4th marks the day we gathered at a court house for a Judge to tell us we were officially and legally, now and forever, the family of Stella. We began adopting her before she was born, as her mom chose to become part of our family forever too. She talks about knowing we were the ones: That we would raise Stella with big brothers and a good dose of chaos, all rooted in long-gathering love. She sensed in us that we would stay that course as long as we had breath, and she wanted that kind of loud, fun, head shaking love for her little girl.

I think maybe the first week of November should always kick off Christmas for me.

Today Stel and I were driving to church and a bluesy jazz piano version of “Silent Night” began to play. The chords were often minor and sustained, and it gave the familiar carol a darker tone. Recognizing the song, she asked, “Why does this Christmas song sound sad? Christmas is supposed to be happy.” I explained to her that Christmas was happy, and—most of all—hopeful, but that the night this song remembers was probably also scary and sad. Dark and cold. Uncomfortable and lonely. But that’s how hope works. It doesn’t show up at the end of the sad, but coexists within it.

“Can I have a twizzler?”

As usual, she found my explanation compellingJ Her interest notwithstanding, I offer us a reminder as we enter Advent: Hope and Lament coexist in the community of God. Advent gives us the chance to feel how heavy the weight of waiting can be. It is sacred weight, grounding us in the divine intention of God to come near when we need rescue. Needing rescue does not mean faith has lost or that despair will win; it simply means we are humans honoring the limits of our everything.

The bluesy music Stella heard today carried this message with no words at all. There is a lesson here as well, and that is to remind us to look to those who have suffered long when we face our own dark nights. Blues music was developed, performed and perfected by African Americans. It is an artifact of their culture—an evolving, shared act of creation that acknowledges the legacy of song-as-balm as it pours forth lament. Blues music reflects the African diaspora, the belonging in home unvisited, the rootedness in a history full of holes. Blues music uses all the keys, black and white, and finds a melody in discordant notes. The blues, in that way, are the perfect vehicle for the songs of Advent.

If you have been taught that faith in Christ looks like joyful, sure hope at every turn, I hope you will allow the voices who hurt—for me often voices of color—to open your eyes to another part of the familiar Gospel story. God comes to our darkest places, sometimes to rescue and pull us out, but often to join us in our poverty. Kings brought Jesus gifts in those early days, but they did not rescue him from his poor, oppressed existence to live comfortably in a palace. God chose to heal humanity with the gift of presence, of shared suffering, of recognizing hope in the midst of despair.

The first week of the Advent season—now, for me, the first week in November—reminds me that knowing God means knowing we belong in a way that expands our capacity to carry the burdens of others. Stella’s belonging to us is the greatest gift of our lives, and we celebrate her with all the hope and grief those who love her must carry. I feel profoundly grateful to have been taught that a faithful life does not require us to only play the happy keys. We are troubled and joyful, forlorn and gathered close. Advent is an invitation to explore all of it, to end this year aware of God’s presence in the dark and in the light.

Before Sunday I will add readings below this essay if you like to practice a daily rhythm of pausing with our Maker. I hope you find time to pause, to wait, to reflect and to wonder with the One who chose poverty, the Light who knew the dark. Merry Christmas.

Lent Readings, week one

To hear Brandi read this week’s essay, click here: https://youtu.be/7ZxMEwTD5t0

Last year, a Global pandemic erupted in the middle of Lent. Although it comes every year, this particular Lent feels like a time warp. We were just here. I encourage you to lean in to this feeling, recognizing that we are often powerless to change our circumstances, to heal our woes, to protect those we love. Maybe we used to think life was linear, so our only chance to find meaning or joy was to work hard and fast until we felt secure. This second pandemic-Lent forces us to recognize that life with God is not linear. That God’s timing is eternal, God is present everywhere, and our life with Christ has seasons of doing, of being, of plenty, of want, of joy, of pain, of rush, of stillness. The pandemic has felt for many like a pause, and I hope this year we will recognize that sometimes frantic doing actually hurts our ability to find security. Lent allows us to observe that joy and meaning often come in moments of stillness, silence and solitude. What better time to lean in than when we are forced to be still, to be silent and to be alone?

We diminish the power of God when we try to protect and expand our own power and security instead of looking to God for significance and peace. In the past, I wanted God’s Kingdom to be made in my image, so the hardest workers and the kindest, the most intentional people won. The Beatitudes remind us that God’s values are different. God promises to be present, generous and sustaining to those who have no power, to those near the margins, to those who align themselves with the overlooked. 

Knowing this, I’ll suggest a few disciplines for the season ahead

1) Consider giving up a treat, an excess, or activity that gives you a hit of pleasure. When you long for the satisfaction it brings, ask God to reveal the hunger you have for comfort or belonging, and to sit with it before your Maker.

2) Consider making an effort to spend time with those who are underserved and overlooked by your community. Find people and institutions who care for vulnerable people, and increase your proximity to widows, orphans, immigrants, refugees and those trapped in poverty, learning from and serving them.

3) Consider picking up a new practice that allows you to make space for stillness, silence and solitude. Pay attention to your body’s sensations, your mind’s thoughts and your heart’s emotions as you contemplate the love of God. Pray scripture, and try sitting before God, consenting to Divine action and just BEING with God.

Given the chance to introduce himself, God says, “I am.” That’s my best name. I am the present one. The always here one. The never past or future tense one. The ongoing in the moment one. To be near God is to be awake for this life, for these current moments: joyful and heartbreaking and everything in between. May these readings be an invitation into presence, with yourself, with others, with the God of “I Am.”

For these 40 days, allow yourself to recognize the abundance in your life, while also leaning in to the lean places. In my own experience of God, there is a connecting holiness—an embodied solidarity—that comes when I decide to stay present with pain instead of escaping. The Torah and the Bible speak of a God who is willing to wrestle with us, to cry with us, to listen to our lament; indeed, God is just as present when we cry as when we refuse to let the tears come, only hoping for, or seeing, the good. This Lent, create moments of stillness so you can notice your own joy and heartbreak. Cry. Or don’t. But don’t believe the lie that crying is unfaithful.

If we want to prepare ourselves for Christ’s coming kingdom, we would do well to spend 40 days marinating in the words Jesus used to describe it. On Tuesdays I will post a few thoughts and quotes for the week ahead. Each day there is a scriptural reading (all poetry…Yikes?! Or Yay?!), and each Sunday we will read the Beatitudes and Woes from the Gospel of Luke. 

Dear friends, find stillness, and believe the Gospel.

Week One

To Ponder:

“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

“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

To Read:

Feb 17 Matthew 5:1-12

Feb 18 Proverbs 2:1-15

Feb 19 Ps 94:12-22

Feb 20 Micah 6:6-8; Mark 7:6-8

Feb 21 Luke 6:20-31

Feb 22 Ps 90:12-17; 91:1-2

Feb 23 Ps 95:1-8