Monday, January 21, 2019

Differently than this


(You can read more about the story here and here).


Over the weekend, an explosive controversy unfolded rapidly on social media responding to an incident Friday at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. 
Groups of people gathered in the same place with different agendas, all operating on stereotypes, assumptions and prejudices.  And in the hours that followed, in the social media firestorm that was unleashed WE operated on stereotypes, assumptions and prejudices.  Here are some of the snap judgments that may have been in play: 
MAGA wearing, white males = perpetrators. 
Native American elder = wise. 
Black people = victims.  
It's Simple. 
Except the kids were shouting school spirit chants, trying to figure out their way through an overwhelming situation.  The Elder inserted himself in, trying to change the dynamic he thought was occurring, adding to the confusion and fear.  And the Black people were the ones yelling racial slurs and demeaning things at other groups - for two hours.  

Cue our heads exploding. 

Because when we first saw the images and clips, we thought we knew who we were supposed to support and stand with, and who we were allowed to judge, condemn and dismiss.  
And now it's not so simple.  
People didn't stay neatly  in their categories for us.

(And let's be honest - it felt like a delicious, righteous rage roiling inside to read the boy's smile as smug, arrogant, Trumpian assholery, didn't it?  We don't want to see a scared kid trying to communicate calm. I mean, look at his hat!).  We humans love having our stereotypes reinforced, and can barely stand - literally are thrown off balance - when they don't fit.

By Saturday we'd already crucified those kids.  Because apparently we are allowed to do the things we supposedly abhor – that is, judge, condemn, criticize, belittle, demean, and destroy - as long as we aim it at the right people. (But they’re not even people, right? Animals, monsters, idiots, let's call them).  
On Facebook I saw people I respect posting the children's personal information, school, church, parents' workplace, neighborhood, etc. Let's get them. Ruin their college changes. Make them PAY.  Maybe you or I would never stoop to issuing death threats, but someone did. You should DIE for showing disrespect. You are not worthy to live.  But we'll take the high ground.  We'll just say you are not worthy to be called a human being

We are the mob. 
We might as well have been in the scene shouting obscenities in their faces.  
Only that doesn’t have nearly the damaging impact of what we can inflict on them from behind our safe and self-righteous screens, does it? The power to punish, right at our fingertips. 

BUT

We all belong to God.  
Everyone in this scenario is a precious child of God. 
Everyone in this scene is acting out of desire to belong. 
Everyone in this scene is reacting to their own interpretations of what is happening in front of them.
Each person is working to figure out who they are and assert where they fit.  
Each person is trying to live out their humanity in a really, really messed up, broken system. 
We are all victims of this system. 
We are all perpetrators of this system. 
We are all culpable for what we’ve built and continue to reinforce.  

AND

We all belong to each other. 
This is true and doesn't change. 
We are stuck with each other – all these different Americans! 
Even the ones we can't understand. 
Even the ones we can't relate to.
Even the ones we don't even like.  
Nevertheless, they are ours and we are theirs. We are responsible for each other. 
Those kids are our kids. That is our Native American Elder, and the small group shouting obscenities at everyone else, they’re ours too.  

Some of us are adults – meant to set an example, to teach, to guide. The elder, the Hebrew Israelites, you and I – we are the adults here.  We are responsible for the nation we are building for our kids.  
What kind of a country do we want to hand on?  
What kind of faith do we want to practice?  
What kind of humanity do we want to embody?

Let’s do this differently. 
I believe we can live differently than this.

Sunday, January 20, 2019

What's Your Identity?



There are things that happen to us in our lives that come to define us. They are the things that most make us who we are. Some of them happen before we are even born – where we are born, the color of our skin, our gender, our DNA that comes with its own timeline and traits, handed down from our ancestors or parents, that predisposes us to disease, temper or genius, a biological tendency toward addiction, or a mind for math.  

Then there are things that happen to us when we are young – particular experiences, like the loss of a parent, a childhood spent moving around from place to place, an exceptionally encouraging teacher, an acutely abusive coach, an accident or illness, or a relentlessly reoccurring message about what it will take to be accepted by our family or community.  

Then, there are the things we experience or choose, the opportunities open or doors closed to us, the advantages or struggles that set the stage for our lives, the terrible mistakes or the soaring successes, the communities that raise us and the ones we seek out, the places we get our stories and the people who tell them to us all shape our identities.

We live in a time where more than ever before in history, it is presumed in Western culture that the purpose of life is to define your own identity.  Nobody else can tell you who you are; that’s exclusively your job, it’s your main job, and it’s your highest job.  
It’s become such an important project, defining your own identity, that we do it all the time without even realizing we are doing it.  It requires comparing ourselves to others nearly constantly.  It means knowing what identities are available so we can figure out where we fit, listening to others who have our chosen identities so we know more how to be whatever they are, whatever we are, so that we can find community or ensure respect by fitting in well enough with whatever that identity happens to be. Who are you going to be?

The tricky part is, some of these things change, in fact, a lot of them do.  Because people change.  You see it most easily with children.  One year their favorite color is yellow, but then it’s blue and you didn’t get the memo.  First it’s dresses and skirts all year, and then, (after you’ve shopped), it’s only pants the next year.  It’s basketball all the time, and then it’s photography; it’s the inseparable best friend, and then a completely new crowd.  Let’s just say, after being able to quote nearly every episode, now nobody in my house will use the Dora the Explorer beach towel in public.  

And being human also means moving through knowledge and development, through ideas, and experiences that shape us and change our perceived identity.  We move from student to master.  From amateur to professional to retired.  From employed to unemployed. From ability to disability, health to sickness, and back again, perhaps several times. 

 And over time beliefs change. So what you might have thought or shaped your life around previously, no longer is central for you, or becomes more nuanced, or is traded out for something else entirely.  And now something new defines you. This new thing becomes your identity.  Until something happens that might shift that again. You move to a new place, lose your spouse, your career ends, your health changes, your child comes out to you, you become your dad’s caregiver, your church falls apart, new questions arise in your spirit, new callings emerge.

And is our identity even consistent from context to context?  With one group of friends we might be the outgoing one, with another group, the quiet one.  In one situation you might be related to everyone in the room, in another you might be the only woman, or only black person, or only English-speaker.  So even though we think it is ours alone to create and shape, our identity has something to do with those around us, and the role we play in the group.

And to complicate things, our culture puts on pressure to be immediately identifiable in your self-chosen labels, so that even thought you’re supposedly completely unique, you should be properly categorized and labeled as a “type.”  People want to know, are you a Republican or a Democrat? Are you Progressive? Conservative?  An ally? An enemy?  What do you do for a living?  Where do you live? Rent or own? Are you single? Did you come from somewhere else? 
We wont admit it, but we want to be able to make assumptions and snap judgments about people based on things like education level, finances, or body weight, which, according to a recent study, is the one area today where stereotypes and prejudices are increasing, while in all other areas, like race, religion, sexual orientation, rates of prejudice are dropping.  

And it really throws us for a loop when people don’t fit neatly into the categories.  What do we do with a black, gay, Republican, Christian Pastor with Asbergers, like my friend Dennis?   Which table does he get assigned to in the lunchroom of life?  I read this week that the Woman’s March founders – for all their unity of goals and perspective, had a personal rift because they differed on whether the Jewish member was part of the dominant white culture, or a marginalized person.   Was she a victim of oppression or part of the oppressive power structure? And we need to know these things so we know how to treat each other. We need to know if you belong, or who belongs more, or who needs to work harder to belong. 
Because in a time when our main job is to create and curate our own identity, we had better not slip up and mislabel others or ourselves and we’d better not lose a prized label once it’s secured.  People are always paying attention, everything we say and do is evidence of our belonging or not, and our place and potential in the world will be shaped by our self-defined identity.  So choose carefully and walk delicately.

This is a new thing. In the past, identities were pretty much given to you by your community.  You didn’t get a say, because it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone that it was the individual person’s job to figure that out. For better or worse, you simply were defined by where you were born, and your status and role in society were predetermined.  You just lived into it. Of course, this had its own problems, but whatever they were, people were not swimming in options and drowning in expectations as they figured out their own slippery identity and tried to live it out in the world.

Step into this framework, the Messiah. And here’s an interesting case.  Is he God? Is he human?  In the lineage of a king, or the son of a carpenter?  (Trick questions, the answers to all of them are YES). 
Messiah - This is a one and only role, never before lived into, with a collection of deeply held expectations at the get-go.  Messiah was supposed to liberate the people from an oppressive empire, to bring in a revolution, restore the nation of Israel.  The Messiah belongs to Israel.  Messiah is strong, extraordinary, powerful and obvious, not vulnerable or ordinary, weak or hidden.

So Jesus has already thwarted all these expectations pretty radically by being born in a (debatable) stable, being honored by a bunch of pagan mystics from a far-off land for his cosmic significance to the whole world, and spending the first few years of his life as a refugee, and then having apparently the most ordinary small town, Middle Eastern Jewish upbringing that it’s not even worth mentioning, with an appearance that didn't stand out in any remarkable way. 

And he hasn’t come to overthrow the Romans!  He has come to overthrow death! We don't have a category for that one. So there are lots of identities being thrust upon Jesus before his ministry even begins, but there’s only one that matters.

And it’s spoken at his baptism.  
John has been preaching and raving in the wilderness, and people are flocking to be chastised by his strong language and powerful rhetoric, and then baptized by him.  And Jesus shows up there, just, it seems, as John references this Messiah that is coming, one who is so important that John would not be worthy of even untying his sandal and washing his feet like a servant.
But Jesus slips into the crowd, according to Luke’s telling, and gets baptized right alongside the rest of them, and John seems not to pause the act, and rather than stopping himself from washing the Messiah’s feet, John proceeds, apparently, to wash him completely, just like the person before and the person after him.  
And then the Holy Spirit descends in bodily form like a dove, and Jesus hears the words spoken over him like a pronouncement, “This is my child, the beloved one; I am delighted with him.”  

In this moment heaven and earth converge in the person of Christ.  Jesus is God, fully God. That is his identity.  And the full God shuffles into the waters of humanity, submitting anonymously, alongside everyone else, to this act of repentance and renewal – for that’s what John’s baptism was.  God claims his identity as a human being, a creature in need of God.  
And at the same time the human Jesus reaches out toward the divine, the divinity of God reaches out and claims Jesus with a voice from heaven and blessing, and the Holy Spirit wraps the connection in affirmation, pronouncement, and blessing. The Trinity is present here, and the movement of God toward us and us toward God. 

Every tradition has that movement, by the way – dedication as a baby and baptism as an adult, baptism as a baby and confirmation later, they all try to capture and express the covenant movement of God claiming us and us responding Yes to God’s Yes.

It’s worth noting that baptism is an enactment of dying and rising.  This gets missed with the gentle Presbyterian head sprinkle, but is easier to see with the full immersion dunk.  

We are baptized into Jesus’ own death and resurrection.  We acknowledge that we die. We are, in fact, given over to death.  And then we are raised up in Christ’s life.  Jesus’ own relationship with God, his identity, becomes ours– permanently sealed into the love of God.  Receiving God’s Yes, living toward God as God lives toward us, is our acknowledged purpose.  

And Jesus, all the things he was supposed to be and do, all the messages shaping even his own beliefs about Messiah, and the people’s intense expectations on him, they die here.  And what rises is just the connection with God, just the identity as beloved, just the purpose of embodying the love of God to us and us to God.

We wont talk about it until Lent, but right after this, Jesus is sent into the wilderness to face temptation, all the things that would try to claim and shape his identity. These too are what he is prepared to let go when comes up out of that water and hears spoken his true identity – the temptations he hasn’t yet faced in the wilderness, and every day after that.

Baptism is not some kind of magical thing.  Ordinary water, ordinary words, ordinary people watching and pouring water and making promises.  But in this ordinary moment, we trust that God –who always has claimed you for love – now becomes the source of your identity, the love of God becomes your purpose, the grace of God becomes your belonging.  It’s the convergences of Yeses. God’s and yours, back and forth. 

All other identities, whether long-term or temporary, inherent or chosen, released or reclaimed, whether denied or explored, embraced or rejected, they are not the true identity that defines us.  None of them is powerful enough or expansive enough to determine our deepest self, and our truest purpose.  
There is but one identity that defines us first, last and most completely. It is true of each of us before we came into being, and it remains true after we are gone from this earth. Beloved, child of God, in whom God delights. 

So despite the relentless messages around us, our primary job is not, in fact, to construct our own identity in the world. That’s already been decided for us.  
Our first job, our only job, is to live into the identity decided for us to us before the foundation of the world.  Made in God’s own image to share this life with God, the grace of God reaches out to us by the Holy Spirit, and brings us back, every time we forget – and we forget many times a day! But God’s grace always brings us back to our truest, deepest identity: which is Beloved. Child of God, in whom God delights.

 Your life is a gift, made to be lived in response to God’s grace.  
Each one of us is completely unique, unequalled in all the world. Each one of us is a mix of contradictions and conundrums, beauty and ugliness, struggle and gladness, a glorious hodge-podge of features and facets.  Not one of us fits easily into human categories or labels, nor should we.  We are each meant to be the one and only you or me that has ever, or will ever, walk on this earth. 
But the only way that is possible is if we trust that our identity isn’t up for grabs. It is secure. Unshakable and permanent.  It cannot be altered or abolished.  It cannot be lost and it cannot be earned.  It is bestowed upon us by the Creator of all, given to us by the one who comes in alongside us.  And in baptism, this identity is recognized, confirmed, celebrated, witnessed, and sealed. 

Death gets spoken over you first.  You will die. This is good news.  First because it’s true.  And baptism tells the truth.  
But also because in baptism we die to all the identities we thought made us who we are, or all the things that will one day seek to so.  
They do not determine our being or define our ultimate worth.  
They cannot give us our purpose or take away our belonging.  
We live in this world as though we’re already dead, so we don’t need to fear death or avoid it – even if we’re threatened with loss, rejection or obliteration.  Jesus died for us, Jesus’ death takes on our death, and we take on his.
  
And then, resurrection. We rise to a new life, a new identity.  Beloved.  Child of God, in whom God delights.  Belonging forever to God, existing for life that will never die.
This identity will never fade. 
This purpose will never disappear.  
This belonging will never end. 

It turns out the only person who can really tell you who you are is God.  
And God names you Beloved
This is your true self.  
Live it boldly. 
Amen.

Sunday, January 6, 2019

No longer settling for stories


In our house, on Christmas Eve we leave cookies and a note for Santa, and Santa has always written back.  The notes vary, but have always carried similar, strong themes.  But much to Andy’s and my surprise, it’s largely gone unnoticed, until this year, when age, maturity, and a reluctantly rethought story have shined a different light on the notes’ consistent contents over the years. 
This year, Santa’s response read, “Dear Maisy, Thank you for the cookies.  First, Sorry is in order. A reindeer deer pooped by the tree. I had Khaleesi clean it. What a nice dog. So sweet, and talking about sweet, what a dad!  One of a kind!  I love that guy.  He really helped me with some Mrs. Claus issues! Wise. So glad to call him a friend. All the best!  Santa”

Nobody likes to have their stories taken away.  We hang onto our stories for all sorts of reasons.  Even if they don’t make sense or don’t correspond to our experience of the world, we often keep telling the same stories. They could be magical ones that make the world feel brighter.  They could be hurtful ones, like “I’m not good enough” or “Those people are the enemy.” Or they might be helpful stories that tell us who we are and help us frame the world, like “This is who I am.”  
Stories provide perimeters, but even the positive ones can keep us stuck, can keep us from being curious or courageous.  Sometimes, looking at our really familiar and well-worn stories, and considering that there may be something more, or even just different, can open us up to God’s Spirit in unexpected ways.

The Christmas story is this way.  We’ve extrapolated all kinds of details over time that are not there but have been injected back in as essential, and while it makes for a good pageant, much of it is likely not true. So let’s take today, the day of Epiphany, insight, Aha!, the day we celebrate with the Magi God’s self-revelation to the whole world, for the whole world.  Epiphany is a good day to open ourselves to God’s self-revelation anew, by looking again at the old stories.

First of all, we’ve spun a whole wide and detailed narrative set in some kind of New England barn scene, where Mary and Joseph have their baby alone in piles of hay, surrounded by animals, just minutes after they stumble into town, Mary gasping with contractions atop a donkey, and Joseph frantically pounding on doors, being rejected by the whole city, and finally being pointed to a stable out back by an either grumpy or apologetic innkeeper.

More likely they’d been in Bethlehem for some time, weeks maybe. And the whole scene I just described is just what imaginations gone before have made of these two sentences, “While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.  And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn."

What we Western, modern folks don’t know about that time and place could fill a stable,  unlike people in that region and time, who didn’t use stables, but instead housed their animals at night inside the family home, not in a separate outbuilding away from the house.  Imagine a simple home, sometimes with a bedroom, and a larger general living room. It often had a guest room attached to the end, or on the roof.  
The main room was a split-level, with a small lower area where, at night, the animals were brought in from the outdoors to sleep in the dwelling with the family.  The first job in the morning was to bring them back out.  The larger room, where the family cooked and ate their meals and generally lived their lives had carved into the floor of the higher level right near the lower level, an indentation, a built-in manger, so that the animals could reach their head up from the lower level and eat from it.  
Finally, the Greek word translated here as “inn” is not the word Luke uses for a commercial hotel in the story of the Good Samaritan, it’s actually the word he uses for “ guest room” when the disciples come seeking a spare room for the last supper. 

Mary and Joseph are returning to the land of Joseph’s people – in a culture of deep, pervasive hospitality. They were not visiting somewhere they’ve never been and stopping at a crowded Super8 along the freeway. Most likely they were staying in the simple peasant home of relatives, or even friends of friends– this would have been common. When the time came for Jesus to be born, there was no room for them in the guest room, so they delivered in the living room, and placed the baby in the manger in the floor next to them.  

And now, we can use our imaginations to explore the story some more.
Remember silent Zechariah and pregnant Mary and Elizabeth?  This first community of the promise –whose lives had been invaded by transcendence, now sharing together the secret of the universe’s redemption, along with the mundane and challenging ins and outs of pregnancy?  Mary stayed with Elizabeth until John was born, probably assisting with the birth and celebrating with them, before setting out for home, 3-4 months pregnant by that time. Remember, it’s a several day, nearly 100-mile journey. 
A few months later, when Mary and Joseph set out for Bethlehem, they followed the same path Mary took, and arrived at their destination, about four miles past Elizabeth and Zechariah’s town.  While they were there, Mary’s time to deliver arrived.  Elizabeth was probably there with Mary for the birth of Jesus. How could she miss it?  God had given them to each other to share this experience; why wouldn’t Elizabeth come and help?  Maybe there was no room for them in the guest room because little Baby John and Zechariah were sleeping there!  Who knows? But the not knowing opens up the chance to consider how else God might have been at work.  

Because I think of Joseph - now in on this story too, it’s become his destiny, his purpose. The angel came to him in a dream and he is now becoming Father of the Messiah.  But he didn’t have a community, like Mary did, to share this.  What if he is given Zechariah?  What if, after his own angel encounter, and the nine months on the sidelines while the Holy Spirit worked in these two women’s wombs and he adjusted to being part of the story of God’s inbreaking, in all that silence, Zechariah now gets to share the words of hard-won wisdom with Joseph?

After Jesus is born, Mary and Joseph settle in Bethlehem for a while. Joseph works as a carpenter and they figure out how to be a family and how to be parents, and what to do with all they know of God’s plan, which isn’t much at this point but that heaven has invaded earth and God has entered in, holding this reality alongside the reality of diapers and spit up and teething and the ordinary business of raising a baby.  
And surely these days they must have gazed at his tiny features, bleary with new parent fatigue, searching for signs of divinity in his perfectly human baby face.  And probably Mary still pondered all these things in her heart on a regular basis. I like to think they stayed friends with the shepherds and regularly shared potlucks or campfire sing-alongs. Maybe a couple of them especially took a liking to the child, and Uncle Omar and Uncle Seth carved toy sheep for the toddler Jesus.

Meanwhile, the moment Jesus is born, a strange star, or light, rises in the sky and astrologers from a far-off land – with completely different customs, religion, beliefs, practices, outside the perimeters of this story so far -  set out to discover the King they believe has come.  And God is getting ready to shake the stories again - Herod’s story of his own power and invincibility, and likely Mary and Joseph’s story of a Jewish Messiah, come to overthrow the oppressors and set Israel free.  
God is coming for a different reason, for a purpose beyond the stories they’ve told for generations.  God is coming for the whole world.

The Magi who come bring three gifts, but there were not likely just three of them.  It could’ve been a whole contingent; all we know from the language is that there was more than one.  It takes these travelers many months, likely up to two years, to reach the Holy Family. Jesus is quite certainly no longer in the manger, and probably not even still in diapers.

They come into town and meet with King Herod, getting their own jolt that the King they seek is not the king of this land, nor was he born in the palace to royalty of any kind.  Instead, when they finally find him, he is in a peasant’s home, with his mother. Perhaps he is just finishing lunch, or helping with the chickens, or playing with his carved sheep while she hangs the wash. 
I love imagining the Magi’s arrival and how things might have gone from there. How did they communicate back and forth? What languages or gestures did they use? How did the stories come out? Was there a big “reunion of those who are in on what God is up to” party with the shepherds and Elizabeth and Zechariah and little John?  After that long, undoubtedly grueling journey, how long did they stay? Weeks? Months? Just a few days?  Just a few hours?  Did they all crowd into Mary & Joseph’s guest room? Or was there no room, so they pitched tents nearby, or spread out into neighbor’s guest rooms? Did their arrival do anything to Mary’s pondering?  What was it like for Joseph’s faith and sense of the future to welcome these seekers from so far away?

And then a dream warns the visitors to go home by another road.  And then an angel tells Joseph to take the child and his mother and flee as refugees to Egypt, while the mad King Herod seeks to squash the potential threat to his throne.  And the one person in the story with a ton of power rages and kills and destroys and tries to cement his hold, and is dead from some really awful and painful illness less than two years later.  And the little family comes back from Egypt and returns, finally, to Nazareth.

Here is what all this is to say – we don’t really know how it happened.   We tell the story the way we’ve heard it, shaped by others’ stories, like, “mangers are in stables,” or “Messiahs belong to the Israelites,” but the realty was real– it was real people’s lives with real fear and real courage and real boredom and real confusion and real pain.  

God came into the real. God was born as an ordinary peasant child into a Middle Eastern, 1stcentury village life.  These specific people- first some shepherds, and then some mystical foreigners from far away - got to meet him in the flesh – to hold him and hear him cry and see him drift off to sleep or wake up looking for his mommy.  They got to see him in with his dad, learning how to be human, with the walking and the talking, like every other one of us before and after him.  
God did this.  God came into this real world.  And God came for the whole world, beyond all our distinctions of nation and language and religion and difference and no powers that be could stop him.  God came for the entire universe, and even the heavenly bodies got in on it – broadcasting the message to any who would notice and follow that star.  
Beyond the material world, there is a reality of transcendence that we can’t begin to even contemplate.  And from outside our time and space and stories, God has come as far in as it is possible to enter, right into the thick of it alongside us, as vulnerable as we come.  This is real.  God is always coming in to the real.  And God is always beckoning us to lift our heads and let the light in, to open our hearts and receive the mystery.

But sometimes we get trapped in our stories. Our crowded stables and selfish innkeepers block the view of a star that shines where it shouldn’t be, brighter than it should be, calling us into the unknown to trust and seek and follow the God from outside who comes in.

Christmas has become a fairy tale.  But it really happened. And not necessarily like we think or have been told. God has become a fairy tale.  But God is really here.  And not necessarily like we think or have been told.

We’re in our year-long journey with grace, the abundance of God’s Yes to us. 
Here we begin "Grace in Presence."
Grace in the presence of God, both mysterious and unknowable, and also coming near, as ordinary as you and me.  
Grace in the presence of strangers, unexpectedly affirming the bigger picture, inviting us to reconsider our stories and open our hearts wider. 
Grace in the presence of those who are in on what God is up to, trusting alongside one another, feeling their way through together, and helping each other adjust to being part of the story of God’s in-breaking.  
God meets us with grace when we refuse to settle for stories and instead seek to be present to the real experience, in all its clarity and muddiness, all it’s ambivalence and fear, all its joy and sorrow.  That’s where God is.  Because that’s who God is now: Emmanual, God With Us.


(For more historical detail, see "The Manger and the Inn: A Middle Eastern View of the Birth Story, by Ken Bailey)

How to Repent (It's not how you think)

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