Choosing Life, Being Found

                    

Jeremiah 31:31-34
 
This week I found myself needing to repent. I got caught up in a pattern of behavior that was life-draining for me and caused pain and confusion for others.  And when I woke up to it, I felt awful and flooded with regret.  Because I was thinking about repentance as our theme this week, it was especially uncomfortable because most of me was caught in the pain and agony of the experience, and a small part of me was watching myself and taking notes. 
 
The Greek word for repent, Μετανοεῖτε means literally “change how you think after being with,” in other words, turn around, shift your being in another direction, change your purpose after this encounter.”  Repent is not a moral word of judgment and condemnation, like we like to make it. It actually isn’t about being good or bad.  Repentance in the biblical sense is a complete reorientation.  It is turning from death to life.  We could think of it as laying down your mind and exchanging it for the mind, perspective, and purpose of Christ. Sometimes repentance is used as something that happens to you, rather than something you do.  One biblical scholar says, “It can be more about being found than about finding oneself." (Matt Skinner, Working Preacher).
 
When we recognize we have sinned, that is to say, when the lightbulb goes on and we can see that we have made a choice toward death and division instead of life, we are flooded with regret and sorrow. We can’t go back and undo what we did or take back what we said. So what happens next?  
 
Sometimes we double down; it’s too painful to honestly face what we’ve done or own what we’ve said, so we blame other people, or the circumstances.  We may make excuses, or drink to forget. We may deflect and point at someone else whose actions are “worse” than ours, to try to make ourselves feel better.  All of these things usually make us feel worse and more stuck.
 
We have no good human mechanism for getting ourselves out of sin, the power of sin, the mindset of sin, which is separation, isolation, judgment. Paul says we are a slave to sin.  Trapped in sin we move to the punishment of sin, condemnation.  Because Sin is living as though God is not God and we are not beloved children of God created to live with and for each other.  So when we get caught in sin, and we are suddenly aware that we are caught in sin, we often sin more to try to make ourselves not feel so alone, so trapped, so disappointed in ourselves.  Or we judge and condemn ourselves, or each other for the sin, which is just another way of staying locked in sin, being ruled by the way of fear.
 
But God has a mechanism to get us out of sin.  All the way back to Adam and Eve, through the prophets and judges and kings, to John the Baptist shouting on the banks of the Jordan this message is then embodied in Jesus himself who proclaimed the words that set us free: Repent! Repent for the kingdom of God is right at hand!
 
Translation: Trade out your way of sin and alienation and disconnection for my way of belonging and love.  Let yourself be found, for God’s way of life is right here for you.
 
Like sunflowers turning their face toward the sun, like exhausted, angry toddlers running back into their parent’s arms, repenting returns to our true selves, and our true place in God. We turn our wilting little hearts back toward their source of life.
We don’t even have to believe we will find mercy, though we will. We may be craving the judgment and condemnation we think we deserve, but this is the power and beauty of God’s way: once we repent, once we turn our sorry selves back toward love, we are released from judgment and condemnation. Once we repent, we receive grace and find ourselves held by God with others. We only need to trust just enough in that belonging to open up and admit we feel ashamed, and acknowledge our regret over what we’ve done.
 
So many of our texts this Lent have been connected to the Babylonian exile – the Israelites ripped from home and stuck somewhere unfamiliar and uncomfortable that is not home.  This feels fitting because this pandemic has been like the whole world living in a kind of exile.  The promise of this prophet to the people in exile is a relationship with God that is not dictated by rules, shaped by fear of punishment, or demanding careful tiptoeing, but a connection defined by love, covered in grace and secured by the Divine and not by us, steered by the One who anticipates our need for salvation and offers it before we ask.
 
These people don’t know if they have what it takes to live up to their end of the deal. In fact, all evidence from history and experience from history tells them and if it is up to them to remember their place and live from that truth they will fail at staying true to God.  But God says it’s not their job to uphold this relationship. God will make a new covenant, a new bond, not dependent on their ability to remember correctly and teach each other rightly, but written into their very hearts, every one of them. This covenant can’t be broken because it will be inside them and God will do the heavy lifting.  They will be God’s people and God will be their God, period.
 
We long to be connected and alive, to sense God and see others, and we long to contribute to connection and love and joy for others.  So for us, repentance is the gift of this connection, the tool right here in our own hearts, to come home when we fall away, to remember when we forget, to let ourselves be put back together again by God, whose love and mercy meet us not only when we step up and reach out, but especially when we’re stuck in our sin.
 
God’s goal isn’t punishment but reconciliation, reconnection. God wants for us wholeness and love.
 
So we get to step up and claim it. We get to accept being accepted, like we said last week that Sabbath rest offers us.  Repentance does this too.  It’s the wake up moment when we say, Oh! I want to trade my pitiful way of greed, resentment and constant condemnation, for God’s way of love that belongs me to God and other people!  And in that moment, we let God’s salvation meet us just exactly how we need to be met, to heal us where we are sick, and mend us where we are broken, and release us where we are caged and find us where we are lost.  Our anger or disappointment, our mistakes or our stupidity, do not get to set the terms, define our lives, keep us divided or trapped. God’s love sets the terms. Grace holds us. When we receive God’s forgiveness, we can forgive ourselves, and we can forgive each other.  
 
But we have to do that part. We have to repent. We have to take that step of complete vulnerability and say it – to God, to ourselves, to the person we’ve wounded. We have to admit we’ve gone off track and let ourselves get turned back around by God, to the way of love and trust, to our true selves.
 
After repenting, I felt relief and hope and clarity.  It’s painful to look honestly at yourself, but it means a new way opens up. Nobody in my house is under any delusion that I wont behave badly ever again, but I got to experience being seen, being forgiven, remembering my place alongside those I love, and more ready to forgive and see and love them as well.  We belong to each other. I belong to all others.
 
A few of us meet online for morning and evening prayers each day. Every Friday night we pray Psalm 40:8. It says, “I delight to do your will, O my God, your law is within my heart.” We delight to do God’s will. We delight to feel ourselves part of the fabric of life, connected to others, aware of God, awake to gratitude and fullness of joy. God’s way is inside us, part of us, leading us, and leading us back when we lose our way, bringing us home again.
Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Being Found Again: A Letter to John

Mark 1:1-11

John

A letter to our ancestor, John.

Dear John,

Who are you? Under all that sweat and dust and camel hair? Behind all the drama and noise?  What do you think about out there when the crowds have gone home, and the stars are glowing above you, and the sounds of the desert creatures and the wind are all the noise that’s left? What keeps you awake, tossing and turning?  What gets you up in the morning, for another day of locust-eating and yelling yourself hoarse with passion and fire?  

You are pissing people off, you know.  You don’t live much longer than this – you’ll die soon for telling Herod like it is and calling him out on his adulterous marriage.  And you don’t get much sympathy from the establishment after your criticism of them and your direct competition – baptism for repentance? Really? The people can get that in the temple. The favor and forgiveness of God is already available…for a fee. But you offer it for free? All the while saying something greater is brewing and you’re just the warm-up act?

I’m sure you heard the story over and over in your childhood, in those few short years your ancient parents had left - between all their prophet-grooming, their stories of prophets of old and messages to Israel and encouragement to listen, listen for the voice of God, the surprise of God that would bring life to deadened wombs and laughter to creaky voices, lay mountains low and raise valleys up, bringing hope and wholeness – between all of that I am certain you heard tell time and again of when Mary came to see your mom, the moment your fetus self bumped belly homes with the embryonic Messiah, as you jumped for joy, recognizing already that everything was changing, and there was nothing to do but celebrate it.

And the messages, all those prophets swimming in your mind, taught to you from Torah, spoken in story from your priest father and your devout mother – it must have meant even more to you than to others…

Did you three carry this secret promise, this crazy truth that you had come from impossibility?  Were you always aware that God had broken in, and nobody knew it yet, but the time was coming when they would all see…? 

And did you ever forget, John? We forget all the time.  Did you? Did you ever wake up knowing there was something to remember and then have the truth wash over you in wonder once again? That God was making good on all those promises of old, that God was coming in?

Did you recognize him in the prophesies? Jesus, I mean. When you were kids, did your cousin seem like the one? Tell the truth now – was he just so ordinary? Or did you know all along?  Did you know before he did? Or more than he did? Or did the two of you whisper about it together at sleepovers?

What was it like, by the way, the day he came to the river, the day you plunged him under the water and the sky opened up and the voice of God claimed him? After the elation that it had come at last, were you psyched to retire? Be finished with your message? Or was it anti-climactic? Or even disillusioning? 

Who are you now, once the one you’ve prepared the way for has arrived in our midst?  When the thing your whole life has been about has been accomplished, what is your life for then?  

If you knew then what you know now, would it all have gone the same?

Mark begins all of it with you, you know. “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God,” then he has you bursting out like you couldn’t contain the secret any longer, the message ripening within your young body and mind until you had to get out of the city, flee to the wilderness and give the message room to breathe, give it space to expand or it would swallow you and everything else with its magnitude and power.

The others don’t begin with you – Luke and Matthew, they tell Jesus’ genealogy and his birth, and the book of John starts with the very, very beginning, with the Word of creation, light in the darkness, but Mark starts with you.

Where would you begin the story?– I bet you’d go back to those prophets – your lifeblood, your mother’s milk, your father’s breath in your ear, whispering their messages and hope.

  

You’d begin the story by saying there were those who said it was coming… remember those voices? Remember those promises?  Then you’d say, It’s true. It is coming. It’s already begun. 

You spoke fantastic visions as well—baptized with the Holy Spirit?  The very Spirit that hovered over the water at Creation, is claiming and cleansing us? Now?  It was a fact.  You spoke these things like they were a fact – preached the future with a present tense. Perhaps you had such bold confidence because you yourself had come from the impossibility that was becoming.  You believed it and you made them believe it too.

I heard someone say once that ‘repentance is what happens to us when the truth of who we are and who God is enters our lives and scatters the darkness of competing ideas.’ (Nadia Bolz-Weber)  It’s like being found, being grabbed on the shoulders by love and turned from death toward life, to see it all stretching out before you with a different horizon.  

Trading our way of perceiving for God’s way - it doesn’t just happen once. It can happen any and every time we start to drift back to the fear, to hide ourselves in the anger, to barricade ourselves in the false security.  When the truth of who God is and who we are enters in, we can repent, and are freed again. It’s an option available to us at any moment.

It happened to me yesterday.  There was a conversation I’d been dreading, practicing what I’d say in defensive language, couched in self-protection.  Then a friend told me to bring my honest self to it, my sadness and fear, and tell the truth.  She invited me to repent. She’d probably laugh to be told that’s what she was suggesting.  But it was, and I did, and I felt my armor fall away and the fears subside. I found myself feeling hopeful again, and secure in whatever God might do there, because the truth is we all belong to God and each other no matter what, and I could feel that truth again.

  

What did it look like, John, to see so much repentance on people? Could you see it in their eyes? Was it relief? Joy? The darkness scattering, the truth seeping in… Did their faces change as the light entered their lives?  Did their bodies feel lighter coming up out of the water than they did going down? Did seeing it strengthen your own hope and trust?

Did you know how they looked at you? How they saw you? You must have.  You dressed like Elijah, you sounded like Isaiah, you were a prophet, and the people came. They came from far and wide to hear you, to catch a glimpse of that modern day prophet who was just like the ones of old.  But the others thought you were dangerous, crazy, threatening, an embarrassment, a freak show.  Did all that bother you? 

Once someone well-known and respected who speaks in front of large crowds told me that what is hardest is the admiration, being admired.  You feel you either have to live up to people’s expectations or disabuse them of their notions, is that how you felt? Is that why you were always so quick and forceful to point out that it wasn’t about you at all, that you were paving the way, clearing the clutter, making the paths straight, because the one who would bring life to the world was coming -?  

I know what’s ahead for you too, John – when you’re in prison and you hear about what Jesus is doing and you send your people to Jesus to ask if he “really is the one who is to come or if we should wait for another?” when you question if it all really is real.  Even you!  That doubt and fear are such an intrinsic part of being human, such an integral part of faith, that even YOU wondered, faltered.  You, who told everyone else so confidently, that God was doing this thing, you too had those scary secret moments when things didn’t look like you thought they would, and you weren’t sure if you could trust what you had believed. It gives me some comfort to know that.

And when your messengers reached him and asked your question, he answered, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” 

What was it like for you to hear that? Did it put you back inside the cosmic story? Could you trust again that what the prophets had said was really happening when your friends had seen it unfold right in front of them?  

Did you repent then?  Let the light scatter the darkness of competing ideas? Sitting there in prison, just days away from your unexpected and senseless death, did you feel the chains fall away and the trust return? Let the truth of who we are and who God is release you from your fear? Did it bring you peace?  

  

I’ll bet you never heard that right after he sent away your messengers and they were hot-footing it back to you, he told the crowd with conviction in his voice that you were a prophet, just like those of old, actually, more than a prophet, he declared, you were the ‘One who announced the Messiah.’  Then he said, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist;” and then did what he does and added, “yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”  

I think you would have liked hearing him say that.  About the least being great, I mean, the poor and forgotten being lifted up that way in God’s kingdom.  Maybe even more than his message to you, it would have affirmed that this is all really happening after all- God’s kingdom really is breaking in, showing how upside down we have it all.  You would have liked hearing him say that, I bet.

When you died, John, it crushed him.  He left everyone to be alone with his terrible grief.  Did that shake his faith, I wonder, bring him to doubt?  That even though the way of God has begun and the light is in the world, the darkness is still here too, for a time?  How did he reconcile that? How can we? What would you say to us now about that, John? 

What would you think of the world right now, John?  

What would you shout at us if you were here? 

You see, we have the benefit of hindsight, we get to see all of this WAY after the fact, so we don’t have to stand on the banks of that river with the mud in our sandals and the insects buzzing around us, listening to you roar out your message and wonder who to believe –wonder whether what you say is even remotely possible, or whether you’re just another fanatic off his rocker. We know who you are and how it all goes down from there. 

So we can ask you now, and we’re willing to listen, what would you say to us? What would you have us do?  

How can we receive our Savior?

Ah, but you’re long gone. You’re silent now.  And so it’s on us.  

See, John, it’s like this every year.  It might have been all new and amazing to you, but we’ve beat this message to death with jingle bells and sentiment and buried it in a sea of candy, carols and wrapping paper and when January comes it is behind us and we’ve moved on.  We’ve put Jesus in the manger and we like him there; he’s so cute and clean.  

So if we really take you seriously, what does it mean for us? 

How does it shape our lives?  

Does God still come?  Is God still coming? We need a little taste of your honey and fervor, I think. A sense of wonder and awe once again. A longing to be stirred enough that it feels like absolute refreshment to be plunged under and feel the water roll off us along with all that keeps us in darkness, to be baptized into a promise that holds us even when we can’t see it.  How should we live a good life, a meaningful life, a life that matters, a life that sees God?  What should we do, John?  

But you would never really say, would you?  When we plead for some direction, Tell us how we navigate all of this, desert prophet! You’d just point your finger again at him and tell us God has come.  In the flesh.  Right here.  

“I’m just using water, people,” you’d say, “he’ll immerse you in the Holy Spirit, you’ll be surrounded and filled by the life-creating breath of God.  

So get ready. Be ready. Live ready.  God is coming.  God has come. Repent.”  

And you’d leave us to it, this holy exchange of our way of seeing for God’s, that scatters the darkness of competing ideas, and welcomes us back to the impossible that is becoming.

So, because I’ve not said it before, John, thank you.  

Thank you for your words and your life. Thank you for preparing the way.  Thank you for reminding us what’s real. Thank you for pointing us back to Jesus.

Sincerely,

Kara Root, and your sisters and brothers at Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, MN, 2020 AD.

This is part of a series, journeying with some of our Biblical ancestors: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John, Samuel, David*, The Samaritan Woman, 

(*This is an older message about David, in this series, we had a wonderful performance of 'David" by Theater for the Thirsty)

Sin, Salvation, and the All-Encompassing Belongingness of God

If my week had a theme, it might be noticing sin.

This week I’ve been forced to own up to the way I let a relationship go and chose avoidance and dishonesty over facing challenging conversations.  And in coming to terms with it, I have had to see that, compounded by years of silence, honestly dealing with it will cause more hurt, and the only way out of it with integrity is to go ahead and tell the truth anyway.

It’s uncomfortable to see sin, both past and present, in my life, and it feels awful, but also good to see it so I can deal with it.

Sin is when we fail to live consistent with who we are made and called to be – when we violate our belonging to God and one another.  It can be personal and internal – letting go of anger, dealing with pride, or self-judgment, and we’re stuck to wrestle inside ourselves with our failure to live consistent with who we are made and called to be. It an be between us, words and actions that hurt or degrade people, that violate the bond we’re meant to share as human beings and act as though we are against instead of for one another.  But most often, it’s both.

This country has a deep sin, our original sin, the sin of racism, which means first of all categorizing people as fundamentally different by the color of their skin, and then labeling some people better, more human or more worthy, and other people worse, less human and less worthy. Then that belief is built into a whole society’s structures and functions so that consistently, both overtly and subtly, for generations, some people are treated as less than and other people as more than, rooting this lie deep inside all people.

Right now our nation is noticing its sin.  

By virtue of the sin itself some people have always noticed it, because it affects their every waking day and it can never be escaped, and others, because they don’t often feel directly impacted by it, can ignore it and look away for weeks, years, even decades at a time.

But right now we cannot look away. 

And it feels awful to be staring at this thing together, this sin at our core, both past and present, but I imagine for those who among us who have stared at it their whole life, it feels good too, to see so many other faces staring at it at once. 

Right now most of this country is looking at the same ugliness and evil and calling a thing what it is. This is a huge part of God’s salvation.

Calling a thing what it is, naming your own story, your own culpability, your own participation in evil, recognizing and saying aloud the way Sin works in you and through you is the only way to salvation. 

We call it Confession or Repentance. 

It’s what comes before forgiveness, but after the grace of God.

God’s grace always comes first. God’s grace is where it starts. 
We begin in abundance and enough for all, harmony and unity in crazy wild and vibrant diversity, all people sharing together in caring for this gorgeous earth and its creatures, all of us made more human by our shared humanity, learning and growing alongside one another. The Way of God is our beginning and our end. 
Anything that takes us away from that is a lie.

We live the lie every day in our country. 

Whether we feel the sting of it in the moment or not, we participate in that lie. Just to illustrate this lie at work, I live in the neighborhood where Philando Castile was shot. He had been pulled over by police 52 times in 13 years. Want to know how many times I have been pulled over in my 26 years of driving? Four.  I was speeding all four times. Two of them I was let off with a warning. As a white woman, I have always felt safe with the police, confident that they are there to protect me. And if I get in trouble it’s because I deserve it, and they are upholding laws that keep us all safe.

Respect, kindness, mutuality, safety - these should not be a privilege. 

We belong to God and we belong to each other.  

Anything less than that is violence to the image of God.

But here is part of the trap – the way of fear, the sin of division, and devaluing each other is so ingrained, that we operate out of that without thinking, without noticing. 

In longing for justice for all, we could settle for revenge against some.  

And wouldn’t it feel so good to hate haters with a more hate than they hate? 

But choosing which people to hate has never been and will never be the answer. And just trying really hard to be good and right and never mess up or hurt others isn’t the answer either (not least of all because it is impossible).

The answer is facing our sin with honesty, letting the sorrow and horror of it wash over us, stepping into our brokenness alongside each other is the place God can meet us and heal us.  In Jesus Christ God so loved the world that God plunged right in alongside and with us into all of it, calling all people children of God, calling all people back to God.  And taking on all sin and evil and division into his very self, God-with-us let it take his life, and then came back to say love is stronger than death. In Christ's complete connection to God and each other, we find the belonging that sets us free to truly live.

Our Psalm today has a repeated refrain: God’s steadfast love endures forever.

Steadfast love is one of the ways the Hebrew word Hesed is translated. Remember Hesed? It was in the story of Ruth and Naomi that we told years ago, and it is all throughout the bible. It’s translated many ways, love, kindness, lovingkindness, mercy, loyalty, favor, devotion, goodness – it captures something of the inner connection and commitment God has toward us, so for years, we’ve called hesed: belongingness.

The belongingness of God is eternal. Nobody is outside of it; nobody gets to put others outside of it. It lasts forever. 

Human beings who have been judged less than and treated as unworthy, they belong to God and belong us.  

Human beings who have grown up sheltered from the suffering of others, benefiting where others don’t, they belong to God and belong to us.  

Human beings who are so filled with hatred and violence they forget their own humanity and purposely dehumanize others, they belong to God and belong to us.  (So then is incumbent on human beings who long for justice and peace not to agree with them and let them off the hook by dismissing them as monsters when they act inhumanely, but instead to call them back to their humanity and hold them accountable it).

The way of fear that says there is only so much belonging to go around – that if we give it to some we must withhold it from others. But the belongingness of God is neverending – eternal – constantly replenishing, spreading and multiplying, claiming us back to the love we came from, the love we are here for, the belongingness we are meant to live into and out of alongside each other.

It doesn’t let us go when we hurt each other, or when we believe the lie about others or about ourselves. Instead it calls us back to confession and repentence, the place where salvation can meet us.

The salvation of God, often called in scripture, the rest of God, is returning to our core, belongingness, being brought back into harmony with God, ourselves and each other, where our souls can be at rest in trust, and we can live consistently with who we are and whose we are. 

Our Psalm today tells of God’s specific salvation, restoration of belongingness, felt right where people needed it most – in their sin and its terrible consequences, in times terror and helplessness, when they were lost or alone, or had reached the end of their capacity to adapt or cope in a crisis.  Each vignette is a story of people who confessed, who recognized their situation – noticed it and cried out to God- And God saved them.

Salvation comes as deliverance from what is holding us captive, wholeness where we are broken, direction where we are lost, and connection where we are severed. It comes as hope in despair and new beginnings after bitter endings.  As this Psalm illustrates, the salvation of God always brings to us just what will heal us – even if it isn’t necessarily what we think it should be – because it is always about restoring us to belongingness in God, and that is not always comfortable, or easy, or fun.  

And it doesn’t mean dead people come back (yet), fortunes are reversed, the world is suddenly fair, or pain we’ve caused can be taken back and erased. But it means the way forward in Christ is deep and true connection to God and each other.  This is where it all began and it’s where it will end up when all is said and done.

So, as brothers and sisters in Christ, the Body of the living Christ here on earth, embodying God’s belongingness in and for the world, we are not to fear the lie that tries to mislead us, or hide us from the pain and suffering of others. 

We are not to fear the lie that says violence is stronger than love, or that hating is ok as long as you direct it at the right people. 

And we are not to fear looking into our own souls and our own actions for the evil and sin that keeps us from belongingness and withholds it from others.

We are to confess them out in the open where salvation can meet them.  

And we are to live the crazy trust that God’s abundant and neverending love and steadfast belongingness is bigger than our sin, wider than our divisions, deeper than our pain and our alienation, and higher than our human goals and aspirations.  

God’s steadfast love is eternal and beyond us, and right here next to us; it embraces and claims us, so we can see each other, listen to each other, confront each other, forgive each other, and thank the Lord for God’s steadfast love, For God’s wonderful works to humankind.

This Psalm was written to be read out, sung out, spoken by a community as a kind of call and response; it was meant to be shared by a diverse gathering of people rejoicing together.  It places them within a bigger story, the eternal belongingness of God throughout history, in the lives of those gone before and yet to come, God redeems and heals and restores. And so it becomes an invitation to honestly recount the stories of their need, and share how God has been faithful in their lives, and to name where they need salvation now, and remember God’s belongingness that holds and heals them even as they are belonging to each other in this act of sharing it all aloud.

So here is what I would share:

Some were forced to acknowledge that their own actions had wounded another.  By avoiding conflict and distress, they’d let dishonesty and division grow.  They felt ashamed and dismayed at the further hurt coming clean would cause.

Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,

And God delivered them from their distress:

God helped them look honestly at themselves, and confess to the person,

to see that forgiveness and reconciliation can only emerge when you tell the truth.

Let them thank the Lord for God’s steadfast love,

For God’s wonderful works to humankind.

For God persists in calling us to belonging,

and offers endless opportunities to make things right, even when it feels hard.

Some were watching their country in turmoil,

as deep sin and evil rose up from within and made itself known once again.

Anger, violence, sorrow and distress surrounded them,

And they felt like they were drowning in the noise of arguing and blaming, 

lamenting and shaming, calling to action and name calling,

and they longed for clarity, direction and hope.

Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,

And God delivered them from their distress:

God brought them side by side with someone in silence to lift up this nation in prayer. 

God reminded them that forgiveness and salvation can only come after confession and repentance. And God showed them stories of people facing our sin and turning toward each other in belonging.

Let them thank the Lord for God’s steadfast love,

For God’s wonderful works to humankind.

For God brings life out of death, always, and God will never stop, God’s justice will prevail.

Let all who are wise give heed to these things,

And consider the steadfast love of the Lord.
Amen.



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"What I told my White Friend When He Asked My Black Opinion on White Privilege."
"What I saw in Charlottesville" 
"For Our White Friends Desiring to be Allies"
"How To Make Fun of Nazis" 
"The Power of Non-Violent Action: South Africa and Poland" (High school curriculum)