Aug 11 | “Myth-makers,” (Sermon, August 11th, 2019)

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. ²Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. ³By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”

Hebrews 11:1-3

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

A friend introduced me to the music of Jay Brannan several months ago. Brannan is a singer-songwriter from Texas. He was raised in a conservative Baptist home and ended up leaving for California to become an actor, more than likely after discovering that he was gay. Over time he built up a music career through sharing his songs on Youtube.

Brannan has a sweet, almost plaintive voice, and his first album is low-fi, mostly just him and his guitar.

The first song my friend played for me was called “Goddamned.” In it, Brannan details his thoughts traveling through the Holy Land. He is clearly working through a lot of the theology he was force-fed as a child, and I could understand why my friend, who went through a similar struggle, shared it with me. It didn’t speak to me in the same way, but for those who have to break through the chains of spiritual abuse, naming such things is an act of bold resistance.

The chorus goes:

“‘Cause virgins don’t have babies / and water, it isn’t wine

And there’s a Holy Spirit, maybe / but she would never rent a room with walls built by mankind

Mary and Mohammed are screaming through the clouds / For you to lay your goddamned arms down

Rip your bigot roots up from the earth and salt the goddamned ground.”

In the interests of honesty let me add that while I have trouble singing the first few lines, I always join in on the last three.

Later, in the second verse, Jay sings, “Am I crazy? Maybe it’s me / But this all sounds like mythology.”

An admission which, for Jay, perhaps remembering thundering hellfire sermons from his childhood, was probably a moment of prophetic bravery.

For me, though, when I heard that line, I thought, “Well…yeah!”

See “myth” has become this dirty word in reference to religion, and it shouldn’t be. Myth was never meant to merely indicate something that wasn’t true. A myth is able to convey a depth of truth that ordinary facts cannot. Our ancestors have always known that, which is why they tell stories. We actually remember stories far better than facts. That’s probably why Jesus, like many other spiritual teachers, taught through story.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

The problem with the more standard definition of “myth” is that it consigns myth to the exclusive realm of spiritual, religious, or metaphysical thought. It insinuates that everyday life and the secular world have no place for such things. But our everyday lives do have myths. Devaluing the idea of myth, or pushing it into the realm of the “merely” spiritual, fools us into thinking we as a species have grown out of them. And we so haven’t!

Richard Topping, the principal of Vancouver School of Theology, used to say, “Today’s myth is that a Lexus will make us happy.” We laugh, but we know it’s true. Commercials are probably the most recognizable Western cultural myths. But there are more in the zeitgeist, floating around, spun by today’s storytellers. One of them is that guns will protect people. One is that the poor deserve their lot in life because they just haven’t worked hard enough. Another is that ignoring hateful people and their rhetoric will make them go away.

Most of us know that none of those things are true, or at the very least, they are simplistic. They have never been factually true, but they continue to influence cultural movements and human souls the way older myths used to. We tell these stories in the campfire shadows of our uncertainty because it makes us feel safe, makes the world seem more understandable.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

If we are not post-mythic, the point is not to try to grow past them, because we can’t. If we start from this assumption, that myths area by-product of human presence, we can move on to deciding which ones are allowed into our palace of meaning-making, here, today.

The point of a myth is to guide us through a loud and confusing world where there are many stories, many routes to take. So let’s think of myths like a map. Which ones give us a true and simple path? Which ones should we discard as out-of-date? Are some parts of them now under construction, or have they surrendered to erosion or natural disaster that changed the topography? Do some warn, “Here there be dragons”? Remember, myths are truer than true. There didn’t need to be literal grasshoppers and ants or tortoises and hares for us see truth and worth in those stories. They are illustrations of things we know to be real.

Now we will not know if our myth maps were the right route to follow until we come to the end of our lives. That’s what the faith, the conviction of things unseen, is for.

As Christians, we are called to use the Jesus map. And choosing it is so much more complicated and beautiful than “What would Jesus do?” although that is a big part of it. It is also so much more complicated than just uttering a magic prayer to be “saved,” as though that were ever done in Jesus’s time.

It’s about holding fast to the faith that Jesus gave us; not The Faith in a capital F exclusive Christians-only sense, but the faith as in the peace, the conviction, the heart of Jesus. It’s about accepting a posture of watchfulness for the one who will come to us unexpectedly – and remember Jesus begins this instruction with “Don’t be afraid.” It doesn’t have to be a frightened, paranoid watchfulness. Think of it more like the watchfulness you might have had waiting for an exciting event – a child watching for snow to show her Christmas is near – or watching at your window for an expected and much beloved guest.

So what is our Jesus myth? What’s the topography? What’s the landscape? It’s anything but easy. There are thick woods and barren wastelands. There are long stretches of unfathomed ocean. There are sticky humid swamps and mossy tundra. But there are also plains of soft sweetgrass and cathedral groves where sunlight paints everything in shades of gold. There are starfields above our heads which represent untold generations of faithful that came before and will come after us. And through it all a voice that proclaims an unbroken hymn: We are not alone. We have been fully known by the one who made us, and that one came to be with us to show us that we are never alone and that violence, ignominious death, and sin cannot change that. The very act of death indeed made it possible for all things to enter into a dance of resurrection and abiding presence.

Once you’ve accepted a myth as binding, you’ve got to dig in. Let it get into every nook and cranny, like beach sand or water. Let it bewitch you. Let it be childlike in its enthusiasm and adolescent in its intensity. Sometimes, it won’t be either of those things. When it isn’t, settle in for a stretch of contentment, or let it push you to reclaim what was lost. Your body and your heart will tell you what you need. Ask yourself questions. Ask God questions. Trust. Again, this will not always come easy or naturally. That’s okay. And if you find yourself trusting despite logic, despite patience, despite terror or pain or grief, let yourself laugh. It was the same for the psalmists, the same for the faithful among the Israelites in the desert.

Remember, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And we don’t need to be afraid.

Let faith frustrate you. Let it claim you. Let yourself be open to shouting at it, laughing at it, accepting it, pushing it away, doing everything we do with the ones we care for most deeply.

Let faith be your landscape.

Aug 08 | [Trans]figured (Letters from the Coast)

Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?’ …

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, ³and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. ⁵Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ ⁶He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. ⁷Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ ⁸Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. ¹⁰So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

Mark 8:34-37, 9:1-10

Does God make mistakes?

That’s a whole post (or a whole other lifetime of books), but it was the question I remember pondering with a spiritual guide in seminary as we talked about trans people and Christianity.

I knew so few trans people before I started seminary, and this was probably a year away from my discovery of the term genderqueer and the beginning of my journey toward coming out as nonbinary. Despite my ignorance, I already accepted that trans people were beloved, holy, and a part of God’s plan however they felt called to present themselves.

But I do remember asking myself the question, and eventually that spiritual guide, an older cishet white guy, asked the same aloud: Does God make mistakes?

Why would these people be born into the wrong body, if we began with the assumption that they were created beings and that their gender identity was not a sin or a sickness? What kind of a loving God would inflict that on a person?

We pondered it for some time before my spiritual guide said, “I suppose one way to look at it is to examine the notion of the Christian being called to transformation. We all believe that we are called to become new creations through baptism and living the new life. That entails transforming ourselves, and there are so many ways to do that. And maybe trans people are called to proclaim and live out that truth…well, physically. With their bodies.” [Or with their presentation or pronouns or what have you, older me with a bit more knowledge of trans issues adds here].

I turned to look at him, and we both smiled. “Wow. Transformed indeed!”

This was earth-shattering for me – in a good way! For me the thought immediately leads to the revelation that trans people and others outside the socially constructed gender binary truly are sacred, just as many nonwestern cultures proclaimed pre-contact for generations.

In the passage above, we read Mark’s version of the story of the Transfiguration, which is traditionally celebrated just before the beginning of Lent, or August 6^th. I have offered up my own queer and trans readings of Jesus on this blog, and here again there is a rich passage for those of us who exist in the twilight spaces in-between. To take us on a new journey, I’ve expanded the scope of the reading beyond the traditional boundaries of the story to give us some added context.

This strange mystical experience Jesus and his disciples have on the mountain occurs about a week after a conversation which arose from Jesus explaining that he was destined to suffer and die. He explains that all those who wish to follow him should be prepared for the same eventuality, and that those who wish to save their lives will lose them.

I want to tread carefully here. Trans people, especially trans women of colour, are among the most persecuted in the world, and I do not believe at all that anyone is called to accept suffering and death for greater glory or sanctity. The very notion is sickening. But one thing that is made clear to me over and over is that eventually, trans people do come to the crossroads of deciding whether or not to align our outer lives with our inner reality, whether that be through presentation, hormone therapy, gender confirmation surgery, or sharing pronouns. It really is a crossroads, because we know that at every turn we will be shamed, mocked, or doubted. So often, however, we choose to make manifest that inner reality, because losing a previous, false life is the only way to save the true, inner life that seeks to be born into the world.

Jesus, whom the Christian imagines as an incorporeal God taking on a new corporeal body, encourages this.

A week later, on a mountaintop before his closest and dearest friends, Jesus…well, comes out! His clothes become dazzling white and he is shown in the company of other spiritual giants like Moses and Elijah, whose inner realities also transcended their outer ones by virtue of their communion with God. Jesus’ inner reality, one that transcends his outer appearance and is confirmed by his association with similar figures, is made plain to his friends, whom he trusts to understand.

Sadly, they don’t. Peter gets excited, as usual, and seeks to ground the moment by building three dwellings. He’s so close to understanding! He understands that what he has witnessed is incredibly important, and that he was privileged to witness it. But he’s only able to respond to the physicality of these three beings. Jesus is extra-super important…but still operates solely on fleshly rules, ignoring the inner reality that Jesus is much more powerful than a mere man.

If you’ll permit me a cheeky analogy for a moment, it’s almost as if Jesus shows up in women’s clothing, and Peter comes to the conclusion that Jesus must be a drag queen. And he is 100% there for Jesus the drag queen! He’s going to come to all the shows and pass out fivers and use the correct pronouns…as long as Jesus is in the dress.

But this isn’t the point. Jesus is not a drag queen. The dress isn’t switched out for jeans and a collared shirt when the stage lights go out. The outer reality now matches the inner reality, and Jesus needs Peter’s support to live as trans 100% of the time, rather than living in women’s clothing sometimes.

And God confirms this. “Listen to him!”

Let him tell the story.

Jesus, in fact, tells them not to say anything when they have come back. There are a lot of theories about the meaning of Mark’s Messianic secret, but for our purposes we can say that Jesus wants to remain in control of the narrative himself. Only he can adequately explain the depth of his inner reality to people, and he’s smart enough to know that he needs to stick to works of wonder and metaphor for a little longer.

Perhaps this was his way of signaling to others who were like him. “I see you. Your inner reality is richer than your outer one too, isn’t it? I see you and I love you for it. I see the inner reality.”

To the disciples, he merely says, “Wait. Wait until my full-on coming out party. Wait until I rise from death: the biggest restriction outer reality has, the Ur-closet.”

They have no idea what the hell he’s talking about.

People who don’t feel compelled to that level of transformation so rarely do.

But trans people do. And Jesus does.

Happy [Trans]figuration.

Aug 04 | “Your life is hidden,” (Sermon, August 4th, 2019)

“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ²Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, ³for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
5 Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). ⁶On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. ⁷These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. ⁸But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. ⁹Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices ¹⁰and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. ¹¹In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!”

Colossians 3:1-11

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! The Great Oz has spoken!”

What an emblematic moment. It somehow manages through utter genius to simultaneously portray the willful curiosity of childhood and the healthy skepticism of adulthood. The curiosity is what saves it, though. An adult would be more likely, on hearing the exclamation, to laugh and walk away, shaking her head.

Only a child would be so recklessly brave as to open the curtain, like Dorothy did.

“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

What a cryptic, wonderful statement! Scores of books and poems and hymns could be written on what this means. What does it mean for our life to be hidden with Christ?

What part of us is behind the curtain?

And how should we rejoice, knowing that Christ, behind the temple veil as our great high priest, still speaks to us from within that Holy of Holies, even if by the nature of our mortality we are not yet fully present with him?

Pay close attention to the one behind the curtain!

It’s appropriate to discuss curtains and hiddenness on Pride Sunday, where we celebrate the breaking down of closet doors and walls, and indeed celebrate something which the church has known for a long time: that family is so much more complicated and wonderful than blood and even legal commitments, that the human gift of thriving in connection is so strong that it transcends all boundaries and that that’s worth delighting in, and fighting for.

Last Monday, I was invited to a fundraiser for the advocacy group Rainbow Railroad. Rainbow Railroad is an organization that provides information, travel funds, and moral support to LGBTQ+ folks fleeing persecution in their countries of origin. There are 70 countries in the world that still criminalize same-sex intimacy, and Rainbow Railroad exists to help people escape and claim refugee status.

I had attended one of these fundraisers before, a couple of years ago, to hear the executive director, Kimahli Powell, speak. This year, though, Kimahli brought a guest speaker: Amin Dzabrailov, a Chechen who had been abducted and tortured by police for over two weeks in 2017. They wanted him to surrender the names of other gay men, which he refused to do. He was a thin, beautiful man who looked much younger than he was. His big brown eyes darted about the room, never settling, and he always clutched at something – his other hand, a denim jacket – probably to keep his hands from shaking. When we asked him how he had stayed so strong, he said quietly, “I thought I was going to die anyway, and I knew they would just do this to someone else if I gave names.”

When he was finally released, his brothers came to pick him up. Their car ride home was “just silence.”

With the help of a friend, deeply secret LGBTQ+ networks in Russia, and Rainbow Railroad, he was able to come to Canada as a refugee with several other Chechen men, who he says are now like a family.

After spending so long being hidden, he told us he could now wake up, go out the door, and be free. He said what was most healing was the ability to learn how to be himself.

It was that freedom which led him to be one of the first Chechen men to go on the record about his experience. He told his story to Time Magazine only a week or two ago.

“When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”

It is not that we are calledto suffer needlessly, to run into the jaws of the dragon, to scourge ourselves seeking some elusive purity through pain and degradation. But in the words of Brian J. Walsh, the Christian ethic is a narrative ethic. This is about accepting an entirely new story as binding on our lives. This is about taking the pain that has been inflicted on us, or that we inflict on ourselves, and reclaiming the narrative.

It might look like facing your trauma full on and naming it, like Amin, for only in telling your story can you claim power over it, like Jesus naming demons.

Or it might look like reflecting on your past choices, and determining through gentle self-examination which ones led you astray through being made out of fear or pride. It might look like deciding on a totally new path, a totally new life.

It might look like playing peek-a-boo with God, who hides to be found by us, and takes delight in it, like a toddler who screeches with joy when she is discovered.

It does not mean we should be so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good. Again, we’re bound to a narrative ethic. We’re bound to a story of God coming out – heh – in human flesh, our own vestments, having chosen this body with great care in order to spread the most good in the time God chose. God went from being hidden, incorporeal, without bodily form, to being clothed in a body, revealed in the glory of an ordinary human life. We may argue that it was hardly ordinary, and of course that’s true, but in his own context, it was to a certain extent. There were lots of healers and exorcists and Messianic hopefuls in Jesus’s time. It was only after that body was reclaimed in resurrection – heh, another coming out – that everything was fully revealed, and indeed once ascension took place and the body vanished, the new hiddenness was not the same as the old hiddenness. For now we had something to hold onto, something new to anchor us in this world and its beauty, while also calling us forward to walk into a new reality beyond sight and time – already here, but not yet.

Our lives may be hidden until Christ’s coming, but are we not also called to live as though the kingdom is already here? Are we not called, like little children playing, to live as though in a world of reckless love and generosity, despite the best intentions of a society that glorifies men who hoard wealth and resources like the one in Jesus’s parable as minor gods? Are we too not called to come out of the tomb, to come out as those who love Jesus?

Are we not called to live like Amin, who reclaimed a narrative of pain and torture by pulling back the curtain, exposing it to light, inspiring further bravery, and perhaps saving countless others in the future?

Perhaps, to the world around us, our life is hidden; our life as beloved, prophetic, dragon-slaying children of God. Perhaps the power we have to heal and liberate is hidden to a world that says sick is sick and dead is dead.

But we know better, don’t we?

We who have witnessed healing and resurrection know that every end is a new beginning.

“When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”

To paraphrase Martha, we know he will be revealed on the last day.

But is Christ not also being revealed every day when the oppressed are given the strength to refuse silence, when powerful and poor alike are called to choose the way of service and solidarity, however they can, and when all are called to elevate the voices of those who have good news to tell?

Perhaps, in the world we’re living in today, it is we who are called to participate in the revelation of Christ, for in that revelation, we too are revealed in glory, for we are co-creators of the beautiful new reality we are being called to embody with our very selves.

Our priest and bridegroom calls from behind the veil for us to join him at the wedding banquet.

Pay close attention to the one behind the curtain!

Aug 01 | Prism Prayer (Letters from the Coast)

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, ¹⁰and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.^{* 11}I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’ ¹²God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: ¹³I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’ ¹⁷God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.’

Genesis 9:8-17

I remember the very first time I bought a rainbow necklace.

It was probably in 2000 or 2001. There were so many options at the Pride Parade booths. I was about 15 and didn’t have a lot of money, and of course they were pretty overpriced, but it felt so, so important.

I picked one on a dog-tag style ball chain. Seven little metal rings, each one a different colour. Subtle, but unmistakable.

Wearing it felt powerful. My school was moderately safe, but things were not the way they were today. There was a little bit of danger in wearing it, but I didn’t care. I was who I was.

It’s amazing where you can see rainbows. The other day, looking into an evening sky, I saw one reflected in a light dusting of cirrus clouds. I’ve seen them reflected in ice-crusted snow at my feet. I’ve seen them in the mist rising off large bodies of water. Increasingly, I’ve seen them on small stickers pasted onto the glass walls of businesses around the city. “Safe zone,” these stickers proclaim.

Indeed.

One might argue easily that Genesis claims God plastered a safe zone sticker over the entire world.

The rainbow has since been adopted as a symbol for a multitude of different movements, but the one which most North Americans are familiar with is the pride flag. According to Wikipedia, it was popularized in 1978 by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker. Since 1979 it has appeared with six stripes, corresponding to any naturally occurring rainbow, but originally it was made with eight, including pink and turquoise. The colours were actually assigned meanings:

Red: Life

Orange: Healing

Yellow: Sunlight

Green: Nature

Blue: Harmony/peace

Purple: Spirit

Pink: Sexuality

Turquoise: Art/magic

Sometimes a black stripe was added for AIDS victims as well.

Whatever you believe about the flood, it’s a story of God turning her back on creation, not because she is a petty creature but because that’s how bad humankind was acting. It must have been bad – humanity had barely gotten off the ground by the time God decided this. The best clue we have is the Song of Lamech, who sings to his wives about killing a man for striking him. God looks on humankind and “is sorry” to have created all things, for the earth is corrupt and “filled with violence.” Despite all of this, God sets apart the family of Noah, who is “righteous.”  Once the floodwaters have receded, God decides never again to wipe out life, and sets the “bow” in the clouds. This is a sign of peace, God laying her weapon down. Despite the continuing violence, God has determined not to punish all creation for the sins of humankind specifically. The resulting covenant, the Jewish people believed, was made with all creation and all people.

About a month ago, I came across this photograph on Twitter, taken by Christine Spencer and retweeted by @41Strange. Dazzled by its beauty, I smiled as I thought about the biblical story of the first rainbow as described above. I retweeted the image with the accompanying text:

“The rainbow has always been a symbol of divine reconciliation (and, I believe, most appropriately used by the queer community). And look here: it’s written into the very fabric of creation, wherever you look.”

As I continued to contemplate this, I was suddenly struck by the beautiful realization that one could just as easily say that queer people in all of their diversity are indeed living symbols of reconciliation. Queer folks, through their resilience, their willingness to speak the truth, their tendency to embrace things which would normally not be embraced by a person of their gender, their commitment to loving someone in a way that often transcends the smallness of gender norms – all of these things are refracted characteristics of the God who calls us out of our beautiful and very small human bodies and into a new dance of light and colour.

Happy Pride, y’all. :)

Jul 26 | This is what we do (Letters from the Coast)

In a small meeting room belonging to St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church, a group of Christ’s disciples gathered around a laptop screen and watched two hours’ worth of debate over a motion to begin offering full same-sex marriage in the Anglican Church of Canada.

We were few, but we were a microcosm of young and old across our national church. There were gay and bisexual people. There were trans and nonbinary people. There were a couple of allies who had pledged to support us.

Parts of it were deeply painful to watch. Parts of it were utterly disgraceful.

We held our breath as they counted the votes. Ten minutes lasted ten thousand years.

And once again, our hearts were broken by the church.

Although I had expected this outcome, it still felt like a cannonball to the chest, particularly because the vote was so close. In order for a canon change to be accepted, it must pass through two consecutive synods by a two-thirds majority in all three houses: the house of laity, the house of clergy, and the house of bishops.

The plain facts were that it did pass by a two-thirds majority in the houses of laity and clergy.

There was a holdout from, as I understand, two bishops out of fourteen or so.

Two.

Three of our country’s bishops whom we know to be affirming were kept from us by illness, including my own bishop, Archbishop Melissa Skelton, who I was told tried her best to wrangle a day pass from hospital out of her doctors, but could not.

I stood there, crying, as others wept or simply fell silent.

And then – blessing of blessings – my friend C stated firmly, “Okay. Now let’s go do some kind of service.”

“What should we do?” some of us mourned.

“I had thought of singing songs on the steps of the law courts across the street,” I mumbled.

“No. Let’s do a Eucharist. And do it right in front of the hotel,” C said.

Of course C was right. It had to be. We were Anglican. This is what we do.

And just like that, we fanned out, gathering up the snacks, books, crayons, and other things we had brought to construct our safe haven for the night. It probably took about ten to fifteen minutes. Many hands and so on.

I got separated briefly, with an armload of cookies and Kinder Eggs, but found my friends again in front of the shining fountain before the Sheraton Wall Centre, where General Synod was being held.

I dumped the food at the fountain and texted my husband to come and be with us. Another priest went to fetch elements, returning with a huge hand-crafted loaf and a bottle of de-alcoholized wine from IGA. C laid out a rainbow scarf and lit candles, and we began to sing.

“And we will walk on / Knowing God is always with us / The wilderness is holy ground

And through uncertainty / There’s so much possibility to be found.”

Voices rose and fell over the crashing beauty of the fountain, reminding us of our baptism, which, no matter where or when it happened, through the power of God’s love, happened at the river, the beautiful the beautiful river.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all,” I said, leaning into every word.

“And also with you.”

My husband had arrived, and I noticed him standing off to the side. Although he is not a believer, I assumed he would join us, but he didn’t. It took me a little while to realize that he was standing sentinel, making sure that all of us were safe, and watching our body language to make sure that no-one who joined us (and there were a few) were the kind of folks we wouldn’t want to be there.

Where the sermon would have been, we shared. We spoke our truths.

I don’t know that I’ve ever been so angry. “I feel like someone shot me,” I said, and I couldn’t help my voice rising. “I am tired of this! I am tired of fighting when I know that God has blessed us!”

Others were numb. Some could not share at all.

As C shared, a woman from a Newfoundland diocese, who had told us her bishops were drafting a letter of support, came and hugged me tight, and whispered to me, “Hang in there. I’m being ordained in a year and a half, and I am coming for them.”

When we had exhausted our voices, we decided to get on with it. I counted our circle of sharing as prayers and affirmation of faith, and we prepared to break bread.

Bishop Lynne McNaughton of the diocese of Kootenay held my phone for me as I read from the Book of Alternative Services. About halfway through, the page got lost, and we went a little off-script. There was laughter.

I insisted that Bishop Lynne be the one to share out the bread. She was the only bishop that joined us. I wanted all those gathered to see that they had bishops who would not betray their vulnerability and their trust, who would feed them no matter their pronouns and no matter their loves.

As we went around, the circle sang, “All we need is here, all we need is here.”

I blessed us: “Live without fear. Your Creator has made you holy, has always welcomed you, and loves you like a good mother. Go in peace to follow the good road, and the Sacred Three to save, to shield, and to surround you all your life, all the days of your life.”

“Amen.”

C raised a triumphant hand. “Go in peace, be gay, do crimes.”

We howled with laughter. “Thanks be to God!”

I picked up the very large remains of the broken loaf. “Church! I need your help!”

It all got eaten. There were no baskets left over.

Perhaps we are the baskets left over, a living testament to there always being enough, to there always being a place at the table.

The church broke my heart, and yet somehow, at the same time, I was so, so proud to be church, in the dim electric light and crashing waves of that fountain.

Jul 18 | Done with the debate, Part 2 (Letters from the Coast)

This is the second in a two part entry about the inherent objectification and racism of modern evangelism.

 

PART II: ALREADY JUSTIFIED

Of course my own denomination has its own problematic racial history to contend with. Glass houses, and whatnot. But the racism of the mainline Canadian Anglican church looks very different from the racism of the North American evangelical church. While we cling to the paternalistic, colonialist racism inherent in historically British institutions, what I’m interested in is the inherently objectifying framework of evangelism as present in those who risk it all to save souls.

Going abroad to spread the message goes all the way back to the beginning of Christianity, but it’s disingenuous to compare Paul’s jaunts across the Mediterranean with Jesuits bringing the Bible to Canada. Paul, while a Roman citizen, was still a member of an occupied community under Roman rule who ended up in prison for what he was doing. And while he was pretty spicy in some of his criticisms of his flock, he tirelessly fought for integration of Gentiles in the infant church. Of course this brought us to a complicated place once the church became the establishment, but in its early days this was more cult than colonialism, and even pretty radical.

Fast forward to today, where we have whatever the heck Jilly’s doing, and people like the somber looking folks my boss and I noticed fanning out across the street from our church two by two, with books in their hands and resolute faces. Fast forward to today, where arguments are not made in good faith but are merely a chance to show off one’s supposed rhetorical skill – really just a chance to, in my opinion, commit the sin of pride by supposedly running circles around heathens with your encyclopedic knowledge of random Scripture quotes, as though doing glorified sword drills were really that impressive a display of faith or knowledge.

There are so many ways to do this kind of work, and almost all of them drive me up the wall.

We’ll start with a beatific smile, and move into the main course, which is telling me, through all of those teeth, that I’m going to burn in hell if I don’t align myself with a set of beliefs that dates back a hundred years at most.

If I do anything other than slam the door, it quickly becomes a chance to mansplain Scripture to me, as if I, raised in the church, a student of the faith in earnest on my return to Christ in 2005, and an ordained priest with an MDiv and awards for my work in New Testament hermeneutics, knows nothing about how the Bible should really be read; even though, again, their particular interpretation of Scripture grew out of a barely one hundred year old panic that higher biblical criticism was going to topple the universe – indeed, as though after two thousand years of biblical scholarship all across the world a handful of white men in the United States only just got it right in 1910.

But if you refuse to engage, of course, you’re a coward. “Debate me!”

No.

I don’t have to.

As a dear friend once told me, “You don’t have to justify yourself. You are already justified.”

I didn’t invent the radical reading of Scripture. I’m only one in a long of radical interpreters. Indeed, I’m only one in a long line of folks, lay and ordained, who have woven their own culture, their own worldview, their own zeitgeist into the braid of Scripture.

That is what Jesus did. That is what Paul did. That is what everyone has always done.

The opposite of faith, someone once told me, is not doubt, but certainty.

If you are so so sure about something, that’s not faith at all. Faith is first and foremost about relationship before intellectual assent. This is how it was in the church for thousands of years. In these latter days of the Enlightenment, though, faith is also about holding fast to what you’re really not sure about, allowing something to shape your life because you know in your heart it’s true but can’t really prove it with the tools of logic. For me, that’s about saying that love, as it exists outside of romance or family ties, as it exists, driving people to give everything up for the other, is more than just a neuron. It’s something that has no biological source, but exists in and indeed holds up the universe. I can’t show it to you on a microscope. I can only show it to you with my actions and my words…AND I would never tell you to only experience it through my actions and words.

What fundamentalists do for their god has nothing to do with faith. It’s just bullheadedness.

In these days where we challenge the colonial legacy of the church, where we scramble to piece together a faith that has probably done as much damage as good (and it has done quite a bit of good, despite what a lot of folks would have you believe), I think we need a radical reinterpretation of what it means to bring Jesus to those who do not know him.

I think maybe it looks like actually practicing what we preach.

I think maybe it looks like friendship more than threats.

And I think maybe it looks like having a bit of damn humility for once.

Jul 14 | “Because God wants you,” (Sermon, July 14th, 2019)

On Tuesday, I told my husband, “I’m probably going to have to write two sermons.”

He looked at me and his mouth twisted sympathetically. “Have you thought about saying that? Like, to the congregation?”

“I don’t know,” I said, surprised. “I guess I could.”

“You should,” he said, and speared another forkful of stirfry.

This is how a lot of my bigger theological decisions begin, believe it or not. My husband, who identifies as atheist, hears me say something like, “I’m thinking about wearing my collar to that protest.” “I’m thinking of speaking up the next time I hear that kind of garbage theology.”

And he responds, “You should.” Sometimes it’s even, “You have to.”

I wonder if God ever sounds like that to a prophet.

We are so accustomed to seeing prophets as fiery types who warn of bizarre natural spectacles like bloody moons and trembling mountains, wild-eyed locust eaters who froth about the indolent rich and axes at the roots of trees.

But here, well into Isaiah, we see something different. We see compassion, patience, and love. We see gentle words, reassurance, and hope.

The chapter from which we read is a part of the collected work called Isaiah that many scholars attribute to an anonymous author often called ‘Deutero-Isaiah,’ or ‘Second Isaiah.’ Unlike the author of ‘First Isaiah,’ which runs from Chapters 1 to 39, Second Isaiah wrote during the time of the Judean exile. Many of the surviving people of God had been torn from their homelands and brought in captivity to Babylon around the time of the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. These forcibly deported people would have felt not only fear and humiliation, but confusion. Jerusalem was believed to be the holy city, God’s protected place. How could it have fallen?

And in the days of old, when wars were seen not only as conflicts between nations but between gods, it would have seemed to many that their God had been defeated.

What was the point of remaining on God’s side? God was, for lack of a better word, dead.

Second Isaiah needed his readers to understand that God was not so weak, and God’s favour was not so fickle. God’s presence was unending, everlasting. God was preparing a servant to liberate the people, just as she had with Moses. God would do this, because God was loving. God had called Israel by name from the beginning. Verse 1 reminds the people of their roots: Jacob whom God loved and with whom God struggled at Peniel, imparting a blessing earned through struggle and hardship and broken bones.

Perhaps, Second Isaiah thought, the people needed a reminder that they had been in exile before, and God had safely steered them home then. But rather than showing annoyance with their forgetfulness, as God sometimes did in other parts of scripture, God here is patient and loving, as a parent might be with a child who’s been told a million times that there’s nothing under the bed or in the closet.

God understands the depth of our fear, our despair, our rage, our helplessness.

Christians, who sobbed through the death of their Messiah on Good Friday only to, like Mary Magdalene, be confronted with the awesome foolishness of his resurrection on Sunday, were so heavily influenced by the Book of Isaiah that some scholars refer to it as the Fifth Gospel. Advent is the time when we hear it the most. It’s woven through Handel’s Messiah. It’s woven into our very language, from “swords into ploughshares” to “a voice in the wilderness.”

The sense of kinship Christians had with these writings is totally understandable for a number of reasons. While some endured persecution and took comfort in the more general notion that God was with them in times of trial, those who read it following the destruction of the Temple in the first Jewish-Roman war resonated deeply with those who had been ripped from their divine homeland. The destruction of the Second Temple was another watershed moment in Judaism, one that again threw their conception of God into question. Was God really with us, no longer having a house to live in?

The rabbis said, “Yes, of course. There was no house in the wilderness. God is so much bigger than that.” And out of their devotion to their scripture and scholarship, they and their people saved the Jewish faith.

Centuries later, Christians agreed.

So what about us?

After hard and mean years of exile, queer Christians have been shut outside again. We have been told that there is no place for us in the palace of the righteous. We have been told that we must bend ourselves into a hundred shuddering shapes to be made ready for the kingdom.

This is nothing new. It’s awful. It’s wearisome. It’s the worst sort of foolishness.

But it’s nothing new.

Not to us, and not to the church.

We are so, so tired.

We’re tired of being told to be patient when we’ve been walking through desolation for thousands of years.

We’re tired of manna in the desert, morning foam on grass, when our bodies want meat.

We’re tired of having to smash stones for water, when we just want to drink from a spring flowing from a generous heart.

We’re tired of asking for fish and being given snakes.

We’re starting to wonder what the hell the point of all this is.

Why spend hours trying to muscle in on a seat at the table when you’re clearly not wanted?

Why?

Because you are wanted.

Because God wants you.

God wants all of us.

No matter what any of the proverbial haters say, even our church knew that on Friday. The change passed in two out of three houses.

We already have a seat at the table. Just because it’s been blocked off by a couple of heavies doesn’t mean it’s not there.

God put it there.

The Church has been wrong before, and it will be again.

And God is with us then, and God will be with us the next time, and the next, and the next.

And all the time she is calling, calling us from the margins, from the wilderness, calling out that we must remember that we are known by name.

Like the exiles, ripped from the arms of our homeland to a faraway place, we are called to remember our roots, to remember who we are: children of God, named and claimed as beloved, because God is where love is.

Like Paul, architect of death and terroristic persecution who suddenly found himself forged into a new creation, thrown from his horse in the blazing light of a new master who would lead him into a love so strong he was happy to exchange his life for it.

Like Mary Magdalene, fumbling through pre-dawn uncertainty, turning to look on the gardener who was not a gardener and yet was, a new Adam come to save us from what we were before: a creature that sought to execute the source of all life and found all attempts thwarted with the gentle question, “Whom are you looking for?”

Like the church itself, a ragtag group of brown men and women living in an occupied land, who would never have associated with each other outside of the Spirit’s mischievous will, who went from persecuted to glorified to feared to ignored and perhaps in the end back again, always carrying within it the most frustrating paradox and the most important news: that death and fear are not the end, that slavery is never a closed chapter, that joy comes in the morning, that struggles are seen and known and felt in the bleeding heart of one who was pierced and returned to us still pierced and speaking peace.

So let us continue our work of love, here and in our own relationships. Let us continue to be loud and proud. Let us continue to show God’s love in everything we do.

For the best way to shame those who would shame us is to live our lives as though we are blessed, because we are.

We are.

Jul 13 | Five Smooth Stones

This is an adapted version of something I posted on Twitter. I shared it as a reflection accompanying Morning Prayer the morning after a few bishops at General Synod 2019 voted not to pass the motion on the Marriage Canon, which would have allowed same-sex couples to marry (rather than simply have their unions blessed) in the Anglican Church of Canada. The passage assigned for the lectionary that morning (really!) was 1 Samuel 17:31-49, the battle between David and Goliath.

Reading this, I’m struck by two things.

Now I’m going to do my best to be “professional” and say that what we should take away from this story is David’s reckless faith in the Lord of hosts…

But I need to confess, my family, that the stone sinking into the giant’s forehead and striking him down made me feel a little happy.

And also, perhaps there’s something to be said for the moment when David removes Saul’s armour. Perhaps we clothe ourselves too much in the armour of those who would do us harm with their words. Those words could be hateful speech, but honestly also Scripture.

Hear me out!

It has been made clear over the course of thirty years that progressive and conservative Christians will not be able to meet in the middle on Scripture. I could argue about the meanings of the terrible texts until I’m blue in the face, and I will never change anyone’s mind. And I don’t even want to anymore.

It is not a philosophical exercise, this debate over people’s lives and loves and identities. I refuse to allow for that. We armour ourselves with our stories, and while I often feel rage that we are forced to do that when it has been proven they will not be held with respect, it remains that witnessing us, seeing us and our relationships, is what truly changes people.

Perhaps that too is a call with its own beauty. For we were forced into closets and ill-fitting “protective” armour, and yet God has always called us to be seen: no armour, no helmet, armed only with the smooth stones of our stories.

So let us mourn if we need to, for there is a season for all things. But when we feel ready, let us stand up and be reckless in our faith in the God who has liberated us. Like beautiful Clare Urquhart said so bravely said last night, we KNOW we are blessed. We KNOW we are loved.

Let’s act like it.

Let’s be prophets.

Let’s take our story-stones and slay some dragons.

Jul 12 | Daybreak Eyes

Jul 11 | Done with the Debate, Part 1 (Letters from the Coast)

This is another two parter entry on the racism and objectifying nature of modern evangelism.

PART I: SELFIES AND SALVATION

In late 2013, I applied to go on an “exposure trip” to El Salvador with the Student Christian Movement. The organization was careful to explain to us that this was not a missions trip or a chance for a bunch of us white kids to go build things and take selfies with brown children. While we would do some work with locals, the main focus of the trip was to meet Jose “Chencho” Alas, a personal friend of Bishop Oscar Romero and a leader of liberation theology, a grassroots movement most folks trace back to Central and South America in the ‘70s and ‘80s which sought to empower laypeople to deepen their faith and orchestrate their own liberation from colonialism and oppression.

I told my stepmother, who didn’t understand that last part. “So…you’re going on a missions trip?”

“No,” I said. “We’re going to learn from Chencho and help out with some of the projects his group has already started.” (We helped plant a food garden and distributed/planted fruit trees in village yards with a group of kids and adults as part of a reforestation and anti-hunger effort spearheaded by his organization).

“You remember my auntie Jilly[1], right?”

My eye probably twitched a little. “Yes.”

“If you’re interested in that kind of stuff, you should get in touch with her! Here, she sent me a postcard.”

My stepmother’s aunt was not the kind of Christian I generally get along with very well. I have vague memories of her when I was a kid, and she was a lovely, kind, vivacious lady. But as I deepened in my own faith, I began to discover that Jilly’s work was starting to make me feel more and more uncomfortable.

Jilly called herself a missionary, and a few churches recognized her as one and sent her money to support her work, which occurs in an American border town. She works mostly with children, many of them with disabilities. She regularly sent letters and postcards to her family and friends detailing the work she did.

Lots of selfies with brown children, as you can imagine.

Shortly after my stepmother encouraged me to get in touch with her, I did become curious about her work. I already knew that it was going to be the kind of thing I would be utterly uninterested in doing for a number of reasons, but I realized I had no idea what churches supported her work, or who was actually keeping an eye on what she was doing. I didn’t even know what denominational family she was a part of, although I do remember my stepmother’s grandmother was a staunch Jehovah’s Witness and remember my father debating Scripture with her – basically the only childhood memories I have of my dad engaging with religion at all.

I set about trying to find her.

She had no website of her own, but I do remember finding references to her on one missionary website which I can no longer find. There is also an archived letter that pops up when you plug her name into Google, replete with both fragmentary and run-on sentences and exclamation points. It’s impossible to tell from the letter what it is Jilly is actually doing with the kids, or exactly where it’s happening, although it’s in a border town and she claims that they are all very poor and many have intellectual disabilities. She also name drops church folks I can’t really trace, and talks about partnering with one organization which has a charitable arm that carefully omits references to Christianity and does look to be doing good work.

In short, I have never been able to fully decipher what it is that Jilly does or who is sponsoring her.

And frankly, that disturbed me.

It disturbed me even more when this story came out.

I actually heard about it through my favourite podcast, Robert Evans’s brilliant Behind the Bastards. When his episode on Bach came out, there was as yet little Western media coverage. Most of his sources were Ugandan, and the group “No White Saviours” had been putting the story out there. He was certain that the story would explode very shortly, and he was clearly right.

Once again, I took to the internet to find more information about Jilly. It was even harder to find anything this time. The letter I mention above was nine years old when I read it the first time in 2014. It’s still there, and I found one or two references in church bulletins to someone with the same name as Jilly, but there’s no way to confirm if it’s really her.

I did find her on Facebook. I won’t add her, so there will be some things I can’t see, but I still scrolled through quite a bit. And again, it’s totally unclear what it is that she’s actually doing. There are lots of selfies of her with brown kids, although it seems to be the same few, so I don’t know if these are kids she’s adopted or if they’re part of a house she’s running. There is also an incredibly eye-rolling post from the summer of 2016 that suggests voting for Trump (without ever mentioning him by name but it’s quite clear) because he’s “brutally honest,” unlike “the other candidate.” Obviously I’m not missing out on a good relationship. It all feels quite typical for the kind of Christian I remember her being.

Let me be clear that I don’t think Jilly is experimenting on the kids. Based on memory and what I’ve seen, she’s never been able to have children of her own, and I believe she does love the children in her care.

But I’m also still deeply troubled by what I perceive to be a total lack of transparency of and accountability for what she’s doing, and the weird feelings I have when I consider that she is female and, as far as I’m aware, unmarried – Fundamentalists and evangelicals have such weird double standards whenever it comes to missionaries!

Considering these two stories together, I started to understand on a deeper level what Christians of colour mean when they say white supremacy is at the core of the North American evangelical church.

—–

[1] Not her real name