This Sunday was originally slated to include a baptism at St. Brigid’s, which is why once again we celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration in this church calendar year. Unfortunately, the baptism ended up postponed, but it was too late to change the bulletins and readings, so I just rolled with it. It’s a fantastic story; no harm telling it more than once.
I couldn’t
stop watching it: a little video, made by a friend, set to music: “Here comes
the girl! Hello, girl! Welcome.”
The girl in
question was a trans girl, brand new in her journey toward presenting publicly
as female in her daily life. Going through my own gender journey, I’d cleaned
my closet of my more feminine things that didn’t feel like they really belonged
to me anymore, and I thought I could pass some of it on to a trans or nonbinary
person. She was modeling a flowered dress from that stash, doing that thing
that all girls do when they get a new dress: twirling. Our body types are
nothing alike, but I figured her height and proportions would just make the
dress hang a bit differently than it did on me, and I was right. It looked
amazing. She looked amazing. Her smile was so sweet, so shy. “Here comes the
girl! Hello, girl! Welcome.”
She wasn’t
on a mountaintop, but she was transfigured.
In the Book
of Daniel, in response to four great beasts symbolizing four of the great
empires that ran roughshod over Israel, a Holy Ancient One cleanses them with
celestial fire, putting an end to the arrogant, hateful, and meaningless words
of the last, most fearsome beast. And after that, when oppression has been put
to the flame, one like a human being, coming with the clouds of heaven,
approaches the Holy Ancient One, and is given full dominion over all things.
One like a
human being, but clearly not – one who comes robed in cloud and seems
unbothered by the torrents of holy fire that have poured forth from this
Ancient One, and yet looks like us. One whose identity cannot be determined by
the eyes alone. One whose true power is only made fully manifest when
oppression is put to the flame.
One like us.
Jesus goes
to the mountaintop. He takes his closest friends, Peter, James, and John. He
doesn’t trust just anyone with the secret he is about to reveal.
He has
already been about the work of putting systems of oppression to the flame. He
has commissioned fishers, labourers, and a tax collector or two, to go out into
the world with the power to heal, to exorcise, and to proclaim the Kingdom of
God. He has fed five thousand people with the bread of abundance, given without
price or restriction to all who hunger. He has confessed, in an act of radical
honesty, that this kind of advocacy comes with a heavy cost – indeed, it
usually leads to death – and has encouraged others who want to follow to join
him in that work of self-sacrificing love, love totally divorced from any
desire for earthly wealth or gain.
And now, his
true power, his true identity, is ready to be made manifest, at least for a
moment.
On the
mountaintop, in a period of deep prayer, accompanied by his closest friends,
the ones he brought into the bedroom of Jairus’s daughter to witness her
resurrection, he takes on a new form, a true form, a form that leaves nothing
to the imagination. He is out and about.
Moses and
Elijah, prophets who also led slaves to freedom, fed the hungry without price,
and spoke truth to power, are suddenly beside him, placing him firmly,
inescapably, in their legacy – in God’s legacy – of putting oppression to the
flame.
In a bit of
spooky foreshadowing the three companions are weighed down with sleep. In
Chapter 22, they will once again be weighed down with sleep, not on a mountain,
but in a garden. The Sufi mystic Rumi warns us, “If you want everlasting glory…
if you want to burn with love, don’t go back to sleep. You have wasted so many
nights; don’t go back to sleep.”
Here,
though, on the mountaintop, they manage to stay awake, and witness everlasting
glory.
And Peter,
ever enthusiastic, ever clueless, tries to bottle the moment, to curate Jesus’s
secret that the Liberator will come clothed in our own bodies, to make a
monument to it.
And how can
we not want to? When we finally see the truth of what Irenaeus was telling us
when he wrote “The glory of God is a human being, fully alive,” how could we
not want to build a city on that truth?
But this is
always our first mistake: believing we can just pluck wisdom off a branch and
keep it contained to one body, one story, one message. Believing we can encase
God in gold and dance before Them on the mountaintop. Believing that we are
one body, one story, one spirit, apart from everyone and everything else,
alone. We take a moving intricate infinite and try to freeze it into a solitary
static image.
Stay awake,
Peter. This moment is too big for a tent or a tabernacle. This is your beloved,
and he took you up here to tell you something profound. Listen to him. This
moment is manna, heavenly bread. It’s a gift, but you can’t take more than
you’re given. We know this, because a cloud comes down, just like it did for
Moses and the liberated Israel. It’s terrifying, because this Liberator is not
someone that can be manipulated or bullied or shamed, not someone who will
inevitably turn on their flock. This Liberator is outside of the corruptibility
that comes with human power. This Liberator is unlike anything we’ve ever seen
before.
Stay awake,
Peter. Don’t just listen because you’re a student and need to understand. Listen
because the moment is fleeting, and it has to last you a while. You’re staring
into a rising sun now, but a long night is coming. Your beloved is asking you
not to waste that coming night with sleep and despair. He’s trying to tell you,
in this one precious moment, that when the night comes, he wants you waiting at
the window like the woman in the Song of Songs, ever hopeful that the
beloved will bring the sun with him as he crests the treacherous rise of death
like a gazelle.
Stay awake,
Peter, you’ll want to see this.
This is only
the beginning.
Have you
ever seen someone transfigured?
Have you
ever been invited to a lonely place to be told a monumental secret, and
suddenly been struck by awe as the one you thought you knew became something
else entirely – something beautiful and profound and unknowable, and yet so
close to you, and wanting you closer, wanting you to cradle this
incredible secret as though it were an infant star in your hands?
What did you
see? What did you feel? What did you do?
Have you
ever felt transfigured?
Have you
ever made a careful, conscious choice of precious friends, and brought them to
the mountain of your solitude to share this secret, not knowing how they would
react, not knowing if they would recognize the deep work of prayer it took to
bring forth this light of truth, trying to get them to stay awake, trying to
get them to see you, to want to see you, to take immeasurable delight in
the sight of you as you crest the hill of loneliness or burst forth from the
crypt of your secrets?
What did you
see? What did you feel? What did you do?
The great
beasts of our world are on the loose, but so many angels are too. A thousand
thousand are serving the Holy Ancient One in the work of lighting matches to
put oppression to the flame. Ten thousand times ten thousand are bearing
witness, tending fires already kindled.
Will it be
enough?
Who knows?
We’re in the cloud. It’s in God’s hands. We can build monuments and stay on the
mountaintop, or we can listen, and go back out into the world, with hearts like
torches.
The Sufi
teacher Kabir Helminski wrote, “To be a dervish is very easy / Fill with love
until you’re empty.”
One morning I
sat in a church holding onto a precious human soul, and insisting, “God loves
you and does not condemn you to hell for being who She made you to be.”
“But what if
you’re wrong?” they wailed.
It was 2018.
I remember thinking, I thought we were past this.
Instead,
here we were. This beloved child of God was ten years younger than me, and yet,
still, the poison of church-sanctioned homophobia and transphobia had been
drowning their soul.
I’m not
trying to bum you out on this beautiful morning when we’re ready to march and
love and be fabulous.
I’m telling
you this because I needed to know, and we all need to know, in every moment,
that Pride is not just about watching corporate floats and politicians and cops
march by and marveling at how things have changed. It’s not just about having
fun on a beautiful summer day. It’s not just about celebrating this church and
the work it has done to make safe space for people like me – even when I was a
confused bisexual kid in the late ‘90s and all the more as a self-consciously
militant nonbinary kid in the 2020s.
My pronouns
are they/them/theirs, by the way. Like Jesus, very God of very God, I am One
who contains multitudes. Like the Holy Trinity, I am singular they.
A lot of
people get it wrong. I’m not mad. I can tell most of the time it’s an honest
mistake – like if your name is Doris but someone calls you Doreen.
I only get
mad when people do it on purpose – like you would if someone kept calling you
Doreen even after you corrected them many, many times.
Or if they
told you Doris was a name they’d never heard before so they were just going to
call you Doreen because that was easier.
But that’s
not what most people are doing.
My pronouns
are they/them/theirs. Not she/her/hers.
I’m asking
you with an open heart to please not put me in the awkward position of having
to apologize for making your life more complicated with my existence. If you
mess it up, don’t start groveling. Just correct yourself and move on. I will
too! I’m not a monster. I’m a human being. I’ve made many mistakes. I know
you’re going to as well.
I know it’s
especially hard if you’ve known me for a long time and you’re used to using
other pronouns. Hard to course-correct a habit like that. I’ve struggled when long-time
friends have changed their names and pronouns.
Do not
underestimate how much someone will appreciate that you’re trying. When I can
tell someone is trying it’s like a flower blossoming in my chest.
And oh
man…if you introduce yourself with your own pronouns? That’s a whole
bouquet you just planted here.
When you do
that, you are signaling to me that you see me. You are signaling to your kids,
your grandkids, your niblings, your friends, your students, your coworkers,
that you see them, and then, like dear St. Fred, murmuring, “It’s you I like.”
When you do
that, you are saying to that crying kid back in 2018, “I’m not wrong. I love
you. And God loves you too.”
Because
there’s clearly not enough of us saying that to the people who need to hear it.
If there
were, maybe our bishops wouldn’t be fighting over whether to include 2SLGBTQIA+
people in ministry, or whether same-gender marriage is okay.
If there
were, maybe I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time convincing queer kids not
to just give up on living.
If there
were, I would never have had to hear that kid ask me, over and over again, over
a period of years, “What if you’re wrong?”
Let’s say I
am wrong. Let’s say for a moment God is exactly who they say He is – because
obviously that God is a He.
That’s no
God of life. That’s no God that glistens forth in thousands upon millions of
diverse creatures of every gender imaginable, and some unimaginable ones too.
That’s no God that liberates the broken-hearted. That God ties up heavy
burdens, hard to bear, and lays them on the shoulders of others; but is
unwilling to lift a finger to move them. That God is a refuge to no one.
I will not
worship that God. That God is a death-dealer. I’ll go to hell before serving
that God.
I’m speaking
to you from the heart, because I love you.
The Hebrew
Bible text we just read proves that God is not like that.
Now I know today’s
readings are a bit iffy from a Pride Sunday perspective. Hosea can be a bit
much. There’s the passage we heard last week about taking a wife of whoredom –
EEK!
But the part
about God still reaching out to us, even as we abuse and corrupt and destroy
the creatures of God, because God is not like us?
Maybe even…a
little queer?
That’s the
good stuff.
God calls those
who try to imprison Him/Her/Them to account in these passages.
From Chapter
10:
“You have
ploughed wickedness,
you have reaped injustice,
you have eaten the fruit of lies.”
In disowning
your children. In campaigning for conversion therapy. In refusing to provide medical
care and appropriate bathrooms for trans kids. In forbidding kids from
accessing anonymous queer and trans support groups in schools. In supporting
people who sacrifice to the Baals of hate, like Intellectual Dark Web trolls.
In refusing to learn proper pronouns and new names because “it’s too hard” or
“it’s not proper grammar.”
It’s way
harder to ask someone to start using a new name, or the right pronouns. I think
the scariest thing I’ve ever done is asking my husband to start using
they/them. I’ve known him for twenty years. I know he’s a good guy. I knew he
would promise to try, and that’s just what he did.
It was still
scary.
And by the
way, Shakespeare used singular they.
But even if
it was, is proper grammar really more important to you than our relationship? I
mean if it is, okay. But don’t expect me to hang out with you.
Despite all
of that, God calls us back. Despite all of the times that I’ve been
hateful, God has called me back. Where I sowed rage, God sowed love and
compassion.
Hosea’s
anger is borne out from his response to idolatry. Idolatry is a sin because it
puts something else in the place of God. For Hosea, writing in a particular
place at a particular time, that was Baal, a different god.
But maybe
for us, it’s homophobia. Transphobia. Misogyny. Transmisogyny. Maybe it’s
thinking that God can’t be queer or trans. Maybe it’s thinking that God always
chooses male pronouns. (Oh man, watch yourself, family, because if you think I
get crabby when I get misgendered).
And maybe idolatry
is based in fear. Maybe when people see someone like me, they see everything
that they were told was off-limits to them, and some of them resent me for not
playing by those rules. Maybe they see someone who feels free enough to be
themselves. I mean I’ll confess that what actually happened was that I figured
out I’m terrible at being someone other than myself, so I gave up.
But, in that
spirit of fear, some folks look at God and think, “God couldn’t possibly
approve of this, because if They did, I was lied to. If it was okay all along
to be fully me, why have I been spilling my heartblood all this time trying to be
someone else?”
Well, I’m
done being afraid. I’m done making myself small to support people in lies of
self-loathing.
I’m done
with that God.
And you
should be too.
You know
what happened to that kid crying in the church in 2018? After they decided to
try being themselves, I watched them become more and more compassionate and
brave and accepting of others.
To my
beautiful rainbow siblings, keep being you.
To those
allied with us, stand with us. Keep being you.
To those who
might be a little afraid, a little uncomfortable?
I was invited to preach at West Vancouver United Church on this day for their Essentials summer preaching series. I did go off script once or twice, so if you’d like to hear the whole thing as it happened the livestream is included below.
My theme was the title of this post. The passage was John 13:34-35.
Thank you
very much for inviting me to be with you today. I’m Clare, my pronouns are
they/them/theirs, and I’m an Anglican priest serving as pastor to the St.
Brigid’s congregation at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver.
I was
surprised and honoured to be asked to come and be with you today. When Simon
reached out to me, he told me about this lovely Essentials series, and then
said, “Your theme is countercultural love. What Bible passage sums that up for
you?”
Okay so it’s
time to get real. I’m an Anglican. We do things by the book. It’s the thing I
love most and the thing that drives me…not just bananas, but like BANANA BOATS.
So Simon
says, “Which passage?” and I say, “Uhhh I’m sorry, you mean I actually have to
pick one?” Come on, man, we preach from the Revised Common Lectionary! I
haven’t picked a passage since homiletics class back in seminary! I
legit took like three weeks to get back to Simon.
So I picked
the passage we just read, but there’s probably like a thousand more I could
have picked. It was just the first one that came to mind. That probably means
it was the best choice.
So buckle up, I guess.
“I give you
a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you
also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my
disciples, if you have love for one another.’”
A little
background. I’ve never felt called to traditional parish ministry. My most
ordinary job was children, youth, and family minister at a large semi-suburban
parish. I basically went back into the closet the whole time I was there.
So when that
position was done, the one big plan I had for what to do next fell through, and
I didn’t really have any other prospects or ideas. I just knew that I was not
in the right headspace to go into full-time traditional parish ministry.
I applied to
a bunch of places, including the Mission to Seafarers, which would have been
really fun! But nothing was quite right.
Until I
found St. Margaret’s, and Hineni House.
St.
Margaret’s is a little Anglican parish just off Knight Street close to King Edward
in East Vancouver. Across the street was the rectory, which the church owned
and where, in former days, the priest lived. It had been renovated and
transformed into an intentional community house for young adults, and they
needed a new community director.
Now people, and
especially Boomers, kind of blue screen when I say the words ‘intentional
community.’ I’m not really sure why, because Boomers were pretty into them back
in the ‘60s! An intentional community is a voluntary residential community of
like-minded folks. Those who choose to live there commit to working communally
for the good of the home and each other in a variety of ways.
Hineni means
“Here I am!” It’s what Abraham says to God. Hineni House was interfaith and
queer and trans-positive. The job of the community director was to recruit and provide
programming and spiritual care for the residents. I reported to the priest of
the parish as well as a dedicated council of folks both within and outside St.
Margaret’s.
In the late
spring and early summer, I recruited, mostly through Facebook and word of
mouth. People applied and went through a rigorous interview process where we
tried to ascertain whether they’d be a good fit for any intentional community
as well as for this one. Once they were accepted, they moved in, and
programming began in September or October, running through to the summer again.
We could fit up to five people. Many were students, but some were already
working.
The original
intent was to invite them to join us at church, but it was not a requirement.
Some were already connected to faith communities, while others were actively
deconstructing or had no faith background at all. While one or two did become
more involved, mostly their relationship to St. Margaret’s was mediated through
me.
Once a week,
I went over to the house and we all sat down to dinner together. Then, we moved
into the living room and whatever topic was on the dock for that week. We
shared our spiritual autobiographies. We learned about the Enneagram and
conflict styles. We had difficult conversations with one another about the work
of the house or our relationships. We hosted guest speakers, everyone from
Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan, who talked about Kabbalah, to my buddy Coll Thrush, a
history professor at UBC who talked about how his Celtic heritage informed his
Pagan spiritual practices, to my other buddy the Rev. Seth Wispelway, a UCC
minister who co-ordinated a contingent of faith leaders at Charlottesville and
ended up in the middle of the fray in 2017.
For five
years I pastored this funny little community. Fifteen people passed through its
doors during my tenure. They were women, men, and nonbinary. They were from
Canada, the US, Northern Ireland, Mumbai, Goa, Egypt, and Hong Kong. They were
straight and queer. They were religious, spiritual, and agnostic. All of them
were under 50; the majority were under 30. Many struggled with mental illness
and trauma. They all needed love, friendship, and a safe, open space to talk
about God, religion, and their place in the world.
And they
taught me, more than the Church ever had, about what it meant to model Jesus’s mandatum
novum, the new commandment.
In the
passage we read, Jesus begins the chapter by washing his disciples’ feet. It’s
this amazing moment where the irony is so vivid. Verses 3 and 4: “And during
supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and
that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off
his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.”
In the
translation from The Message, it says, “Jesus knew that
the Father had put him in complete charge of everything.”
Is this how someone who is in complete charge of everything acts? Taking
the form of a slave?
It’s hard for us living in the 21st century white West to
understand what this would have looked like to those gathered around that
table. Here’s an interesting piece of trans history: The cosmology of the Roman
Empire stated that gender was fluid, and that cisgender men had to continually
assert their masculinity through acts of dominance in order to stay cisgender
men. To remove one’s outer garment and take a submissive posture in front of
one’s social inferiors put you at risk for losing your status as an authority
figure – and as a man!
Close your eyes and picture a very traditional family banquet. Who’s at
the table? Who’s in the kitchen? Is it the head of the household? Probably not,
right?
But here is Jesus, putting his manhood and his status as teacher at risk
– but not so that he can make them the masters and him the servant.
He’s using his privilege, and he is modeling how they should be with one
another.
He is teaching us that if you have power in a relationship, you don’t
deny that you have it. You find ways to subvert it.
And you love one another.
If you love one another in a way that subverts hierarchy, subverts the
capitalistic impulse that demands we view relationships as transactional, in a
way that’s embarrassing to the established order – either by breaking down
walls of shame or calling out abusive behaviour that corrupts and destroys the
creatures of God – everyone will know that you are disciples of Jesus.
One of the
last things I did before the pandemic began was take the people in that
iteration of Hineni house, all women, on retreat. It was March 6th
to 8th, 2020. We rented a gorgeous AirBnB in Garden Bay on the
Sunshine coast and settled in for “Called to Holy Ground,” focusing on what it
meant to find God in wild and lonely places. We read from the Bible and the
Qur’an, studying the stories of the burning bush, Jesus’s temptation, and Surah
19, the Qur’anic story of the birth of Jesus, which takes place under a palm
tree out in the desert. We even had a little desert box, like the ones used for
Godly Play.
When frantic
emails from our bishop and diocesan office started flying, we were snuggled in
this lovely home. We cooked. We made music. One taught another to crochet.
Another read to us from an old short story collection. We shared the Eucharist around
the massive oak dining room table.
It was the
last time we were able to gather in person for months.
When the
Hinenites (that’s what I always called them) came home, completely unprompted,
they made a pact with one another to stay together. Not all of them honoured it
in the end, but the fact that it was an organic movement of love was what
really mattered.
This was
only one example of the ways they showed up for one another. There were other
times that were more difficult – health emergencies, mental distress, moments
of trauma and anger. Not all of them had happy endings, but in almost all
cases, the care and love and resilience shown to one another was boundless.
Things
happened in that house that I never saw happen in the church, in nearly a
lifetime of lay and ordained ministry. Endless nights of listening to the
topography of each other’s pain, terrifying and painful phone calls,
heartbreaking hospital visits, awkward silences, prolonged and averted eye
contact, spontaneous moments of grace, forced conversations to bypass simmering
resentments, side-splitting laughter, long walks with these beautiful souls
trying to figure out what they were supposed to be doing in the world.
At the
beginning of this year, it was decided that after increasing difficulties due
to the demands of a pandemic, the program would be put on hiatus. This year’s
group put together a goodbye ritual. We circumnavigated the house looking for
things in the grass that jumped out at us, bringing back stones, leaves, and flowers
to place around a lit lantern. We heard a beautiful blessing from Jan
Richardson. We anointed one another. We prayed, we sang, and we blessed one
another around the old wobbly-legged coffee table.
It was one
of the most moving spiritual experiences I’ve had in any tradition.
Things
happened at Hineni House because God was actually given space to move and grow.
Things happened because, rather than planting Love in perfect rows in a carefully
manicured garden, it was sown on the side of the road and allowed to be
invasive.
Which, to be
perfectly honest with you, seems to happen less and less often in the church.
Do people
know that we are disciples of Christ by the way we love one another?
Do people
know that we are disciples by the way we show up for one another?
Do they know
we are disciples by the way we allow Love to be invasive within us?
Do they know
we are disciples because we risk our status and our privilege in order to
subvert the expected behaviours of our society, like our teacher did?
Do they know
we are disciples because we make a mockery of the established order: the one
that says, “F you all, I got mine,” the one that demands much of the afflicted
and little from the comfortable, the one that sees the land as property rather
than a living being that sustains us, the one that has endless patience for
abusers but none for the abused?
Do people
know we are disciples because we say, “I love you no matter what”?
Do people
know we are disciples because we say, “I know you’re better than this”?
Do they even
know that disciples of Christ are supposed to do this?
Not everyone
in that house succeeded in all of these things. But almost every night, I saw
them try.
Do we try?
What is countercultural
love? It’s not just unconditional. It’s not just beautiful to witness. It’s
subversive. It’s self-sustaining. It’s usually painful, maybe the worst pain
you will ever experience.
In my last
year of seminary, I was part of a small pastoral leadership class led by the
incomparable Rev. Dr. Janet Gear. For each member of the class, she crafted an
image or phrase that she thought summed up the way we should live out our
ministry.
Mine was
“the sacramental hearth.” She felt that my vocation was to be someone who
allowed people to ‘come home’ to God through soul friendship and the rituals of
the church.
It truly was God’s will, then, that I should find you, a place where this ministry already occurs freely, naturally, and aggressively as the blackberry tangles in the Hineni backyard. I will be forever grateful for the way you have showed me what this looks like ‘in the wild.’
In some
ways, you made the work very simple, because it is in your DNA, but also
because of the radical hospitality of what you have done at Hineni House. So
many of those whom you sheltered told me how they felt held, safe, and loved
during their time there. Most churches aren’t brave enough to set aside their
assets for the kind of work you did there: work that provided a loving home that
was a safe and relatively neutral space for those who were curious about
spirituality in general to process their feelings and, in some cases, their
histories of spiritual abuse and loneliness. To host them in a home, while
challenging, is significantly easier and gentler than insisting on their
presence in a church in order to earn the gifts of community. For them, you
demonstrated true Christian love: patient, kind, unenvious and humble, doing
your best not to insist on your own way.
I tried my
best to contribute to that work. Only the Hinenites can say for sure if I ever
succeeded.
Now, I am
being called to a very different and more difficult ministry: to find a way to
create that same spirit in a church setting, when all too often such settings
have been places of trauma and division. It is my hope that all you have taught
me about grace, empathy, and hospitality at St. Margaret’s can benefit those
who come to St. Brigid’s, and perhaps teach the wider Cathedral community,
which is struggling through many staffing and pandemic-related changes, what it
means to be grounded in God’s hope that “all shall be well, all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well.”
To my
Hinenites, near and far: Thank you for taking the risk of coming through our
door to be opened to yourself. Thank you for taking the risk to try community
in the raw. Thank you for taking the risk to tell the divine, in whatever form
it may take, that you wanted deeper relationship. Remember always that you are
loved and welcomed just as you are, and that the desire to know the
divine and to love your neighbour is all you need to do the will of the One who
made you.
Even if you
never find that One for whom you search in this life. Even if you fail over and
over to love your neighbour.
The Creator
of the stars of night did not make us to be gods or angels. They made us to be
just who we are: human beings, fully alive.
To Heidi,
Hineni Council, and St. Margaret’s: know that your ministry changed lives for
the better. No matter what happens afterward, you created a waystation for
weary travelers in a hurting world. You did exactly what you set out to do.
Today is a fascinating confluence of days in the
Church. We’re observing National Indigenous Day of Prayer, when we mark
our need for and commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples in
Canada.
South of the border, our friends in the United States observe
Juneteenth, which commemorates the emancipation of African-American
slaves, finally recognized as a national holiday only last year but
celebrated across the US since 1865.
And finally, today many Christians observe Corpus Christi, a feast
day in the church founded by Thomas Aquinas and a canoness named Juliana
of Liège. This feast day is a celebration of Holy Communion, the
sacramental gift of Christ’s enduring presence in bread and wine.
Today, we’re being called to reflect on a magnificent paradox: God’s
incomprehensible vastness and utter and complete intimacy with us.
To whom can we compare the Creator, a God with such incredible power
that They are capable of not only creating planets and stars, quasars
and black holes, galaxies and nebulae…but subatomic particles,
single-celled organisms, eyelashes.
If that seems frightening and inaccessible, the chapter from which
Isaiah’s passage comes begins with “Comfort, O comfort my people. Speak
tenderly.” While the prophet reminds the people that they are tiny in
the sight of God, the posture is one of gentleness.
This is the gift of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. The One who
measured the waters in the hollow of Their hand and marked off the
heavens with a span, who enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure,
weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance poured
themselves out for us, Body and Blood, to feed us – not just with the
fruits of creation as in the Garden, but with Their own Body, knitted up
from our own flesh. The fruit of disobedience which once turned to ash
in our mouths is reconstituted back into stardust.
Balance is restored. All is well.
But how often do we still seek to privilege one over the other –
intimacy over vastness, or vastness over intimacy? How often do we still
see ourselves as blessed above all others, privileged with this Body
and Blood? Do we ever see God as only being present to us in this
church, and not in what Augustine called God’s first revelation:
creation itself? I feel like folks who are drawn to this part of the
world are good at discerning God’s presence in nature, because how could
we not? But do we sometimes feel that Holy Communion only comes in
bread and wine, and not in the crimson flesh of the salmon that returns
year after year in a cycle of death and rebirth; or the pure water of
this beautiful coastal rainforest; or the precious air we breathe? Do we
perhaps feel that faiths outside of Christianity contain less of God’s
essence or wisdom or blessings for humanity or the world?
For many Christians that is a core part of the faith, but there is no
denying, on this National Indigenous Day of Prayer, that that belief is
what led us to the broken relationship we have now. Our ancestors in
Anglicanism sought and continue to seek to remake Indigenous Peoples in
our image.
In this part of the country, many Coast Salish peoples had the
potlatch, a huge celebration in which new names, rights, and
inheritances were bestowed, the dead were remembered, the newly born
were celebrated, and wealth was redistributed among all those who
attended. This sacred ritual was outlawed in 1885 after many years of
lobbying by missionaries and federal officials. Sacred objects were
confiscated and brave Indigenous Peoples who ignored the ban were
jailed.
The potlatch was not made legal again until 1951 – the year before my mother was born.
Those missionaries believed the ban was God’s will, but how could it
be? How could this be the will of the Creator God who bestows new names,
who pours out holy inheritance, who remembers the dead, who celebrates
the newly born, and who puts down the mighty and lifts up the lowly?
Is God not bigger than one culture, or one religion?
It’s natural for us to want to shrink God. Think of how many
thousands of years it took humanity to actually get a look at planet
earth from a distance! I don’t imagine we’ll be able to do that with God
until Judgement Day. God is so much bigger.
But how often might we go too far in the other direction, and imagine
that God, a Being that transcends Being, is far too vast to be
concerned with us and our tiny problems? In hard times we even wonder if
God exists at all, for surely if They did, They would put a stop to all
of the misery and greed and violence that brought us slavery and
residential schools and colonialism and ongoing racism and planetary
annihilation?
Why do we say our way is hidden from God, and we are disregarded? The
light of God’s compassion for this little blue ball shines in the cold
darkness of this vast universe, and that darkness does not overcome it.
God’s choice was not to use us like chess pieces on a board. Love offers
freedom while demanding much.
Though we may faint and grow weary, from our own ongoing failures and
from the failures of our ancestors, we will renew our strength if we
wait for the Lord.
How do we wait for the Lord? The need is dire. Reconciliation does
not come through thoughts and prayers. We all have work to do and the
work cannot wait.
As Chapter 41 of Isaiah begins, we hear:
“Listen to me in silence, O coastlands;
let the peoples renew their strength; let them approach, then let them speak;
let us together draw near for judgement.”
Let us be complicit in renewing the strength of the people of this land. When they are ready to speak, let them approach.
But dare we draw near for judgement? Comfort, O comfort my people. The judge is Jesus, our carpenter desaparecido, who
sought intimacy with the oppressed, who chose death to better know
those who do not choose it, who returned breathing not vengeance but
peace and power to overturn death forever.
God tells us through the prophet:
“I, the Lord, am first,
and will be with the last.
You whom I took from the ends of the earth,
and called from its farthest corners,
saying to you, ‘You are my servant,
I have chosen you and not cast you off ’;
do not fear, for I am with you,
do not be afraid, for I am your God.”
The God of this National Indigenous Day of Prayer, the God of
Juneteenth, the God of the Sacred Supper, is a vast and intimate God of
freedom for all.
What shall we do with our freedom?
Rejoice, I say again rejoice, in the new world made manifest, but
that some are too cynical or frightened or weary or invested in the old
order to see.
Prophesy, I say again prophesy that it is not only Christians who are
one Body, but all humanity, indeed all creation, on this island home.
And now, let’s follow the Spirit. Break down walls. Protest. Call
Lazarus, shackled in the tombs of racism, sexism, homophobia,
transphobia, ableism, and colonialism to come out, and when she does,
when he does, when they do, unbind them and let them go.
Don’t do it for glory. Do it because the living should not be kept
among the dead. If you are invited to celebrate, be a good guest and
bring your first fruits to the banquet.
Be brave, I say again be brave. The new covenant does have enemies,
even if it’s not polite for us to say so. Take heart from the prophet,
“[T]hose who war against you
shall be as nothing at all. For I, the Lord your God,
hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Do not fear,
I will help you.’”
And sing, I say again sing.
“Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
A friend
once asked me this, and I remember thinking, “What a tremendous mixture of
courage and vulnerability. The spiritual maturity to know that beauty can occur
with and without intent, and the humility to ask, ‘Please help me find it.’”
“Tell me
something I did beautifully.”
Well, most
of us have probably done something more beautiful than denying a beloved one,
or being so excited to see the beloved return that we jump into a lake after
putting our clothes back on!
Do you think
Jesus laughed when he saw that? I hope so!
It’s 100%
Peter as we know him – rash, impulsive, audacious. The Sufi poet Attar writes
that those who seek God with all their hearts can afford to be audacious:
in your boldness, for you’re like a
lunatic on fire.”
We know
Peter walked on water briefly, but lost his nerve. This time, he doesn’t care
whether he walks or drowns!
He’s got to
get to the beach! He waited all night, daybreak came, it’s time! Mary Magdalene
and Thomas got their chances. Now it’s his turn to level up.
What a sight
he must have been, making the water boil around him, probably falling and
getting it up his nose.
All while
Jesus waits there, getting the fire ready.
A charcoal
fire – ooh.
When was the
last time Peter stood at a charcoal fire?
It was not a
time like this, full of expectation and love and dawning sunlight.
That fire wasn’t built for breakfast on
the beach. That fire was built for heat, because it was a cold night.
Do you know
what Christians in Damascus call Maundy Thursday? “Night of Secrets.”
A cold night
of secrets and betrayal, arrest and conviction.
A hair-raising
night of “Did I not see you in the garden with him?”, and three denials, and
the sharp accusation of some far-off rooster.
In that
moment, there was no asking, “Tell me something I did beautifully.”
Sometimes I
wonder if Peter paused for a moment on the beach, only coming closer when
Jesus, who once encouraged would-be disciples to “Come and see” now invites apostles
to “Come and eat.”
Eat bread
and fish, signs of abundance and mercy.
What do you
imagine their conversation was like? Was there any? Did they keep staring? Was
it awkward?
It’s not
important to the Evangelist. Some secrets stay secret. In the veiling of these
precious moments, it’s as if disciples and teacher all become one body: a
prefiguration of what you and I celebrate here in this place.
And then the
real work begins.
Because
Jesus turns to Peter, and, unprompted, invites him to do something different.
Something
beautiful.
There are
three things to note in this most important part of the story.
The first is
action.
The second
is language.
The third is
time.
Action. Jesus asks three questions, and
Peter gives three responses.
We know why.
It’s the charcoal fire.
Over a
charcoal fire, Peter fulfilled Jesus’s prophecy of betrayal.
Over a
charcoal fire, Peter is offered redemption.
Three
denials, two of them explicitly identical, in response to whether he was a
disciple: “I am not.” The third is not explicitly mentioned, but that very fact
implies that it was also identical. “I am not.”
Here,
barring a slight change in the last response, same deal. Identically worded:
“You know that I love you.”
Threefold
invitation to forgiveness. Threefold acceptance. Threefold invitation to
redemptive action and responsibility, both of which mirror Jesus’s own ministry
as the Good Shepherd.
The curse of
Peter’s denial is lifted. Action.
Language. Jesus asks three questions, Peter
gives three responses. The questions, unlike the responses, are not identical.
“Simon son
of John, do you love me more than these?”
Who are
these? Maybe the other apostles. Maybe a reference to some other conversation.
Doesn’t matter.
In this
first question Jesus uses the word, “ἀγαπᾷς,” which the
English translates “love,” but that’s not the word Peter uses in his answer.
That’s “φιλῶ.” One scholar I consulted, Dr. John Bechtle, suggested that ἀγάπη is “primarily a
matter of choice rather than emotions…a one-way love that can flow even toward someone who
does not deserve or return it,” while φιλία is “often an emotionalresponse to someone or
something that appeals to you…a two-waylove that instinctively flows toward someone who returns your love.”
Many theologians far more educated than me squabble over the possible
reasons why two different words are used here. Let’s put a pin in that.
After issuing the cryptic command, “Feed my lambs,” Jesus asks the second
question, slightly different from the first:
“Simon son
of John, do you love me?”
No “more
than these.” And again, he uses ἀγαπᾷς.
But Peter’s
response, as we already said, is identical to the first.
“Yes, Lord;
you know that I love you.” Using “φιλῶ” again.
Finally, the
last question, which, in English, is the same as the second, but in the Greek
is not. Now Jesus uses φιλεῖς.
Peter’s hurt makes more sense when we know this. He just said to Jesus
twice that he loved him – φιλῶ. But it’s deeper than that. The English phrase
“Peter felt hurt” doesn’t really convey what’s happening here. It sounds like
an awkward misunderstanding between friends. No, the Greek suggests Peter felt grieved.
This is deep pain – the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible actually uses
this word for the pain of childbirth.
How apt, considering what is occurring as the denials are undone.
Maybe this is what leveling up feels like for Peter.
Now his response is different: “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
This isn’t,
“You’re omniscient, all-knowing.” This is, “You knew what I would do, you know
what I did do, you surely know all that’s going to come after – but you also
must know what’s in my heart right now. You know I’m all in.”
Jesus does
know he’s all in, but Peter’s missed the real purpose in Jesus finally using φιλῶ. Peter seems to think Jesus chooses this word to twist the
knife, and is grieved because he asked “a third time.”
But Jesus actually asked three different questions.
Maybe, having ascended by being lifted up on the Cross, he is once again
descending to us.
“Is it ἀγάπη you feel
for me – your newly risen and sublime Lord?
Is it ἀγάπη for me,
your teacher who invited you on the journey from the Jordan to Jerusalem?
Is it φιλία for me – the friend you betrayed?”
Peter
responds, “Lord, I have φιλία for you. You told us we were no longer servants
but friends.”
Ah, Jesus
surely thought. Now here is something you have done beautifully. Leveling up. Language.
Now,
finally, time.
Here the
English translation really fails us. For most of the Gospel, the action has
been taking place in a particular tense. Mostly, it’s aorist – a tense that
doesn’t exist in English but was used in ancient Greek to tell stories.
But once we
get to chapter 20, the tense shifts…to present.
All of the
stories of the resurrected Jesus are told in the present tense.
He is still
with us, unbound by time.
All three
of Jesus’s questions and two of Peter’s answers are in the present tense; not
“Jesus said to Simon Peter” but “Jesus SAYS to Simon Peter.”
Until we
get to the third response. Then it shifts briefly back to aorist again.
Peter’s
grief is locked in time.
He stepped
out of the boat and walked on water, but now he’s starting to sink again.
And Jesus
pulls him back up. Back to present tense:
“Jesus says
to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’”
Friends,
this is the heart of it. Present tense means we’re all there with Peter, with
the apostles, on the shore, in the young sunlight, hearts alive with the
electricity of resurrection.
Right now,
in this moment – can you smell the fire and the fish?
Last week for Easter I mentioned that Mary Magdalene had “leveled up,” and that this week we would talk about the same thing happening with Jesus’s disciples.
And we will, but first I wanted to tell you about a conversation I had with Christine Killen. Christine is a member of the St. Brigid’s community who serves on our steering committee.
One of the
things I appreciate most about Christine is that she asks clear and concise
questions and makes clear and concise statements. As we talked, one of the
things she said changed her faith was that she “needed love with skin on it.”
I need to
confess [to you, dear sister] that I missed the next few words because my mind
was blown by the beauty and honesty of that statement.
I needed
love with skin on it.
It’s not
just about getting past a faith that’s bloodless and digging into one that has
real substance. It’s about making something abstract into something particular.
Something not just with weight and sinews but with moles and freckles, with
quirky mannerisms, with a smell all its own.
Love with
skin on it.
This is what
the disciples lost. Oh sure, Jesus told them he would love them to the end. But
that’s not what we mourn when we mourn someone who has died. We don’t mourn
their abstract love. We mourn their physical body. We are forced into a
solitude we did not choose. This is why we get so angry at platitudes when
we’re grieving: “Everything happens for a reason.” “He’s in heaven now.” “He
wouldn’t want you to be sad.” Whether you believe those things or not, they
tear up the particularities of grief and try to re-assemble them into something
universal, and that just reminds us ever more of what we’ve lost, because it’s
the particularities we miss the most.
Thomas isn’t
with the disciples when they first see Jesus, who despite passing through
locked doors is clearly still solid. He invites them to explore his solidity,
showing them his hands and his side. They rejoice when they see it. The
invisible holes within them he is filling up again, even as he returns
with holes and scars himself. But there’s an added beauty to this which I don’t
know that the disciples quite understand as yet – not until Thomas, who I argue
is the hero of this story, points it out.
It’s not
just that Jesus returns to them in that solid form which heals the hurt of his
absence. The scars are also a sign of his complete forgiveness. He has not
erased the horror left by his death. He can’t because this is the only way the
disciples can truly be forgiven for their betrayal. Forgiveness comes when we
bear witness to the harm we have caused. The disciples are confronted with it,
and yet Jesus sends them peace.
But Thomas
isn’t there. We don’t know why. Sometimes I wonder if he was doing his best to
just get on with life, or maybe it was too painful to be with his friends,
particularly since Thomas was a deeply devoted disciple before, stirring up the
disciples to return to Bethany for Lazarus even if it meant death, and asking
for details on how they could know the way Jesus was going. Maybe he was angry
with his friends for betraying the one he loved. And yet here they come
claiming Jesus has returned offering total forgiveness.
Of course Thomas wanted to see the wounds. He
wants to know that his friend isn’t offering cheap grace. Under the old order, Jesus
would come in a brand-new sparkly body with no scars, no signs of what had
happened to him under the brutal hammer of the state. He might have looked like
a totally different person or creature – an angel or some idealized Adonis.
Heck, maybe he wouldn’t have been embodied at all; just a voice or a light. All
sunshine and rainbows, no change.
No
acknowledgement of the love the disciples had had for that particular body,
that particular voice, that particular physical presence.
No sign of
what had happened on the Cross, nothing that allows those who harmed to
understand the depth of the harm they had caused and thereby facilitate true
forgiveness.
Thomas says,
“Nope. I need love with skin on it. If I can’t put my hands into the scars, I
won’t believe. A ghost, an abstraction, a philosophical concept can’t save us.
Only love can save us.”
That’s
mind-blowing enough, but guess what? There’s yet another layer here, a layer we
don’t talk about enough in Church, a layer of true incarnation that makes
Thomas more than a hero – that makes him a prophet.
And that’s
the layer that theologian Nancy Eiesland shares with us.
Nancy
Eiesland was a professor at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in
Atlanta. Born with a congenital bone defect, she was angry with the way her
Church demeaned her experiences by patronizing her, assuming she had hidden
sins which led to her disability, or saying suffering made her virtuous in the
eyes of God, or that she would be whole in heaven. And yet in the disability
activism spaces where she also moved, the people around her rejected the Church
for these wholly understandable reasons. In a sense, they continued to impose a
solitude on her as a Christian, replicating the forced individualism society
continues to place on disabled people.
Nancy wanted
a God who understood her, and after a lot of work talking with other disabled
folks, she found Them. In her beautiful book The Disabled God, she
writes,
“The foundation of Christian theology is the resurrection of
Jesus Christ. Yet seldom is the resurrected Christ recognized as a deity whose
hands, feet, and side bear the marks of profound physical impairment. The
resurrected Christ of Christian tradition is a disabled God. This disabled
God…called for justice not from the distant reaches of principle but by virtue
of God’s incarnation and ultimate knowledge of human contingency. …If Christ
resurrected still participated fully in the experience of human life –
including mysteriously the experience of impairment, we must be scandalized by
our theological tendencies to perpetuate the myth of bodily perfection in our
defense of heavenly (or, indeed, earthly) perfection. The disabled God nails
the lie in our belief in a paradise in which we are “released” from the truth
of worldly and bodily existence. That which God has called good, and in which
God has participated through the incarnation, cannot be simply viewed as a
temporary “evil” which we repudiate in order to participate in the promised
fullness of life.”
Talk about
love with skin on it.
Despite how
others try to domesticate this story and use “Doubting Thomas” as a slur,
Thomas, in a profound and prophetic act of questioning, shows not just how far
forgiveness goes, but how far the incarnation goes. He asks Jesus, “Is
everything, every morsel and facet of the human experience, really redeemed and
made holy in the resurrection?”
And what is
Jesus’s answer?
“Put your
finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not
doubt but believe.”
Don’t doubt
forgiveness. Don’t doubt my incarnation. Don’t doubt that I am here, all of me,
and because I am, you are here too, caught up in my net of new life.
All of you. Every possible way you could
be in the world, I put on like a royal garment. I am love with skin on
it.
Of course
Thomas responds with “My Lord and my God!” We don’t even know if he does
put his hands into the marks, because he doesn’t need to.
And even now
it’s not the end of things, for then we hear:
“Have you
believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet
have come to believe.”
Blessed are
we who have not seen the marks with our own eyes, and yet have come to believe
that no part of our identity is rejected.
Blessed indeed am I when I look out at you and see the Body of Christ. Disabled and able-bodied. Black, brown, and white. Queer and hetero. Trans and cisgender. Child and adult. Poor and wealthy. Mortal and eternal.
You’re done with all the talk, talk, talk with nothing on the table
It’s time to come on out; there will be no sign from above
You’ll only hear the knock, knock, knock of your own heart, a signal
The artist Vienna Teng released her song Level Up in 2013. The music video for this remarkable piece begins with a couple embracing in front of their home, which is in ruins. It transitions to a man with a prosthetic leg standing at a set of parallel bars, with a physical therapist standing at the other end, then to a person sitting on the ground in a dark alleyway, then to a couple (one of whom is Teng) in a bedroom, who look like they’ve just had a fight. Teng slowly rises, goes to stand before her partner, and they begin to dance, mirroring each other’s movements. The walls of the room then fold back and show all of the other locations – the alleyway, the room with the parallel bars, the destroyed home – and Teng walks through, engaging each of the other characters in dance.
After a moment, a brilliant white portal opens up before each of them, and they walk forward with reverence.
If you are afraid, come out
If you are awake, come out
Come out and level up.
Mary Magdalene, the home of her heart in ruins, feeling the
earth-shattering loss of her teacher, totally alone and spent after a
quarrel with the state where she and her people all came out the losers,
went looking for a dead man, in the dark of early morning.
Afraid, because now what was she supposed to do with her life? Awake, because she surely didn’t sleep.
There was no sign from above. She went to weep, went to anoint,
knowing she only had so many chances to be with him before the dear body
would no longer be recognizable.
Little did she know, her entire worldview was about to level up.
Because the stone’s been rolled away.
She could not have imagined a good or joyful reason for this state of
affairs. What could possibly be at work here but the most brutal
mischief? She runs to her friends, panicking, and they come with her and
find the shattered remains of Love’s great Exodus, but only one of them
gets it, and seems not to want to explain it to the others.
Why? The text has no clues. If we’re going to take this metaphor all
the way, maybe for this unnamed Beloved disciple, the little rainbow
ball is still spinning, the little hourglass is still turning, the
loading screen is still doing its silent work: Leveling up. Please stand
by.
Takes time to level up from “Everything dies and everything dies for good” to “Your experience may differ.”
So they go back home, leaving Mary behind in a white-hot fury of
grief, but suddenly…something changes. The tomb which was empty now has
two figures in it, who speak to her, but she can’t make heads or tails
of them.
Begin again; dynamite the dam on the flow
Your body feels the tock, tock, tock of time as it hammers
Lord, we are all cinders from a fire burning long ago
But here it is the knock, knock, knock of your own heart that matters
And she turns, and here is someone else…someone who asks her a loaded question: “Who are you looking for?”
This means so much more than what’s on the surface. This is a question for a disciple – or, in this case, an Apostle.
Who are you looking for?
A Teacher. A Beloved. A Conqueror of the Grave. A Resurrected One.
But Mary is still grappling with that end boss, that old worldview.
Death is final. I’m looking for a Beloved, but he’s a corpse. I’m
looking for him so I can provide his husk with the proper rituals. It’s
what we do. What else is left? I care for him because his work is over. I
thought, I prayed, I hoped that it would never end – but it did,
horribly.
I’m here with the bitter herbs of my sorrow. I’m here with the salt
of my pain, and all there is to do is anoint and cry because it is over.
And he speaks her name: Mary.
She stares, stares for a thousand years. Here comes the loading screen.
If you are afraid, come forth
If you are alone, come forth now
Everybody here has loved and lost
So level up, and love again
He’s here, but he’s also not here. She calls him Teacher, and that is
what he is – as he said only a few days ago. But he’s also not that,
not anymore. That’s why he says, “Don’t hold onto me.”
He has become what Rumi, Hafez, and Attar call The Friend, capital F. And Mary emerges, leveled up, and goes to do her business.
Call it any name you need
Call it your 2.0, your rebirth, whatever
So long as you can feel it all
So long as all your doors are flung wide
Call it your day #1 in the rest of forever
Day #1 in the rest of forever is sharing with the others. But it
appears like they need time to level up too, which we’ll get into next
week when we tell the story of Thomas. We don’t know what happens to
Mary after she makes her proclamation to the disciples. Our ancestors
had many stories of the people she met and the things she did, including
miraculous deeds of power, even resurrection. But perhaps like so many
mystics and lovers before her she just disappeared in the glory of what
she had witnessed. Perhaps, through Love, all division between her and
the Beloved was erased. This, after all, seems to have been what
happened to Mary of Bethany, who washed Jesus’s feet.
And it is we, like her brothers, who are left – we who have not seen,
but have come to believe. We who remain after generations of
storytellers and believers, workers of good and evil, all ages, all
colours, all genders, all bodies, all orientations, builders of an
upside-down kingdom.
If you are afraid, give more
If you are alive, give more now
Everybody here has seams and scars
So what? Level up!
The legacy Mary Magdalene leaves to us is not one of unquenchable
faith, or matchless strength, or boundless patience, or the gift of
powerful speech. It’s a legacy of solidarity with the suffering –
standing at the foot of the Cross, alongside all those who are still
being crucified, day after day.
It’s a legacy of seeking: inelegant, desperate, blubbering seeking.
It’s a legacy of accepting when the old way no longer fits, and leveling up.
It’s a legacy of filling up with love until you’re empty, of letting love rewrite the story not just of you but of everything.
Even the things you were told were non-negotiable like who’s allowed
to have power over you, like who you’re allowed to love, like who you’re
allowed to be.
Let your faith die
Bring your wonder
Yes, you are only one
No, it is not enough
But if you lift your eyes, I am your brother
I am. In this kingdom, I belong to you and you belong to me. We’re
siblings in that we didn’t choose each other – Jesus did. We’re friends
in that our bond is deeper than one shared by blood.
And now that we have found each other, what shall we do? Our master
carpenter took a sledgehammer to the gates of death. The work is done.
Whether your faith is an oak tree or a mustardseed, you are counted
among those who stand in the rubble of all that’s been burned away in
the fire of new life to dance. To sing. To shout, “Alleluia.”
On June 27th, 2015, ten days after a white supremacist I won’t name gunned down nine African Americans at Bible study in a Charleston church, activist Bree Newsome approached the flag pole of the South Carolina statehouse. At the top of that thirty-foot pole flew a Confederate battle flag.
Bree scaled the pole, reciting Psalm 27 and the Lord’s prayer, and snatched the flag from it. A photograph taken that day shows her about a foot from the top, with the offending flag flowing from her hand.
When police shouted for her to come down, she shouted back, “You come against me with hatred, oppression, and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today.”
Asked in an interview with Vox how it felt to hold that flag in her hand, Bree said, “The only word that can come to mind for me is triumph. …[A]t that moment I really did symbolize the struggle. Like it wasn’t just Bree Newsome scaling the flagpole.”
Bree was then arrested, charged with defacing monuments on capital grounds, and imprisoned for about seven hours. In the same interview she said,
“By the time we had been processed we’d already gotten word that the flag was back up and so at that point I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know how much of an impact it will make that we took this flag down but we took the flag down.’ In jail they had the TV on but they didn’t have the news on so we didn’t have any way to know what was going on. It really didn’t occur to me how much of an impact it had had until word started trickling through the guard.”
The photo and the story had gone viral.
Bree is one face in a sea of saints and prophets who engaged in direct action, civil disobedience, and performance art to call oppressors to account. None of us can deny the power of an image. Bree on a flag pole. Amanda on her knees before police with an eagle feather in her hand. Rosa on a bus seat.
Jesus on a donkey.
Today, we celebrate Palm Sunday. It’s a strange story. I mean, a lot of the stories we tell about Jesus are strange, but this one is particularly odd. He gives instructions to his disciples, so he clearly planned this in advance. For what purpose? Why did people spread their cloaks on the road? Why did they recite Psalm 118? Why do the Pharisees tell Jesus to stop?
If it was just an ordinary day in Jerusalem, why did Jesus do this?
Well, it wasn’t.
It wasn’t the only grand entry into Jerusalem that day. From the western side of the city, a different entourage was processing: the governor, Pontius Pilate, and his imperial troops. Governors always came to Jerusalem during Jewish festivals like the upcoming Passover, just in case there was “trouble.”
This was not just a political affair – it had theological implications as well. Roman emperors during the time of Jesus were viewed as living gods. Inscriptions from the time imparted familiar titles to the emperors: “Lord,” “Saviour,” even “Son of God.”
So, Jesus knew what he was doing. He had a co-conspirator in the city who let him take the colt. It had to be a colt, because of the prophet Zechariah: a king would come to Jerusalem riding the foal of a donkey. And that king would “cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations.”
Sometimes the Scriptures seem to suggest that the prophets predicted things that happened in the Jesus story. But this robs Jesus not just of his Jewishness but his agency. He did this to make a point.
And the people picked up what he was laying down. They spread their cloaks on the road, as they would for a king, and waved palm branches, symbols of royalty and victory.
And they sing passages from Psalm 118, which my Jewish Study Bible calls a victory song “possibly reformulated to celebrate the return from exile and the rebuilding of the Temple,” a song where only the righteous may enter the Temple, a song which contains a reversal of expectations: the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
Bree on a flagpole. Amanda on her knees with the eagle feather. Rosa on a bus seat. Jesus on a donkey.
Images that struck matches and set old orders on fire.
The Jewish playwright David Mamet says that the human creature injects drama into everything, even things as impersonal as the weather, to make sense of the world. What we find especially alluring are stories with a three-act structure which throws the hero into struggle from which they emerge victorious. This allows us to feel the thrill of anxiety, romance, even anger, within a safe space. They also allow us to feel a sense of superiority – even godhood – for knowing what’s going to happen. But melodrama, romance, and even smarter issue-driven works discussing themes do not ultimately satisfy us, because we know, even unconsciously, that we are not superior. In fact, we are flawed and anxious creatures. We may tremendously enjoy those stories, but they don’t stick with us long-term, and they often breed resentment, because even subconsciously we know we’re being manipulated.
In his book Three Uses of the Knife, Mamet writes,
“Myth, religion, and tragedy approach our insecurity somewhat differently. They awaken awe. They do not deny our powerlessness, but through its avowal they free us of the burden of its repression.”
Bree, Amanda, and Rosa did not do what they did imagining they would achieve personal glory. Bree knew the power of the image, so she said yes. Rosa was an activist for years before the bus incident, and yet it’s what we remember her for. With Amanda, I had to look up her name, because the image of her, which was taken from behind, was all I knew. The power came from that image being made into art across the world, and she’s actually fine with it.
The task of the writer, Mamet says, is to craft narratives that do not conform to satisfactory conclusions; that waste no time in trying to convince us that we are gods. This is the only way to be respectful of one’s audience.
He then broadens this to apply to leaders of all kinds. A leader, he says, resists.
Rather than claiming the end justifies the means, a true leader says, “There is no end and even though it may cost me…I’m not going to give them what they want if what they want is a lie.”’
Jesus offers a counter-narrative in his entrance to Jerusalem, knowing that despite his best efforts, his people will still want him to conform to the old narrative: The Messiah dashing the Romans with a mighty arm and liberating through violence. But that’s just another version of Rome. Jesus knew that narrative was a lie.
This is we celebrate Palm Sunday this way, by waving branches, and reading the account of Jesus’s betrayal, arrest, and death, as though we are there with him, active in his betrayal and lynching. It seems odd to mark it with this sense of festivity, considering what we know is to come. Are we having a party at the foot of the gallows? But Jesus knew that true freedom comes from embracing powerlessness. That is what he offers us.
From Mamet again,
“Tragedy is a celebration not of our eventual triumph but of the truth – it is not a victory but a resignation. Much of its calamative power comes, again, from that operation described by Shakespeare: when remedy is exhausted, so is grief.”
That Shakespeare reference is to a line from his play Othello. Only a few verses later in that monologue, we get:
“The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.”
And so, we wave our branches, we sing our songs, we celebrate, and we even openly admit our complicity in corrupt systems, because we, like Jesus, are free.
Free to be daring, free to be human, free like Bree, like Amanda, like Rosa, to come against Empire in the name of God.
“Slowly blooms the rose within / Slowly blooms the rose within.”
A long time ago, we had a curate here at the Cathedral whose name was Chris Dierkes, a former Jesuit. He had connections in the Christian Contemplative movement, and in 2011, he invited the wonderful Cynthia Bourgeault to join us in Holy Week.
Cynthia Bourgeault is an Episcopal priest and writer currently living in New Mexico. She was a student of Father Thomas Keating, a Catholic monk who re-developed the Christian practice of Centering Prayer. Cynthia went on to found The Contemplative Society on Salt Spring Island in the 1990s, where she taught Christians how to reconnect with ancient Christian practices of prayer: the nurturing of silence and the re-learning of Wisdom literature from non-canonical Scriptural texts such as the Gospel of Thomas.
Being fascinated by her work, I attended her Holy Week service. It was held on the Monday in the evening. Four people sat on this platform behind me: Cynthia, a musician whose name I have sadly forgotten, Chris, and Chela Davison, a female friend of Chris’s. The musician began to play a harmonium, which filled the air of the church with a sad, reedy moan. After we listened for some time, we realized she was playing the Easter hymn, “Now the green blade rises.” And I broke out into gooseflesh as, totally unprompted, the entire congregation began to hum along.
The contemplative ritual that followed focused on the Gospel story we just heard. Cynthia explained to us that the woman who anoints Jesus, named here as Mary of Bethany but unnamed in other Gospels, was a forgotten Holy Week figure, the only one who really understands what’s about to happen to Jesus, unlike his disciples. In this ritual, based on one Cynthia witnessed in a French monastery, we’d reflect on how the anointing of Jesus by a woman bookends Holy Week – here, and later with the three who come to anoint his body after death. By washing his disciples’ feet on Maundy Thursday, Jesus follows her example. We would also reflect on the beautiful synchronicity of the anointing with the Song of Songs from the Hebrew Bible.
The musician began to play again, singing this song:
“Slowly blooms the rose within / Slowly blooms the rose within.”
Chris and Chela then read parts of the Song of Songs as a dialogue, which is how it is supposed to be read. The energy of the room shifted dramatically. Chris and Chela sat in their chairs perfectly still without touching or even looking at one another, with calm and quiet voices, but the experience of that reading was still powerfully erotic. I have NEVER felt that way in church!
I actually reached out to Chris to ask about the details of this service, which were blurry in my mind, and he linked me to a written reflection Chela had done after the experience of reading. She writes,
“All that was required of me was to open in love. …[I]n order to open as love, I needed to open to every other arising experience. …So anxiety arose and I opened. Fear arose and I opened. Cynicism arose and I opened. I could feel layer upon layer, shells and callouses giving way and falling from my heart. …It was the first time that I have felt so fully, so deeply that there was nothing to do but love and for no other reason than for love itself.”
After reading the Gospel passage, Chela anointed Chris’s feet. The congregation was then given the chance to anoint one another’s hands with fragrant oil, which was passed across the rows of chairs. All of us were transported into the Gospel story as the whole church filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
Why am I telling this Holy Week story before Holy Week? Well, partly because today we observe the beginning of Passiontide, which begins this Sunday and ends on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter. Passiontide is one of our lesser-known traditions, and includes things like veiling crucifixes until Good Friday. The venerable Wikipedia tells us that this is a reference to John 8:46-59, in which Jesus “hid himself” from the people.
We are preparing, of course, to move into the most sacred time of year for Christians. Not to yuck anyone’s yum, but Christmas ain’t got nothing on this. As radical as it is to imagine the Creator of the stars of night entering a poor brown baby living in occupied territory, imagine proclaiming that that very Creator is lynched by the state only to overturn that old order in a conflagration of resurrection – not just before breakfast but even before the kids are awake to hunt for their eggs.
We’re on the threshold of something brand new. God is preparing us for great wonders in this shining moment where Truth is veiled for a short time. Mighty waters, symbols of chaos and changeability, will part to show us the way toward new life, a way built on solid ground. Chariot and horse, symbols of empire and oppression, will be extinguished, quenched like a wick. Freedom will be poured out abundantly like water – freedom from bondage, freedom from sin, freedom from Empire, freedom even from the fear of death.
But not yet. These are just whispers in a room full of fragrance, as we veil our crosses in remembrance and humility, recognizing that the things God will accomplish through Jesus are too incredible for us to fully understand, and so we fall into wordless sign-acts of anointing and veiling, a visible marker of the way we forego saying “Alleluia” during the season of Lent, while the rose of expectation blooms in our hearts:
“Slowly blooms the rose within / Slowly blooms the rose within.”
Holy Week is special because it is filled with these wordless sign-acts that point to truths which can’t be revealed through words alone.
Today, we veil. But next Sunday, this place will be decked out in red as though festooned with fire. There will be palms and joyful singing, and yet what a strange joy, because we are heralding Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem, the place of his execution.
Why should we be joyful? Because we know what awaits at the end. We know the story. We trust the story.
And then we continue with smaller revelations.
We’ll have our own, less elaborate contemplative service of song and anointing on Monday evening: Anointed, hosted by Lauren and me.
Holden Evening Prayer with the Rev. Matthew Senf will be held on Tuesday.
The incredible music and light-filled service of Tenebrae, one of my favourite Holy Week services, will be held on Wednesday.
And finally the Triduum, the Three Great Days, filled with drama, as we remember hour by hour the story of Jesus’s last days, and re-enact them, because we need to remember how it feels, in our bodies as well as in our minds, because Anglicans are a holistic people who like to re-member things physically as well as intellectually.
Like children, we are playing a game together, but this game is no frivolous undertaking. Playing is an important part of development. We all hold multiple identities within us, and your soul is a precious child that needs play to integrate and learn deeper wisdom. And this year, we get to be together again, in our own space, what our dear children and family minister Lauren calls “the prayground.”
If you’ve never acted in the drama of this week before, you’ve got to try it. If you’ve done it before, but not with us, you’ve got to try it. If you’ve done it before with us, many times, you’ve got to try it.
Come on, try it with me. I’ve done it here before but never with you.
Even if you may get bored hearing the same story over and over, your soul is a child, and children never get tired of hearing the same stories.
It happened once, generations ago, but it’s also only just beginning.
“Slowly blooms the rose within / Slowly blooms the rose within.”